Negative thoughts are the beginning of a destructive spiral that instantly takes over our lives and can keep a grip on them if we let it. Negative thoughts, if kept uncontrolled, will be destructive to us and those around us. We lose self-confidence, lack belief in ourselves and others and after a short time; we don’t even try to better out lives because we assume we’ve failed before we start.

It is very important to overcome the negative thinking at the very first possible opportunity to be successful and achieve our biggest goals and dreams.

Self-reflection is an important strategy that benefits us more than we can imagine. It helps us to stop and truly look into our lives, behaviors, and our relationships and think about what we’re doing right – and wrong.

When we do that, we will see the changes we have to make so we can improve our well-being. Reflection is one thing that’s good for our soul; so long as we keep it positive. We might have negative thoughts that become burdensome, but with the habit of positive thinking, we can reframe those thoughts to better serve us.

Positive affirmations are another strategy that can help us reflect with positive intention so that we can help chart the path of our day. There is no truly defeating our negative thoughts. Instead, we need to learn to manage them. And the initial step is to recognize them. It’s important to discover the weaknesses and triggers in our thinking we experience.

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself that stops negative thoughts:

These questions are meant to help us discover our negative thoughts and understand where they’re coming from. When you know their source, you can begin to make changes to address the negativity.

1. How exactly do these negative thoughts truly serve me?

The response to this question is usually ‘It doesn’t serve’. Much negative thinking is just unrealistic and inaccurate, and it serves no actual purpose. Negative thoughts only exist to remind us to take the appropriate actions. When you ask the benefit of the negative thinking, you can often discover that the negative thoughts simply start to disappear.

 2. How else can we look at the situation?

With this question, we’re motivating ourselves to look at the situation from various perspectives and break down the feeling of belief that has led to our negative thinking.

3. What will somebody else think about my thought?

This is a good question to help view things from another person’s perspective. When we begin to look at ourselves through another person’s eyes, we’ll view the circumstances more clearly and draw a much more reasonable conclusion.

4. What’s the worst that can happen?

We can easily get caught up with negative thinking and see all kinds of things that can go wrong. To help overcome this spiral of negative thinking, it is important to spend some time figuring out the worst thing that can happen.  Usually, the worst thing isn’t as bad as our imagination. Perspective is very important, and when we can keep things in perspective, they become less scary.

5. Can I handle the worst situation?

Often the worst situation might not be that bad. When we realize this, we have confidence that we can handle any outcome that comes up, and it will motivate us to move forward.

Life is full of unanswered questions, and it is the determination to ask enough of the appropriate ones that will eventually lead us to understand ourselves better.

We could spend our life wallowing in a sea of negative thoughts like -Why me? Or we could be grateful that we have made it this far. We are here to live another day. We have the ability to think for ourselves which means we can choose the course of those thoughts.

Negative thoughts can easily dominate our life and destroy our authentic self. When we allow negative thinking to consume us, we hold ourselves back from going after our goals. We won’t be able to think achieving our big goals is a possibility.

We might try to act like negative thinking doesn’t affect us, but that’s just a way of avoiding it. Make no mistake about it, negative thoughts do affect us and those around us.

Once we accept this, we can start to discover and challenge the negative thinking as it appears. As we keep challenging the negative thinking, we will quickly improve our self-confidence and begin a successful path towards achieving our goals.

Our goal is to start questioning our negative thoughts. Start with the five questions on this list or use questions that make sense to you. Do that and you will be surprised at how quickly your thoughts begin to change for the better.