Are you someone who is often plagued by negative thoughts while you are studying? Well, then you can take heart from the fact that you are not alone. Plenty of people suffer from a tendency to think negatively about themselves and this is not just something that they do only during their studying hours but pretty much every moment of their waking lives. It is sometimes quite natural to think negatively about life and many people are more prone to think negatively than others.
Also depending upon the mood, there are times when one has more negative thoughts and at other times they are able to have less of them. If you are consistently prone to negative thoughts, it can affect your concentration and reduce your ability to retain information that you learn from your books.
Whatever be your individual situation, it is vital that you get rid of your negative thoughts in order to achieve greater success with your studies. Negative thoughts and depression can not only reduce your overall ability to function to the best of your ability but they can also make you extremely cynical which can affect your social skills and seriously affect your mental agility to perform day to day tasks. Whether you choose to do it yourself or seek professional help for the same, you must try to achieve control over your thoughts so that they do not have the power to ruin your life.
Common patterns of negative thinking
Every individual, whether a man or a woman, has certain common patterns of negative thinking which they fall into time and again. If you are looking to attain control over your thinking, then you should first have anunderstandingabout the nature of your negative thinking processes. Here are some of the typical patterns of cognitive distortions that many people suffer from:
- Thinking in an all-or-nothing way:
Many people tend to develop quite all-or-nothing or black or white methods of thinking that they apply in different walks of their lives. They use these absolute modes of judgment when they think about themselves or the others. Such tendencies hardly ever enable a person to develop proper understanding of the self and others.
- Mental filtering:
Another common tendency is to filter out all positive aspects of a given situation or a person and only focusing on the negative aspects. Alternately, one might also see only the positive side of something and intentionally stay blind to the negative aspects. Both these behavior patterns stem from a desire for absolute perfection which is far from reality.
- Overgeneralization:
This indicates a tendency to generalize over something based on one single experience. For instance, a particular thing or person when once bad is always bad.
- Catastrophic imaginations:
Some individuals have the tendency always to focus on the worst case scenarios and automatically blowing every small thing out of proportions.
- Jumping into quick conclusions:
The tendency to draw negative conclusions without reasonable evidence is another type of negative thinking. For instance, assuming that we know what is going to happen in the future.
- Personalization:
This refers to a tendency of claiming personal responsibility for everything that is happening but is outside of one’s control.
Positive thinking as a practice
Positive thinking is not something that can be done momentarily. It has to be a practice, a way of lifestyle to have the desired effect. There are many ways which one can adopt to think positively, but they should be inculcated deeply into day to day life. Getting the correct education is all about the correct attitude where positivity is the key and there are no two ways about it. While the methods discussed below have been proven to have positive results on the psyche of a person, it is always better to take a slow but steady approach while practicing them.
- Firstly, it is never possible to have control over your thoughts unless you are aware of them. Most people think about their lives in an automatic way rather than consciously choosing their thoughts. In this way, you are hardly aware of what you are thinking and you are ruled by the emotional impulses created by your thoughts. So you should start observing your thoughts and develop greater awareness of them.
- The best way to attain heightened awareness of your own thoughts is to observe them consciously, and this can be best done by practicing meditation. There are different forms of meditative techniques and you can practice them as they suit your needs.
- No one can be good at everything but every person has specific areas where they specialize. You should try to find out what are your talents or what you are good at and then try to strengthen your positive qualities. These qualities can be anything; from being a good listener, to having more physical energy or mental focus. Once you focus on your strengths, you will see that you automatically feel good about yourself. There is no need to hit the panic buttons if you are stuck with homework and in need of assignment help, as professional companies offer homework help services at reasonable costs and make way for you to earn impressive grades via professional paper presentation.
- Try developing some hobbies that allow you to engage yourself both in heart and mind. This can be anything from reading books, painting, and photography, collecting items or traveling. Hobbies not only allow one to expand their knowledge and consciousness but also provide with ample joy and happiness.
- Maintain a balance between spending time with friends and staying alone. When you tend to be having negative thoughts, it is not always advisable to stay alone as it can make you ponder more on your dark thoughts. On the other hand, you will also need some alone time for yourself as it will help you to understand and organize your thoughts and work on yourself. Hence, it is always better to strike a healthy balance between the two.
- Try to apply your focus in everything that you do throughout the day instead of simply going through the task in a detached manner. This can include even the most mundane tasks, such as eating, dressing up for going somewhere or even while walking down the street. This will help you to be engrossed in your actions and avoid negative thinking.