Effects of negative thinking on health
“ABRA-KADABRA”. How many of you are familiar with this term from Walt Disney movies and other magical series and shows?
It is defined as “an incantation used as a magic word in stage magic tricks, and historically was believed to have healing powers when inscribed on an amulet”. Another deeper meaning one should learn about this lovely expression is that in an ancient language own the meaning of “I create as I speak”.
What an impeccable thing to say… literally! It is very well known that throughout the history of mankind the mind and speech have had always been powerful and affected people’s lives, for better and worse, and in some cases unfortunately much worse.
It seems that the power of the mind has a significant impact on so many aspects of our health.
Negative thinking in particular will affect your physical and mental health. It will lower your self-esteem, reduce your drive and motivation, change your decision making mechanism, damage your physical health, change thinking patterns, seclude one socially and might just lower us into depression.
What a pooper negative thinking is right?
The power of thoughts is a very powerful tool that shouldn’t be disregarded. Before we dive into the elaboration of effects of negative thinking on our health I feel we should first define with simplicity and clarity the word “thought”.
The definition of thought
Thought is defined as “an idea or opinion produced by thinking, or occurring suddenly in the mind” and “the action or process of thinking”. A thought IS indeed an action per se. It involves the consumption of energy, electrical nerval movement in our central nervous system, a good aerobic activity to our brains a whole parallel universe of its own-even if just in one’s head. A thought even burn calories!
So now that fully understand the concept of thought let’s dive into a world of influences it has on our health.
Negative thinking – Lower our self-esteem
Self-esteem is often described as one’s opinion of themselves. The evaluation of your own worth and the possession of beliefs, thoughts and emotions about yourself that can be expressed in various ways. It can either contribute to your self esteem in cases of positive thinking or meet you in the negative thinking court and be expressed in despair, sadness, and low worth emotions. Thinking “bad” about ourselves will make us believe less in ourselves and do or initiate less as our self worth in our minds will be low and unworthy.
I also found that negative thinking about our surroundings does not contribute to our self- esteem as once we possess negative thoughts about our surroundings (say we think we have a jealous neighbor)we feel somewhat attacked and in need to defend ourselves- and by that initiate less out of fear.
So try to think as less negative about yourself or others as possible. Yes, some people will stand in your way to success no matter what their reason will be, but not as many as you think. The person that will most likely stand in your way to success will be no other than yourself by those imprisoning thoughts.
So exercise your thoughts and let go -you are not as interesting as you imagine in other people’s minds. People are usually too self centered to be thinking of you all day. They have their own problems to deal with…
Negative thinking – Reduce our drive and motivation
Thinking negative is tiring! The constant thoughts of “I’m not good enough” “why should I bother” or “ my mother in law doesn’t like me” can easily drag us into exhaustion and despair. Once we’re exhausted and see why not instead of why yes our drive and motivation decreases significantly.
The worst thing about “seeing black” is that it is a mechanism the feeds itself. Motivation and drive works in cycles- the more we do and initiate, the more we wanna keep doing and the less we do the less we will most likely wanna do in the nearest future. Negative thinking will lead us into zero motivation to do in the first place.
Yes, it may take time and you will most likely won’t make it perfectly at first or ever, but with the positive “can do” attitude in mind and the motivation that follows it will all come together, so dare do.
Negative thinking – Change our decision-making mechanism
Decision-making plays an important role in the transformation of information received by our senses and the actions followed. Many decisions have important biological and social consequences, so it is crucial to understand the source of these decisions.
The neural mechanisms of decision-making are being broadly investigated and is known that being significantly affected by not just the quality of thought (knowledge) but by the state of mind you’re in while making it. Negative? or positive?
For the sake of example let’s assume You’ve decided before you have even taken the first step forward, that it will probably won’t work (negative thought). Before you’ve even begun, you’ve created a destructive path that can lead to only one place: failure. So why even try next time? That way we create an un-efficient decision-making mechanism that will lead to endless wrong decisions in the future.
Thinking as less negative thoughts will allow us into the go and try attitude, despite the fear of failing or being mocked. Whenever I encounter those thoughts and fear I remind myself this awesome quote :
“There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
So fly… even if close to ground. One step at a time.
Negative thinking – Damage our physical health
“Poorly-managed negative emotions are not good for your health. Negative attitude and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness can create chronic stress, which upsets the body’s hormone balance, depletes the brain chemicals required for happiness, and damages the immune system”.
Negative thinking stress related also creates cognitive changes that might affect the stability of mental health that requires a fine balance to begin with. Anxiety can be developed, ADHD, mood disorders and many more. Unfortunately, our brain is better at learning from bad experiences rather than good so paying attention to the type of thoughts we possess is needed.
Catching a cold, exhaustion, chronic hunger, sleep deprivation and even allergies can make you depressed, which leads to negative thoughts and in many cases and depression can be caused by negative thinking, itself. See where am getting at?
The medical establishment has been proving that the mind can heal the body. Some may call it “the placebo effect,” and we know that when patients in clinical trials get sugar pill and are told they have received a new medicine for their condition – they get better in up to 30%-60% of the time simply by believing they have received the new magical drug. Believing is a thought and in that case a constructive one.
On the other hand, harmful beliefs poison your body. And harmful beliefs are thoughts too. By these negative thoughts, emotions trigger the amygdala in your limbic brain to send emergency signals that will activate the “FFF” (freeze, fight or flight mechanism)- our evolutionary reaction to life threats. By that, the body’s self-repair mechanism will dysfunction and predisposed to illness.
All because you thought yourself sick.
Negatively change our thinking patterns
Through negative thinking your thinking patterns change. Say you look at an opportunity that lies before you and for a glimpse of a moment feel the rush and excitement of possibilities paths you can have from it. You feel alive, powerful and victorious of everything you could do, The world lies at your feet, the skies are blue and the sun shines on everyone.
But then the doubt crawls in like a thief and steals the moment. you start having second thoughts, “this is too good to be true. “If it’s that good why wasn’t it done before?” “there’s has to be a catch somewhere”. Your thoughts change into “oh no I’m probably missing something”, “ I shouldn’t do it” and “ what if I can’t pull it off? everyone will laugh at me and justify their laughter in the castrating I told you so”. The doubt invite its best friend fear and together drew you back into your cocoon.
That is the birth of poor thinking pattern, And if we’re not careful and pluck those negative thoughts by root and stem we will witness a poor thought newborn turning into a poor thought old man or woman. We are our thoughts.
Seclude us socially
Negative people with negative thoughts must be avoided. They affect your attitude, suck the life out of you like energy vampires, discourage and bring you down with them, needy and constantly put further weight on your shoulders, distract you from your goals, annoy and can damage your credibility as considering themselves part of your social environment. You are on a constant drama siege and from there no growth can occur.
So I’ll ask you one simple question. Why be that person?
No one likes a party pooper or getting dragged down into oblivious and despair. A constant moaning persona will most likely cause others avoidance. Life is complicated enough to so many people without adding this character whispering in their ear just how “hard and wrong” this and that. On the contrary, people search for problems distractions, not problem reminders.
Having negative thoughts will create eventually isolation between you and society. Isolation will create loneliness and misery. I am not suggesting to be always positive yea? We are all humans and it is more than ok to moan, have a bad day, week or even a month – as long as we remember to go back from the land of difficulties and complaints. Whilst not occurring on a regular basis complaining is considered legitimate and natural.
Tip – if you see close people (say more than 3) start to avoid your presence on a regular basis ask yourself why if this has to do with negative mood you have been having lately.
Negative thinking – Cause sense of depression
Often enough you feel you can’t control how you feel but you can always control how you think. Depression should be diagnosed by someone who is qualified to do so but sometimes sadness or mild sense of depression can occur from despair and hopelessness feelings that originated by negative thoughts.
Depressive thoughts manifest in negative thinking just before a negative effect is created. And people should be aware of that. Sometimes it can be sufficient to fill ourselves with positive happy thoughts rather than sad negative ones to get ourselves “out of the mud”. Simple as that.
At the end of the day, our thoughts paint the reflective colors of our well being if any left. We are what we think and by thinking something the creation wheels set in motion, so might as well direct it to be good and prosperous rather than poorly negative. So what would I offer instead?
Gratitude, yes- gratitude is the practice of good thoughts and shield us from negativity by shifting us to feel grateful for the things we do have. This will allow more positivity in our lives. After all, It is all in the head – let it be a positive one.
“Seeing the mud around a lotus is pessimism, seeing a lotus in the mud is optimism”
