Personal Development Ideas

Personal growth: Trying to reduce negative thinking one day at a time May 14, 2018

An interesting exercise in personal emotional control I’ve been trying off-and-on recently is to try, for one day,  to not say anything negative about situations and circumstances I’m faced with during the day; a task that turns out to be difficult because negative thoughts occur surprisingly frequently.

In this mini program-for-a-day I’m not talking about the issues where I am simply faced with making a yes or no decision on something I need to deal with.

Nor is this an attempt to ignore bad situations without taking any corrective steps to improve them.

It is also not an exercise in constantly speaking positively and radiating a glow of extreme never-ending optimism, ignoring reality and pretending that everything has a good side.

The idea is more along the lines of trying not to complain, whine, or act crabby about the countless little irritations that we all encounter every day; like the line for coffee or at the bank moving too slowly.

So really, I guess it’s really about becoming more self-aware, and accepting the fact that everything is not always going to go the way I want it to.

And it’s about accepting the fact that I will probably be more relaxed and productive if I’m not spending valuable mental and emotional energy grumbling about stuff that should not really be on my worry-radar.

The idea behind using a one-day-at-a-time or day-tight-compartment approach to this or other personal development goals and tasks, is that the one day at a time approach is generally longer lasting in its results and more productive inn the long term than doing goal-directed activity in bursts  or productivity binges.

In using activity-burst  approach what you’re doing usually doesn’t stick mentally or emotionally and it’s inherently undisciplined, compared with taking the time every day to work on an important goal.

— Dennis Mellersh