Is The Monster Of Negativity Growing In Your Life?
Negativity can be defined as “any attitude, belief, or expression that works against you, or is limited in vision.” Is the monster of negativity growing in your life? Do you wish to slay the negativity monster? Then let’s get going toward Overcoming Negativity in Yourself!
1. What types of negative things are you doing in your life: behaviors, actions and talk with others and towards yourself? Write them down, look to see if there is a pattern of when, where, with whom, around what type of circumstances or situations do they happen? Examples: eat bad food, tell myself I’m dumb, tell my wife she’s overweight, yell at the kids, say bad things about my boss, cut in front of other drivers, don’t spend time on the things I really should, etc.
2. Divide list into two parts: negative behavior that you do to others and negative things you do to yourself. If you are brave enough, have a friend, family member, co-worker or other give you ideas of what they see too about you.
3. Prioritize your items on your two lists from 1 to ?, with 1 being the most important negativity your want to change.
4. Now take the number one item from each list, these are the two negative areas you are going to change in your life.
5. Set a Goal for each that you want to accomplish (goals are broad statements such as, “I will not yell at my wife”).
6. Now you need to write Objectives for your Goals. Objectives are specific in what you want to accomplish and have a timeframe in which you want to accomplish it. Example: “By, (date – give yourself one year or less if you think you can realistically make it), “I will not yell at my wife when in public, 50% of the time”. Make your Objectives real and reasonable. You will need to determine a way to measure how you are succeeding as you progress.
7. You are ready for the creative part – what steps or actions are you going to do to reach your Objective? You need to list the obstacles that are in your way too and the ways you are going to get over/around/underneath them. Don’t limit yourself when you brainstorm on this, you will edit it later. Have someone else brainstorm with you, it can be fun.
8. Now you have to whittle down the steps you are going to implement into some you are going to try immediately. Keep your brainstorming list in case the steps you choose don’t work; something else from your brainstorming list may do it! After you have chosen a few really good steps that you think you can realistically implement, and that will get you to reach your Objective, set the date to implement your plan. Don’t be afraid if some steps don’t work; you just use different ones. Don’t be afraid if you lose motivation, get sidetracked or give-up once in a while, you can get right back on track at any point. Have someone to support and encourage you and someone to keep you focused and on on-track. It isn’t easy but by writing things down, having a plan of action and by reviewing it daily, you will start to see progress.
9. Once you reach your Objective, start on another or increase its success rate. Once you reach a Goal, start another. You can have a few Goals and each can have many Objectives under each. As you continue, you will find it easier and that you accomplish things faster. Your life will change and you will Overcome Negativity in Yourself.
10. Two key components of Overcoming Negativity in Yourself are to surround yourself with positive people and people who do not have the negative habits that you have towards others. People do adapt to the ‘flocks’ of people they hang with, so make sure the ‘flocks’ of people you choose to be around have the values, traits, behaviors and attitude you want and/or have. The other key component is self-talk. We can all be our own worst enemy with what we tell ourselves in our ‘heads’. Stop using negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk. Sometimes changing our self-talk is very hard and many people have very good luck with self-talk CDs. Listening to self-talk CDs in the background or while you sleep have proved very effective for many. If you’re interested in self-talk CDs, we have some excellent choices in our product/resource section.
Down with negativity!
Tonia Boterf – The Practical Expert(TM) 617-895-0249, is a Certified Life Coach, Holistic Health Practitioner and LSW with 25+ yrs of experience offering strong results oriented coaching services for Boomers facing the challenges of caring for aging parents and still having their own life. Offering free & affordable sessions, quality e-books and articles. Try a FREE coaching session and get relief.
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