How to Turn Around Negative and Dark Thoughts

Q: Why can I not catch the thought at the point it starts?

You cannot. By the time you are aware of it, it has already arrived. What you can lengthen is the gap immediately afterwards, and that is enough.

Q: What if the dark thoughts are very loud?

Sometimes it helps to sit down and invite them. Go on then, give me the worst of it. They are usually more hollow than they sound, and there is far less behind them than the volume suggests.

Q: Is self awareness really the whole of it?

Close to it. You cannot choose what to do with a thought you have not noticed. Everything else in this episode depends on that one thing.

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The transcript

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overthinking · suffering · healing · self-compassion

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When I woke up this morning, I started reading my emails and I got an email from Ian. And it

gave me the idea to do today's podcast, riding the waves of dark and negative thoughts and moving towards peace.

And in this podcast, I'm going to answer a few of these questions that he asked in his email.

And I've also got a really honest and brutal message for Ian. And anybody that is struggling with the deepest

and darkest thoughts and struggling to come to terms with something that's happened to them. So stay tuned for that.

But

first, welcome to Stillness in the Storms. I'm Steven Webb, your host. And over the next 20 minutes, you can

learn ways of dealing with negative, dark and destructive thoughts. And also ways in which we can turn them

around and turn our life around into a little more peaceful life doesn't It isn't always easy and it is

a struggle and it's an ongoing struggle. But there is simple things that we can do that really do make

a difference.

So, it's a new podcast. You're here and I welcome you. Thank you very much for anybody that's donated a

coffee and supported me or leaving reviews or anything. You are awesome and this podcast would not be possible without

you. So, let's really move into because there's a lot to cover in this week's podcast so I want to

move straight into it. And I'm going to do this. I've written out five questions. But just before we start,

I'm going to read out Ian's email. He says just been listening to the podcast on The Funnel after having

a tough week and some dark thoughts. So, in a minute, I'll explain what The Funnel is and I'll link

to that podcast underneath this podcast. And then he expands. Could you expand on the podcast on how to deal

with those negative thoughts at the point of origin? And how do you generate motivation? So I broke

his email down to five questions. Why do we experience darker negative thoughts? How can we effectively confront

negative thoughts as soon as they arise? What are the practical ways to break free from cycles of dark thoughts?

And how can we find motivation during tough times? And the final question, what role does self-awareness play in

managing our thoughts and emotions? And I've done the time stamps below of those five questions to make it

easy. So why do we experience darker negative thoughts? We have a negative bias and they protect us. And if

you think about from an evolutionary point of view, and you imagine you're in a forest and you've got that

party goer that's always happy, doesn't even bat and I did and you hear a big bang and they go,

oh, carry on partying, nothing's wrong. And you've got that negative person that says, no, we should put the fire

out. We should like get out of here. We should run. Well, that person is going to protect us. So

it's natural that we have a negative bias. It's natural that when we're going through tough times, our subconscious mind

is going to naturally gravitate towards the negative thoughts. Totally understandable. It's going to try to protect

us. It's just the protector within us saying, hey look, keep an eye on this. This is what could become

another road. The problem is we're living in a totally different world now. We're living in our homes and centrally

heated and all those things. And the mind just hasn't evolved anywhere near to that degree. We're still living in

a cave. We're still hunter gatherers and things like that. So the threats to our lives now are completely different

than what they were. I don't know, half a million, a million years ago. So, but the negative thoughts are

just there to protect us. And what the subconscious mind does, it wants to generate feelings. And

every time that it comes up with a thought based on narrative, history, your habits and everything else, it wants

to create as deep a feeling as possible or the highest feeling as possible. I say deep. What I mean

by is a strong feeling. So if it gives you a feeling and you have real desires it's really strong

and it really enlightened, happy and joy, it'll keep giving you that one. And the same goes that if you

have a real dark feeling or you have a real sadness and it's the opposite to joy and it's real

grief, it'll keep giving you that one. So whatever your general frame of mind is at the time, that's where

your subconscious mind will keep giving you more of them. Do you notice you have like biorhythms that you might

have two or three days that nothing will take you down and two or three days that nothing will pick

you up? And you don't, and it's really hard to step out of either. And that's what the mind does.

It just tends to, it's like a flywheel. It's just on that same trajectory. And it's really difficult to change

that trajectory, if that makes sense. So that's a really short reason why we have negative thoughts or dark thoughts

or we end up getting stuck in the hole, so to speak. But how can we effectively confront negative thoughts

um but the one of the first things you need to do is... Become aware of them when they're arising.

Very often we have the thought arise, we have the feeling arise we just go with it and we don't

even know we've done it. And the one most obvious for that is anger. Someone really pisses us off and

we jump to anger so quickly and we don't even realise the action or something that caused the

anger in the first place. We're just already angry. The body jumps to that anger so quick. But what if

you could have a little gap between, what if I give you the gift of, so you have a thought

arising and then I give you a gift of you got a couple of seconds to look at that thought

and decide whether to go with it or not go with it. And then you just push it away or

you just let it float away or you choose to go with it and expand it. Just like very similar

to out of the blue, if I gave you a cookie to eat. You have a decision whether to eat

it or not. Imagine if you had that choice with every single thought. Well, you can. The only problem

is it takes a lot of hard work and as you identify motivational to do the meditation, to put the

work in, to create that gap between what's arising and what you do with it. You know, very often we

are everything that arises is a thought and we just react. The habit, the subconscious mind. It hasn't even consulted

with you at that point. It's already done it. Whereas the idea is that any thoughts that arise, whether they're

stimulated from the outside world or from within, you then have a choice what you do with them at that

point. But it's really hard to see. Now then, as soon as you see the thought, as soon as you're

aware of the thought, you can ask yourself, and Byron Katie's question I think is brilliant. It's so simple, but

it's brilliant. And she asked the question, is it true? So if I have a thought that uh I'm always

neglected or I'm always hard done by or no one ever listens to me in the council, and then I

can go, is it really true? No one ever listens to me in the council.

And immediately my subconscious mind you're right go yes, true. No one does. Yeah. Okay. Ask again. Is it really

true or

maybe they listen to me sometimes, but most of the time they don't listen to me. Okay. Again. So is

it true that no one ever listens to you? No, that's not true. So we start to analyse the thoughts

that we're having. And okay, I took a relatively benign thought. But I'm thinking back to my

darkest time in life when I really hit bottom My thoughts were really painful um And at that time, I

was broke. I had no money. I thought I would have no life in future. Being paralysed I've been in

the wheelchair and all that just give me no hope I'd never thought I'd have another girlfriend again or a

partner or anything like that. I thought my partner that had just left me, I thought they were doing all

the things that I dreamt of doing. And I don't really want to elaborate on the podcast, but you know

we're all adults here um You know what I'm thinking. So those thoughts were so damaging to me. And every

time I thought it, they were doing those things right there and then. And it was almost like they were

rubbing my nose in it. But of course they weren't. That wasn't true. So when I would when I learned

to ask myself, is it true? Very often, no, probably not. They're probably stressing. They're arguing. They haven't even got

a new partner. They're not even doing that you know It's quite different. So the reality is very different to

what our thoughts are. So that's one of the ways in which we can address the negative thoughts once we

step in. And I'm going to talk about that a bit in a minute. Creating that gap. But ask yourself,

is it true? And it has to be absolutely true. Not just, oh, it's a bit true. It has to

be absolutely true. The other thing is just engage with it but recognise that it's a choice whether you

go with it or not. It really is important to know that you can have a thought. They're not your

thoughts. You know, they're coming from a story. It's like your subconscious mind is picking them out of all the

books in your mind. And they're probably your dad's thoughts, your mom's thoughts, family's thoughts, your teachers, your religious

teachers, all those things. It all comes together. It makes your subconscious mind, your subconscious mind plucks all these thoughts

that it thinks is flavor of the day. Here you go. Take that thought. And then we run with it

because we think it's us and it's the only thought in the head. It's not what we can just get

we could be amused by it you Imagine stepping back and just watching your thoughts go by. Most of them

are hilarious.

It's like the old joke when people were driving along. What would happen if we drive down over there? What

would happen if um these kind of things? It's the mind creating scenarios to protect you, to make sure you

don't do those things. And

I can remember my one time when I had the most darkest, horrible thoughts when I was contemplating suicide and

taking my life. At that point, I had thoughts coming into my mind that I couldn't live like this. I

was in so much pain. I wanted to get rid of the pain and the suffering. And the only way

I could do that at that time was to throw myself off the bank. And then my mind started saying,

yeah, but what if you get caught up on a tree? What if you spend the next four days hung

up here? All those things and I must have done a bit of meditation by then because I found them

quite amusing. It's like, yeah, that'd be my luck. And then I started to think, well, do you know what?

What would I miss out on if I didn't if I did end my life today? What would I miss

out on I thought about I would never see my daughter again. I would never have the chances in life.

I would never have done half the things I've done now. And at that point, it was before I was

mayor of Truro and before I, I suppose, took count on my city counselling

voluntary job a little more serious. And before my podcast hit a million people and all those kind of things.

And don't get me wrong, I don't always feel like doing these things. I struggle with them sometimes and I

have thoughts that, oh, it'll never go anywhere and no one ever listens. I've got nothing to say, nothing practical,

things like that. So all those thoughts are there for me as well. I just find them more entertaining. So

moving on to the next question. What are the practical ways in order to break free from the dark thoughts?

Well, create the gap. So we need to become more mindful of what's happening in our lives. And you do

that by, the first thing you can do is do a mind dump. Just grab a piece of paper, grab

a pen. No one's ever going to read it. You can burn it afterwards. Do whatever you like with it.

But just write everything down. Positive, negative, whatever. Don't don't even bother with full stops and

commas. No one's going to read it. Just write everything down. And the mind shifts into this, oh, I've dealt

with a lot of that and it It kind of stops bringing it up. And write positive things in there

and negative and all sorts? Because thoughts are just thoughts. They're not either. The

other thing you can do is spend more time, not so much in deep meditation because you said you're finding

the motivation hard. Just spend a few minutes. Whenever you've got like a minute or even 30 seconds at the

crossroads, like red traffic lights, just go, ah. What's

going on in my head?

And just observe your thoughts. And the more you do that, the more you realise you are not your thoughts.

And that there's the Holy Grail. You are not your thoughts. You're the observer you're the You're the thing aware

of your thoughts. But you are not your thoughts. Thinking about it, you could scrap this whole podcast and just

take that with you. You are not your thoughts. And

the other thing you can do after you... Totally did by that. And when you do it 24 hours a

day, let me know. The other thing you do is practice gratitude. Just write down three things in your life

right now that you're really grateful to have. And if you can't find three things, find three things that if

somebody come in and robbed you right now and they took three things, what three things would you miss? The

device you're listening to this on um What if they come and robbed your clothes? What if they took your

pillow? Your life would be worse without those things, you know, instantly um

So there's loads of things to be grateful for, whether they're big things or small things. Problem is, whenever we

think of gratitude, we think of bigger things like family and that we're alive and we've got a house and

got a car, got a career. No, it can be the small things like you've got a pillow. And trust

me, not having a pillow. So moving on to the fourth question. How do we find motivation during tough

times? And this is difficult. Motivation is not something external. It's not like fuel you put in a car.

It's not something that you can just go and buy from a shelf. Motivation, I think, is a word that

just should not exist. You find motivation. Motivation is a byproduct of finding things you want to do

so If you think back to the early stages of like your first relationship or the relationship we're in

now or whatever it is, did you need motivation to get out of bed and on a cold morning and

go and meet them? Did you need motivation to walk through the snow to go and get them? Did you

need motivation to save some money to buy them a present? No, you just did it because you wanted to

do it. It gave you the reward. So you've got to find the things that give you reward. Once you

found the things that give you genuine reward, and it could be you know knowledge from books, it could be

um getting fitter from exercise, it's not the action of doing, it's the it's the result you get from doing.

So you you'll never find the motivation to meditate. Trust me. Nobody ever, or unless you're

crazy um no one ever goes, hey, let's sit down for 20 minutes and meditate and do nothing. No mind

ever said that in the history of minds. You know, nobody wants to sit down and meditate for ages just

like, oh, I'm gonna do nothing for 20 minutes. The mind sits down within about four seconds. It goes, I'm

done with this. Let's go on Facebook. Let's go and watch a thing. You don't need to do any of

this rubbish. So you won't find the motivation to do the hard work, but you have to focus on the

result from the hard work. And this is why I say start small. You know, every time you brush your

teeth in the morning, just sit on the toilet for five minutes before just two minutes thinking about your thoughts.

And then do your teeth. Then when you grab your coffee or cup of tea in the morning, just spend

that time drinking it. Don't turn on the Tv. Don't do anything else. Just drink that tea or coffee. Really

savor it Every sip. How does it taste? What's it like? What's your thoughts? What's your feelings? Really dive down

deep into the present moment. And what this does, it creates your subconscious mind and your human mind, the slower

mind, will end up starting to work together. And it will start being present more often because the result of

that is just being more mindful. You can make better decisions and you have a bigger gap between what arises,

that point of origin, and

then the decision to go with it or not go with it.

So forget motivation. Forget waiting for that. It won't happen. Start finding what you want to do. And you could

do it the old-fashioned way, which works perfectly as well. Grab a piece of paper. Start writing down the 10

things you want to accomplish this year. Scrub out seven of them and pick the three most important. And then

work out how you get towards them. The problem is we're trying to... Do everything and get to the end

game because that's where we want to be. We don't want to be on the journey We want the end

game.

And that's the reality. But the problem is we have to go on that journey because you won't enjoy the

end game without going on the journey. But we're looking for the motivation for the journey, whereas really we've got

to look at the end game and enjoy the journey with that motivation for the end game. I hope that

makes sense. I feel like I've...

Complicated it. Just really looking at what you get from it is the real holy grail here. And the final

question is, what role does self-awareness play in managing our thoughts and emotions? Well, we touched upon this. It plays

everything. You cannot be in control of what you do with the thoughts when they arise if you are not

being present and mindful. Now then, a thought arises. It just comes out of nowhere. You you won't

pinpoint where it comes from because the minute the thought the minute you're aware of the thought,

it's already arisen. It's already happened.

So you cannot ever go to the point of origin. You can go nerdy there. So the moment the thought

arises... There's a small gap that the more meditation, the more mindfulness and the more you practice,

you increase that gap and you have slightly more time to decide what to do with it.

Now then, if your subconscious mind and your instinctual mind has already passed it over to you, then it's nothing

to worry about in that moment. They would have took care of it if it was something that had to

be done instantly they would have They've already made those judgements. They've already thought about it. They've already been full

of emotions. They've already done way more calculations than you can ever imagine. In the 30 or 40 milliseconds it

takes, your brain is way more powerful than you are yourself. So by the time it

gets to the point that you're aware of your thought, just

be mindful. Just slow down. Just take notice of what's going on and make slower

decisions. Make more effort to take time out and see things for what they are. And when you stop and

look around things of what they are, and when you have thoughts and all that, just go, ah, is it

true? Do I have to do anything with this? Do I have to make a decision now? Is it a

thought that's worth getting on? Is it a thought that's worth challenging? The problem is, it sounds, and for me,

so many thoughts end up arguments and committee meetings inside my head that nobody ever wins it's

just drains me down. And it seems like one after the other, they're all like talking over each other and

it's like, just give me a break. Whereas we want to take ourselves out of that and watch them. And

you'll find out when you acknowledge them and go oh okay Thanks for the thought. Nothing really, it doesn't have

to go anywhere. So

I did say at the beginning of this podcast, I was going to talk straight to you, Ian, and anybody

that is going through a difficult time.

It's hard going through difficult times. It's hard having life-changing things happen to us. And it

wasn't easy for me. It was difficult for me as well. And even now with the operation I've just had

a couple of months ago. Now then,

sometimes it's worth going to dig

in the hole a little deeper. And

you'll you'll find that when you dig your hole a little bit deeper, you'll find that what we're moaning about

or what those voices are moaning about really just doesn't really mean anything. But the problem is while we're we

have feelings of depression or feelings of we've had enough, really there's a lot more rock bottom underneath that.

And very often if you give them attention, you sit on the edge of the bed or wherever and go,

okay, hit me with it. Give me all the worst, darkest thoughts you can imagine and just

wait for them. You'll realise they're quite hollow.

You'll realise they don't have that much depth behind them. You'll realise the thoughts are quite fragile. And they

don't have that much meaning. They don't have that much truth. And

I do this with my loneliness. I very often feel quite lonely. And although I've got carers around

me and I've got other people in my life, when

I just sit there, I go, okay, be lonely for a minute. What does feeling lonely look like anyway It

looks like having nobody ever looks like I'm the last person in the whole universe. Even the trees don't exist.

Even the planets don't exist. I'm just flying in the universe. And

after a while my ego goes, stop this, you're not that lonely. And then it kind of gives me another

frame the It gives a chance for the other voices to perk up. And I think when we're suffering and

when we're trying to get out of that cycle of dark and negative thoughts, the other voices are so drowned

out because the protection mechanism of negative and dark thoughts to protect us is so loud.

But first of all, we realise we're not in that position to need them at that point. And then the

other voices step in and go, hey, we're still here. The gratitude voice, the happy voice, the desire voice, the

enlightened voice, the wise voice. All those voices start coming up as well. And then you end up in a

mad, crazy committee meeting of all sides that come and go on a daily basis. And we can just watch

the... Whole orchestra of voices. And be entertained by them. But we don't have to become any of them.

And I think that's really important. We become part of these voices. And these voices become part of us.

And they become the only voice we have. And that's not true. All the voices are all part of us.

The 10 000 news And I think that's where you'll find most of the break is when... You

realise you're not any of those individual voices. You're all of them. Listen to all of them. Enjoy all of

them. Enjoy all the musical instruments. Play the whole orchestra of life. And

then you'll find out that there's a lot more to enjoy. I

hope that helps. I hope that helps anybody that's going through a difficult time. And Ian reached out to me,

went to StevenWebb.uk and sent me an email through the contact me. Please do so if you'd like to reach

out to me um And I'm available for a call. You can book it in. Just email me and we

can book it in. If I can help in any way, not sure I can, but let me know. And

just thank you to anybody that supports this podcast. You're making a difference. I'm trying to be a little more

proactive, trying to be a little more consistent. And my life is really settling a little bit more now since

the operations and since... My disability is becoming more manageable now, so... And your support helps.

I love you guys. Take care.

How to Turn Around Negative and Dark Thoughts

In this episode

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

One calm email.
Every Sunday.

How to Turn Around Negative and Dark Thoughts

In this episode

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

More honest conversations

One calm email. Every Sunday.

One calm email.
Every Sunday.