This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Power" by Rhonda Byrne. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Why are negative thoughts so difficult to deal with? How do you get rid of negative thoughts, and is it possible?
You can’t wish negative thoughts away, but you can replace those thoughts with something positive. You get rid of negative thoughts by adding more love to your body to remove the bad feelings.
Read more to learn how to get rid of negative thoughts and how it can help you.
How to Get Rid of Negative Thoughts
Just like you can’t wish away negative situations, you can’t wish away bad feelings. And whether you like it or not, you need bad feelings. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to recognize the good feelings as good. When you feel happy, you know you do because you compare it to times when you feel sad. So bad feelings are just as valid as good feelings. It’s the way you approach the bad feelings that matters.
If you feel bad about feeling bad, you attract more bad feelings to you. Each bad feeling attracts more and more until all the bad is piled up. When this happens, turn your feelings toward love to make the bad feelings vanish.
Think of your feelings like a glass of water. Love is the water, and your body is the glass.
- When you feel bad, your glass is more empty than filled. Therefore, your body is more empty of love than filled with love.
- Being mad at the lack of water or trying to resist or ignore the emptiness doesn’t change the level of water. The only way to get rid of the emptiness is to put more water in the glass.
Likewise, add more love to your body to fill it to the top. Then, you will get rid of negative thoughts.
If this still sounds too complicated, try assigning an image to bad feelings. One example is the image of a horse for each bad feeling. Imagine a bitter horse, a sad horse, a frustrated horse, an irritable horse, or a disappointed horse. Imagine the stable where these horses live. When you feel bitter, imagine climbing onto the bitter horse. If you can climb on this horse, you can climb off of it. See yourself dismounting the horse and leading it back to the stable.
If someone else is expressing their irritability, you don’t have to meet them in that negative space. Imagine them climbing onto the irritable horse. This will help you put their negativity into perspective and keep you from taking it personally and attaching bad feelings to it. And maybe picturing yourself or others bucking around on bitter and irritable horses will be humorous, and laughter is a wonderful way to fill your glass with love.
You can’t decide to never have another bad feeling. But you can decide to throw love at the bad, and if you can do that, you can get rid of negative thoughts from your mind.
Ridding Your Life of the Negative
You can rid your life of negative things using the same process you would to manifest positive things. If you have a negative situation or experience in your life, recognize that this experience was born from a lack of love. Imagine the opposite of whatever the situation or experience is to project love.
You can’t wish the negativity away. Creation is the process of creating, not reducing. Something positive must be created to replace the negative. Rather than focusing on what you don’t want, imagine what you want, and create it through positive feelings. Give love to receive love.
Let’s say you’ve suffered an injury that causes you great pain and is not getting better. Your focus is probably on how much pain you’re in and your frustration with the slow recovery. This strengthens the negative because you are giving out negative feelings.
Instead, focus on being pain-free and making a full recovery. Imagine your body as healed. See yourself recovered. Feel the joy of those things, and amplify your magnetic field by giving love to all the good things in your life. When you imagine good health and feel love for it, you create a frequency of good health that must be returned to you.
Never contradict the feeling of having what you want. You’ve done the work to create a new world. Even if you haven’t received what you’ve imagined yet, you’ve still changed your world to one where you have it. If you shift back to a focus of not having what you want yet, you’ve shifted your desire to a new frequency, and the old world returns.
- If you’ve done the work to imagine a full recovery from your injury, move forward with that truth.
- When someone asks how you’re doing, say something full of love. Say, “I’m feeling good, and my body is healing” or “I’m grateful to be on my way to good health and for this chance to appreciate the power of my body.” Don’t say, “It still hurts a lot” or “Better but not great.”
You can’t speak of something in a negative way without eliciting a negative feeling. Be aware of attaching bad feelings to your words. Change them quickly to get back on the good frequency.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Power summary :
- How you can have whatever you want in life simply by feeling love for it
- How to form a lasting and powerful relationship with the universe
- Tips for harnessing the power of the force of love
