Negative Head Space
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You have a plan. You are ready to accomplish the plan and it feels good to be able to complete a task or project. Then, someone or something disrupts the plan. You are caught off guard and do not know how to deal with the change. If you could complete your plan then you would be happy and content and enjoy the day. But now, life has changed and you go down the negative road in your head. You cannot do anything now but focus on the disappointment.
Negative Head Space. Everyone has it. Some are able to put a stop sign on the road and prevent themselves from living in that space. It is off limits to dwell there. You know it is there because negativity is all around in this broken and fallen world. You are choosing not to live in negativity. You visit it from time to time, but you turn around and go in the opposite direction.
Some people fall into the negative head space and have no idea how to remove themselves from it. It feeds the “worst case scenario” view of life. You begin to plan for what could go wrong and live in the constant fear of what could happen if you do not plan for it to happen. Planning is the way to control. You only plan for all that could go wrong, but rarely plan for a good outcome.
Your brain contains millions of thoughts. Some are fleeting and zoom through your head at rapid speeds never affecting your day to day. Other thoughts stagnate and create a deep rut of negativity, fear, and anxiety. You get stuck on what could happen, what you should have done, what you said wrong, why someone looked at you that way, and on and on down the slippery slope of doom and gloom.
Thoughts control your behavior and how you react to others. When these thoughts are negative, your words express nothing positive or hopeful. You see the wrong in the world and in life and do not see much good around you. You are always looking for what others have done wrong and develop a victim mentality. Something bad always happens to you.
The reality is that something good always happens to you, too, if you look for it. There is good all around you and even in your head if you allow it to be your focus. The key is not giving negative head space all the room nor feeding it by dwelling on it and adding to the thoughts. Starve the negativity. Keep replacing the space with what is good and healthy.
Negative head space may have become more familiar and an easy space to slip into when life feels intense. It is being intentional where you live in your head. Just because it is familiar does not make it healthy. Acknowledge to yourself that there are negative thoughts in a situation, but that is just one side of the situation. There are other options. It is retraining your brain to see other possibilities. It is getting off the narrow road of negativity and allowing alternative plans to be considered.
Sometimes the negative head space is just you not getting your way or being upset someone else had a better idea. It is slowing down your thoughts and not jumping quickly down the doom and gloom road. It is being open to different ideas and looking for good in the changed plans.
Elaine J. Sturtz
Living In The Different
