Stop Catastrophizing and Start Thinking Positively
People believe they can tell whether your outlook on life and your attitude towards yourself and others are positive or negative by asking you the simple time-old cliché question: “Is your glass half-empty or half-full?”.
Your answer can be merely reflective of your attitude that particular moment as it can convey your overall stance on everything surrounding you. generally “half-full” reveals a positive and optimistic persona while “half-emty” communicates a pessimistic and gloomy one, however if you answer “My glass is broken” or “There is no water in my glass” then, you are definitely the catastrophizing type of person.
Catastrophizing is an utterly and extremely negative outlook on life, you can tell if you are the catastrophizing type if you often hear people around you desperately telling you to “Stop catastrophizing”. You resist change on every possible scale, future seems ominous, you believe that failure is your lot, but you just do what you have to do anyways because that is how “things are.
This attitude may seem perfectly justified to you because everytime you expect things to go wrong, they actually do; lets say that you have been trying to lose weight and you opted for a particular diet that you were not sure about but everyone recommended it. Before starting the diet you were like “This can’t work and it is a mere waste of time but I’m going to try it anyways!” after a month you prove everybody wrong about the effectiveness of the diet because you didn’t lose weight.
The result of your diet and of every other project you expected to fail are your own making because your thinking determines the results you end up with. It is a causal loop cycle, in other words your thoughts are the main creator of your emotions which inspire your actions and behaviour and hence the catastrophic results you have expected in the first place.
Stopping catastrophizing is the one and only result you should expect and this causal cycle starts with postive thinking. People should not be telling you to stop catastrophizing and start thinking positively because you can’t just give up an attitude and immediately endorse a new one, they should put this in the right order, that is to say, they should tell you “think positively in order to stop catastrophizing”.
It is not about stopping, it is about rethinking your outlook and considering to perform some drastic changes in the way you look at things. Stop catastrophizing is synonymous with taking charge of your thoughts and directing them towards a rather optimistic viewpoint and it can be done by:
Remembering that you are not a victim and you are capable of changing your “lot” by changing your attitude.
Establishing a routine of postive and healthy self-talk that is based on approaching unpleasant situations in a positive way.
Considering some “me time” in order to assess your thoughts and feelings.
Trying to smile as often as possible.
Surrounding yourself with positive people.
Meditating or doing yoga.
Listing five thing that you are greatful for everytime you feel down.
Stop catastrophizing and start thinking positively because negative thoughts drain away your energy and destroy your capacity to love and live happily.
Catastrophizing is an utterly and extremely negative outlook on life, you can tell if you are the catastrophizing type if you often hear people around you desperately telling you to “Stop catastrophizing”. You resist change on every possible scale, future seems ominous, you believe that failure is your lot, but you just do what you have to do anyways because that is how “things are.
The result of your diet and of every other project you expected to fail are your own making because your thinking determines the results you end up with. It is a causal loop cycle, in other words your thoughts are the main creator of your emotions which inspire your actions and behaviour and hence the catastrophic results you have expected in the first place.
