Is Negativity Winning In Your Brain and This Is Not Your Best Day?
I am usually a happy, optimistic person who sides with positivity but sometimes, the dark cloud rolls over me and I succumb to a bit of doom and gloom.
This week I had a few of those days. I let the negative voice in my head roll in and offer advice that wasn’t useful. I started to build up examples for how I was failing myself and was not enough. I avoided evaluation of my thoughts and rolled forward in full-blown, out of control thinking combined with a few weepy moments.
I am a life coach–I coach others so certainly I am not supposed to have bad days (I don’t think that is written in the life coach manual). I pulled my coaching tools out of my bag and I set to work trying to fix my state of mind. No luck-Negative Nancy wasn’t budging (please never call me this but I was at a low point this week so I was engaging in negative talk). I was totally engaging in confusion and misery.
Around 6:00 pm on day two I decided to do what I am trained for and sat in quiet to face my thoughts and feelings.
I listed the thoughts. They weren’t pretty.
I had six different thoughts that were raging on one topic.
I then did an exercise called The Model that I learned at Life Coach School (LCS):
Circumstances create your thoughts,
that create your feelings,
that create your actions
that creates your results (thoughts create results).
I was indulging in some negative thoughts that surely would not produce positive results.
After I stopped indulging in my negativity I learned a few things.
My thoughts were not completely true.
Failure isn’t negative–it is the path to success.
I can make a change–that is a sign of growth.
I revealed a clear message of what I want to do and what I don’t want to do.
My week wasn’t perfect, I wallowed in discomfort just like you might do. I held on to my negative thoughts for a bit too long. But, eventually I used proven tools that work and used them to grow and learn.
I am a work in progress and proudly claim that I am a life-long learner who can always grow to become a better version of myself.
Life is bitter and sweet, we don’t live in a utopia. But, we each can pull out tools to help us on the bad days when negativity wants to prevail.
Do you want to learn new tools that will help you grow to become the best version of yourself?
If you want to work with a coach who is real and still evolving at age 65–send me an email at nancybeardcoachiong@gmail.com and we can set up a time to chat via Facetime or Zoom.
Big hug to me this week and a big hug to you.
Nancy
