5 min read
“How To Never Let Negative Thoughts Ruin Your Day”
Introduction
Negative thoughts are capable of completely ruining your mood, behavior, and actions for the rest of the day or even week. If you find out that you didn’t get into the dream school that you applied for, despite putting in so much work, it would beat you up. After all, you had to have put that work in for something, right? Well, unfortunately, that’s not how the world works. Sometimes, you get a result for your input. Other times, there’s nothing at all.
In my experience, and probably in your experiences too, I’ve seen that whenever something that I wanted to go well doesn’t go my way, it ruins practically everything. Maybe there’s a day in which I wanted to hang out with friends, and it turns out one of them can’t go so we decide to reschedule.
That happens way too often. And that’s just life.
Here, I’ll briefly explain how not to let these controlling emotions, control you. We don’t want that.
Classic Illusions
Whenever I have negative thoughts (and when I say negative, I don’t mean self-harm, I mean just generally negative), the rest of my day seems to follow some kind of trend. It’s also on the days I feel the worst mentally that everything around me also just seem to work against me. All of a sudden, I’m the problem for x, y, and z. Although, to me, and probably as truth, it may not have been my fault; it still is in the eyes of others. The world sees you having a bad day already as it starts, and it makes it even worse.
That’s the classic illusion that I always end up falling for because it’s practically unavoidable.
In other situations, you do something wrong, and then just proceed to make wrong move after wrong move. Your first step is bad, so you just purposely walk in the wrong direction for the rest of the day.
A Good Example
I haven’t experienced this, and am only saying this in general based on what I’ve heard from other people’s experiences.
Say that someone sets a goal weight that they want to reach by the end of the week. They really want to reach this end weight. For some people, this goal might be quarter pound, half pound, or a pound. By all means, anything is possible (for the most part), so these are all achievable in the right hands.
What’s most important to do with diets is to be strict with yourself. Don’t eat the cookie. Stay away from sugar. Don’t eat highly, ultra-processed foods. Rarely ever eat out and maximize food cooked at home. It takes longer to cook and eats up lots of your time especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, but is healthier and better long-term. We all play for the long-term reward. Although we want the good things now, we can’t expect to have everything immediately. It’s an unachievable standard that sets too much weight on our backs.
So, you listen to a friend, or watch a video, and say “screw it”. You eat something that you’re not supposed to, according to your diet, and now the entire day is ruined. You just ate something worth 500 calories, which is almost half your entire daily caloric intake limit. Wow, all of that gone just to some small measly treat. Well, I hope it tasted good.
At this point, you might as well just leave it for today. Don’t worry about it. Eat as much as you please because you already technically broke the diet before the day even started. Why bother now?
You Don’t See Things The Right Way
I saw this a while ago in a video made by Alex Hormozi, so all credit for this advice goes to him. I would link it, but I don’t remember where I saw it.
Instead of seeing it as a “daily caloric intake”, see it as a “weekly caloric intake”. Instead of chasing daily limits, chase after weekly limits. Say that your limit is 1750 calories. Multiply this across a 7-day period (unless for some reason you didn’t count weekends). You get 12250 calories. This is the maximum you can eat across an entire week.
Sure, you might feel like you completely messed up the last day or two, but doesn’t that mean that there’s still 5 days left to redeem yourself? Yes, there is!
Instead of seeing it as 2100/1750 and 2200/1750 calories across the past two days, see it as 4300 calories out of 8000 you can eat across the next 5 days. By no means will it be easy, but it’s still possible if you just knock yourself back into focus and just do it. Following instructions isn’t hard, and it’s absolutely straightforward. School unfortunately taught us that paying attention and listening to an instructor is what makes us valuable (when that’s not entirely true). However, the good portion of that advice has to do with just doing the work. Just do it, even if you don’t want to.
School makes kids do work because of grades, and with the motivation of getting put into harder classes which ultimately would look better in front of colleges. Colleges, and degrees, especially from good schools, means a high-paying job with a yearly raise of some random number.
Point is: if you are consistent, you just can’t fail. You can’t.
A Small Boost
Say that you just couldn’t follow the diet. Well, you probably could’ve, but it just didn’t go that way. Alright. What does this mean?
For the same situation described above regarding the 1750 calories; if your limit is that low, it probably means that your normal caloric intake is not that much higher from it (usually). Therefore, your usual is probably 300-500 calories higher on a daily basis.
Say that you just gave up for the week, and your calories looked like this:
| Monday | 1720 calories (first day’s motivation) |
| Tuesday | 2800 calories (just couldn’t do it anymore) |
| Wednesday | 2300 calories |
| Thursday | 2100 calories |
| Friday | 2500 calories |
| Saturday | ? |
| Sunday | ? |
If you followed this diet, by Saturday, you would’ve been left with 830 calories left. (despite having eaten at and even above your limit on most days)
What I’m trying to get with this is that although you gave up, you ate comfortably, or really beyond comfortably, and still had close to 1000 calories leftover despite all of that poor eating. Technically, despite eating at that poor rate, you only had a day and a half left to endure. That’s really it. And if you just stuck with the 2000 calorie intake area (more precise), you would’ve only had Sunday left (and 250 calories). That’s it.
I want you to think of a diet as not an immovable object, but a moveable one that just requires enough strength. Except, it’s not actually strength in this case, it’s discipline.
You Are The Solution
The only one who can take action and fix your problems and get you out of the situation you’re in is you. If you want to feel better, fight better, or look better, you need to take action. No one can do things for you unless you’re below the age of 8 or above the age of 70-80.
I make excuses, but I don’t like them. Hate is a strong word, but in this case, it’s a kind word. Why? Because if it means you getting up and doing something besides just sitting around waiting for the day to pass by, it’s your fault. Don’t blame anyone else.
I see way too many people nowadays just never being able to take accountability for things. Yet, it takes almost no effort (at least for me). Sometimes it sucks, but that’s what happens when you do something wrong. Consequences must always be paid forward; and a lot of times, that involves you.
There’s many days I just don’t feel like doing anything. Making breakfast feels like such a hassle when you have seemingly nothing to do. But, you make it anyways. That’s just the way these things go.
If you let natural scenarios and everyday things get to your head, they won’t stop bothering you. But if you just swipe it off like dust on an old table, it’s remaining self is on your hands. From here, it’s your choice to either immediately rinse it off with water, or let it naturally come off as the day passes. Either method works, just one is slower and the other is faster.
Recognizing The Problem
Some people might opt for just “forgetting their problems even existed”, and just walking past them. In my opinion, I don’t really think this is a good decision.
There’s way too many things in life that you can’t outrun. Even the fastest beings in fictional universes, like Barry Allen, still has problems that he can’t outrun, despite being the “fastest man on the planet”. If you choose to walk past it and look away, it will never stop staring at you for eternity (until you do something about it).
Sometimes the problem isn’t you, other times it’s because of something that’s happened recently. Maybe this person did this to you. Or maybe X happened, causing Y. At the end of the day, you can’t change the past. It’s happened, and unless time travel is invented, there’s really not much else to do. If it deals with people, sometimes the solution is just forgiveness. Other times, with just a situation (not people-related), it’s about coping, at least reasonably. Coping, of making it make sense to you, and you only, also isn’t inherently good.
If it’s something that’s been building up, and not really anything major, then just gradually let go of it.
Example
If I had recently been struggling with something, like maybe over the past few weeks I’ve lost motivation to do work because of some growing issue in my mind, it sucks. It’s possible other people, through meeting them, only reinforce it too.
In that case, your first decision should be to 1) tackle that problem directly; while still doing the usual work you do. Understand that it probably won’t really compare to the work you’ve done over the past couple of weeks or days. (depending on how long this has been occurring)
Your next decision should then be to 2) continue everything as normal. By this I mean, follow your normal routine. If you have to make a few changes to accommodate for the growing problem, then that’s ok. If you want to feel more productive, especially for those students over the summer break trying to get involved in some personal project or aspiration, then don’t give it up. This is a time that breaks a lot of people because it just ruins mental stability and momentum. I’ve fallen for it too. You just need to learn when to get up and uppercut it where it hurts most.
From here, just try to find a balance and gradually, but still quickly (we don’t want to take too long) get back up. If your normal routine was doing X 5 hours a day, and you’ve went down to just 2 per day, get that back up at the pace you want. If you want an hour every day, you better be sure you can be better in 3 days. 72 hours is a lot, but not everyone sees that as a lot of time.
Do what works for you. Just don’t forget the original goal, and stick to that.
Short-Term Solutions
If you’re someone, on the other hand, that still follows a regular routine just fine, and just wants some quick fixes to some emotional problem. The best solution is to satisfy the need that your brain demands. Is this attention, love, interaction, laughter?
There’s plenty of methods, each one that works really well, to each of these problems. For example:
- Watching a TV series that you’ve seen online that you wanted to start watching.
- Talking to family, and driving outside at night doing absolutely anything that comes to mind. (better than staying at home in most cases)
- Calling friends and hanging out with them whenever you guys are all free.
- Watching a video that gives you laughter. (these are great, and there are plenty on TikTok and YouTube – they’re just particularly hard to find through search)
- Hopping on a video game with friends or family or even solos, and trying to find fun and engagement in that. (story games are the best for this kind of scenario)
There are plenty of solutions, and in almost all cases, you can always do something about it. I’ve recently gone through one of these kind of problems, and the best fix for me was actually none of these; instead it was just to go through my day as I would usually. Wake up early, get work done, and limit distractions. For that time, I’d seemingly forgotten who I was. I didn’t recognize myself for that 3-week period. Now I feel better, and know I can continue at a better rhythm. Take the best action for yourself.
Conclusion
Face your problems; and remember that in a world of darkness, you either spark the light or transform into the light. If no one else understands you like you seem to, then it’s your mission to step forward. So watch me. You are a striker.
