How Negative Thoughts Harm You

Be Careful of the Words You Say

Recently, as a result of the increased rate of suicide, the notion that words can do more to harm a person than physical abuse has gradually started to gain popularity.
Capable of crossing gender, ethic, socio-economic and generational divergence, words have the power to strengthen a spirit as well as the power to trample it – all in a single breath. Yet the words that have been shown time and again to wreak the most havoc on the human psyche are the words we chose to say to ourselves.
If you could narrow down a single element of your life causing you the majority of your problems that element would be negative thinking. It is estimated that we have up to 50 000 thoughts a day. If your cast of mind is predominantly pessimistic, the daily number of negative thoughts that you could be generating would be astronomical.
The mind is a neutral energy. The way you think determines whether the results are positive and beneficial or negative and harmful. The mind does not usually judge or examine thoughts and opinions before accepting them. If what it hears, sees and reads is always negative, it accepts this as the standard way of thinking and behaving.
We all view everything around us through our predominant mental attitude. If our thoughts are negative, our lives and circumstances will most likely mirror these thoughts.
If you believe that you are going to fail, you will unconsciously sabotage every opportunity to succeed. If you are afraid of meeting new people or having close relationships, you will do everything to avoid people and any possible interaction you could have with them.
At the most cerebral level, negative thinking causes health problems because it leads to poor decision making on both a conscious and unconscious level. If you were to think negatively about your body then you would be much more likely to abuse it with unhealthy foods, excess alcohol, drugs, and other toxins which could cause short and long term health problems.
English novelist and dramatist, Charles Reade once said:
“We sow a thought, and reap an act;
We sow an act, and reap a habit;
We sow a habit, and reap a character;
We sow a character, and reap a destiny.”
While most people acknowledge and accept the role that negative thinking plays when it comes to the decisions they make and the stories they tell themselves, they discount the very real and visceral effect negative thinking has on their bodies. They neglect to recognise the gravity of the words they say that only they themselves can hear, and forget to be careful of the words they do not say out loud.
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