Negative thoughts are a very common problem for my clients and I am often asked ‘how can I get rid of my negative thoughts or negative thought patterns’.

When you speak to yourself, do you notice the tone of how you speak? Is it negative or positive? If you do anything wrong, do you feel angry or depressed with yourself? Or do you often put yourself down when you make a mistake or even if you don't make a mistake?

We talk to ourselves all day long, most of the time it will be simple instructions or a ‘To Do’ list such as ‘I need to do xxx' or 'I have to go to yyy'. But sometimes, negative chatter creeps in such as 'I can't do this' or 'I'm never going to get all of this done today' or even ‘I always get things wrong’.

Once this starts, it can really spiral out of control, so it's important to stop it in its tracks.

For this reason, negative self talk is extremely dangerous and can only lead to yet more feelings of low self esteem and more negative self talk. In other words, it is a complete waste of your time and energy, but it can be very difficult to break the habit. The problem is, the more you do it, the more you will start to believe it - you are training your subconscious mind to believe your negative chatter! This is why it is so dangerous, because your thoughts control your actions and negative thoughts do NOT produce great results in life.

You may have noticed this in one or more areas of your life already?

Your subconscious mind is active as soon as you are born and has been programmed with messages like these ever since. The influential adults in your life were the first 'programmers' of your computer programme - otherwise known as your subconscious mind. The problem is if those adults were prone to saying things to you in a negative tone, you will eventually believe these statements. But as I am constantly telling my clients ‘beliefs do not mean it is a fact’. It is only your perception. Change your perception and you can erase these negative thought patterns.

It really is true when they say in that if you call a perfectly intelligent child 'stupid' often enough - they will believe they are stupid. Despite their test results at school or what they achieve later in life, those ‘programmes’ are ingrained in your subconscious forever. They will not leave of their own accord; it is up to you to do something about them.

The good news is that you can change these programmes and that has to start by changing your inner self talk, your 'inner critic'.

The easiest way to do this is to become aware of your conscious thoughts (your inner chatter) as these are key to discovering your limiting beliefs, which are much more difficult to overcome as they cannot be heard - the subconscious mind is silent. But each time your conscious mind turns to negative thoughts, say a simple phrase to yourself whenever you catch yourself feeling negative. Such as 'that's just NOT true' or 'I am doing the best that I can'.

Once you become more aware of your conscious thought patterns, you can start to retrain your brain into thinking positive thoughts. You can also start to get to the bottom of your limiting beliefs and erase them. Once you start this process, it will really make a big difference to your positive thinking. You could also try EFT (Tapping) or other forms of energy healing to help you to deal with these old beliefs.

The other way to overcome negative beliefs is to use visualizations so that you can imagine a positive outcome to a situation or a positive future – this is particularly useful when trying to achieve a goal. It’s very easy for negative thoughts to derail our goals, but with visualizations you can change your thought patterns back to a positive mindset just by thinking about the results of your goals and the impact that would make on your life.

These are just a few simple tips of how to overcome negative thinking. If you would like more information, you may want to sign up to our 7 day mini-course which will help you to take this further.

Positive thinking will really help you to see massive improvements in your quality of life and you will start to achieve goals that you never believed possible.