Breakout of Negativity in 1 Minute or Less - Using Present Moment Focus

It’s normal, of course, to react negatively to the things that don’t work out the way we want, we are all human after all. Sometimes however, it can be hard to let go of negative thoughts and emotional reactions, and we can struggle to move on to a mental place where we accept our circumstances, and eventually, start looking for ways to solve or manage our problems instead of dwelling on them.

If we’re not careful, it's easy to become fixated on the negatives and to ruminate about all the things that have gone wrong, bad decisions, and the overall disappointments in our lives. Letting our minds go into these negative and unhelpful thinking spirals for long and repetitive cycles is a recipe for feeling frustrated, being unproductive, and for overall unhappiness about the way things are going in our lives.

Fortunately, there is a simple and helpful way to breakout of the negativity we can sometimes find ourselves immersed in, and that’s by using what I call “Present Moment Focus.”

I describe how to use Present Moment Focus and all the ways you can benefit from using it, in detail, in Chapter 11 of A High Performing Mind. It’s a simple and powerful mental tool that can help you accept what’s going wrong, breakout of negative thinking spirals, and quickly get your mind functioning in a more positive, focused, and higher performing way.

To use Present Moment Focus to break out of excessive negativity, you would simply bring your attention to the present moment, and fully and completely focus on what you are currently doing or observing around you.

To elaborate, any time you catch yourself in a negative thinking spiral about something that’s happened in the past, or something your worried about in the future, instead, bring your full concentration and attention back to the present moment. If you are doing something, you would fully focus on that, and if you aren’t doing anything in particular, you could focus on what you can see, hear, and hysically feel around you in that particular moment.

By shifting your mind out of negative thinking spirals, and from dwelling on unhelpful internal commentary and feelings, and back into the present moment, you slowly dissipate negative energy and allow yourself to regain your ability to choose how to respond, instead of simply being reactive.

If you find this difficult to do, you can also, if needed, shift your thinking from those negative thoughts and feeling to some of the things you need to do to accomplish your daily and longer term goals instead. Anything you do to help yourself move your focus from excessive negative thinking and into constructive and helpful thoughts and actions will move you one step closer to achieving your goals rather than one step further away.

Repeatedly using a Present Moment Focus to bring your attention back to the task at hand, what’s going on around you, or to planning your next steps to achieve any immediate and long term goals, will give you a much constructive focus, help manage the bad feelings associated with what has gone wrong or isn’t working out, and power you towards a happier and more rewarding life.

Give it a try today!