One of the questions that is frequently asked during my training and coaching programs, is this… *“How do I deal with negative thoughts?”* Before addressing this question, we need to understand, “What do we mean, when we say negative thoughts?” Negative thoughts are thoughts that create uncomfortable emotions like Fear, Anxiety, Worry, Guilt, Jealousy, and the myriad of other combinations of these emotions… Fear could be triggering worry and jealousy could be triggering guilt and so on and so forth. We also need to understand some basic things about the brain and mind. I feel Human Brain is one of the most complex creations in the entire universe!!! It is mainly programmed for two things. One is for learning… The other is looking out for danger… When you need to cross a busy road with high traf c, your brain wakes up to the possibilities of any danger… And that is a useful thing… right… Being completely positive, without taking into consideration the risks, could be dangerous… right? Yes, these so-called negative thoughts do serve us, at a very important level…But at times, we can feel that this “looking for danger” is getting too much frequent, loud and sometimes out of control… And this could create problems for us. We need to have reasonable control over the negative thoughts and for that we need to understand them. We need to understand, that the more we ght these, the stronger they become… The more we try to resist them we give them power. So, one thing we can do is, ignore them. How do we do that…. By, being ok with them and at some level accepting them as a part of living… I came to know about a formula, which can help us… *The formula is called as RIVAJ formula, which is an acronym in this context.* Do not RIVAJ, is the message here: Do not RIVAJ the negative thoughts…
Do not
R – Resist the negative thoughts
I – Identify with the negative thoughts V – Visualize the negative thoughts
A – Analyze the negative thoughts J – Judge the negative thoughts