Having negative thoughts is normal every once in a while. Sometimes, things can be stressful, and those negative thoughts can come creeping in your brain. However, the effect that a lack of positive thought combined with negative self-talk has on your overall mental health can be detrimental. Negativity can cause depression and anxiety, and leave you feeling lost and with a lack of motivation.
You may feel stuck in your life and unable to move forward or change your situation because you’re too used to filling your brain with negative self-talk. Words can have a profound impact on your mind and on your overall mental health. Negative words can make it hard for your neurochemicals that help prevent stress and regulate emotions to work properly.
Negative words can even overwork the fear center of your brain, which will cause an influx of stress hormones to overrun your body, making it more and more difficult to see the positive things in life. Changing the words you use inwardly – and outwardly – can train your brain to be more positive.
How Positive Words Can Help The Brain To Start Thinking Positively
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” – Alphonse Karr
The Importance Of Positive Words
Using words that are correlated with positivity can help your brain function better with cognitive reasoning. They can also help strengthen your frontal lobes. When you use positive words, your motivation increases.
Rather than lamenting that something is difficult and that you don’t think you can overcome it, try instead saying, “This is a challenge and I will do my best.” This simple change in how you talk to yourself can kickstart your motivation and make it easier to overcome stressful challenges and allows your brain to work better and come up with solutions that you might otherwise not be able to.
Positive Words Can Change Your Entire Outlook And Perception
Keeping positive words in mind, rather than negative ones, can change how you view other people. When you hold negative words in your head, you’re more likely to react to people with doubt and suspicion, since the fear part of your brain is more stimulated. On the other hand, when you focus on positive words, you become more likely to react to others with good faith.
The words you use can change the way you perceive your reality. The next time you find yourself interacting with someone and you feel that they have bad intentions, but you’re not sure why, try looking at the situation with more positive words in mind. You may find that your own negativity is being projected onto another person without you knowing it.
Positive Words Can Alleviate Anxiety And Depression
When you allow negativity to cloud your mind, your mental health suffers. Focusing on negative words can make recovering from depression even harder. The symptoms of depression like lack of motivation, hopelessness and negative-self-image are only exacerbated by allowing yourself to indulge in negative words.
Being kind to yourself is one of the greatest ways to help combat the symptoms of depression and anxiety, and one of the best ways to do that is to start using positive words and affirmations when you self-talk. Using positive words over a prolonged length of time can increase your happiness, motivation and overall mental health.
Training your brain to use positive words can seem difficult, especially if you’re used to using negative words. Yet, doing something so simple as changing the words you use when you self-talk can have the most profound impact on your life. Try to keep track of how many negative words you use through the day. When you catch yourself thinking something negative about a situation or towards yourself, write it down and reflect on it at the end of the day.
Then, see how you can change the words into more positive ones that look towards a positive outlook, rather than dwelling on a bad or stressful situation. Turn each negative thought into a positive one just by changing the vocabulary you use.
For example, instead of saying to yourself, “I don’t have the time to do this,” try saying, “I will rearrange my schedule and find the time to do this.” You’ll be amazed by how quickly your whole outlook begins to change when you train your brain into assessing a situation with a more constructive way.
