Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

‘Why Do I Always Feel So Stressed?’

Negativity steals your life and energy from you. It robs you throughout your day and does it in plain sight. When negative thoughts enter your body, they become toxic emotion. Emotions become negative and further fuel the negative thoughts. Negative self-talk keeps you tired, stressed, angry, resentful, and powerless. If you want peace of mind, energy, calm, and focus in your daily life you need to learn how to detox your body of negativity.

Awareness is the Key

If you’re stressed and anxious, the cause is usually a pattern of negative self-talk. I call it a pattern because it is just like a taped recording that we play in our minds over and over many times throughout the day. The voice often takes the tone of an authority figure, stern parent, or enemy. It says things like, ‘You can’t do this. You are worthless. Nobody likes you anyway. Why bother, it won’t change things. Stop being such a baby! You’re fat, ugly, etc.’ There is no way to deal with negative patterns unless you pay attention to them first…
Meditation is a simple practice of paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, body, and senses. Yesterday, I posted a primer article on what meditation is, and how to do it. Go check it out. It’s simple, effective, and can be done by anyone. Meditation is the first step to becoming aware of those negative mental tapes you play in your head all the time.

Bait and Switch

You can only hold one thought in your mind at any given time. It tricks you into believing you have many thoughts at once because it moves so quickly and in such a chaotic manner. Pay close attention to your thoughts and you will find this to be true. If you can only have one thought at a time, there is a simple tool to erase the negative mental tapes and replace them with positive ones - thought replacement.
When you notice a negative mental pattern playing in your head, try to catch it as soon as you notice it is happening. Visualize a large red stop sign, and say to yourself, ‘STOP!’ (Don’t do this out loud or people will think you’re crazy.) Then immediately replace the negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, if your negative thought is ‘I’m fat and I’m never going to lose this weight’, replace it with ‘I want to lose this weight, and I’m going to make it happen.’ You might have to use your stop sign a hundred times today to get rid of a deeply ingrained mental pattern but I guarantee you, tomorrow you will only have to do it eighty or ninety times. After a short period of initial effort, the toxic thoughts will be replaced with healthy ones.

The End of Negativity

Negativity loses power quickly if you make a conscious decision that you don’t want it anymore. Your mind is a hungry animal - it doesn’t care what it eats, as long as it has something to chew on. Thought replacement isn’t repression and will not create unresolved emotional issues for you to deal with later. It doesn’t require superhuman willpower either because thoughts come and go very quickly - only a short period of time is required to change your thinking. This simple technique will detox your body of negativity and you will quickly reclaim what’s rightfully yours - your peace of mind.