Fear is one of the biggest contributors to thinking negatively in life. Fear can cause us to always see the bad side of situations and constantly expect the worse, resulting in our living a less fulfilled life than we hoped for and even holding us back from achieving our dreams.

Fear can stop us doing plenty of different things that we’d love to do – for example, maybe you have always wanted to visit Europe, but your fear of flying gets in the way each time you try to get on the plane. The negative thoughts regarding air travel are stronger than the positive ones about tour- ing Europe, eventually taking control and limiting you to what you can do with your life.

Switching your negative thoughts for positive ones is a process which may take a lot of time. Some people are naturally more optimistic than others; but even the most optimistic people on earth can still find themselves thinking in an extremely negative manner when it comes to their fears and anxieties.

Overcoming negative thinking is a vital step to overcoming your fears, as learning the strategies and methods which are vital to replacing negative thoughts with positive ones can help you gain control of your fears and anxieties when they start to creep up on you.

Practicing Gratitude

Saying ‘thank you’ is one of the simplest and easiest things which we can do, often resulting in people saying it mindlessly without taking a minute to step back and practice real gratitude. Practicing gratitude daily can help you to create a more positive mind-set and completely transform your attitude towards life.

In and of itself, practicing gratitude won’t suddenly transform you into a fearless person. But, it can have a significant indirect effect on your fears by giving you the means to become more positive and think more optimistically about a range of different situations. When you practice gratitude you become a happier person, and naturally the positive thoughts and mind-set will follow.

Practicing gratitude helps us to see situations in a more optimistic manner, lessens panic and also invokes feelings of empathy whilst lessening feelings of regret, envy, jealousy and even fear. Practicing gratitude enables you to see situations that once may have been scary for you in a more positive light, minimizing the negative thoughts and anxiety which you feel.

How to Practice Gratitude

When you begin to work on practicing gratitude, it’s important that you do it for the right reasons. Forcing yourself to feel grateful for things simply be- cause you hope that it will diminish your fear will have no real effect, and the majority of the time you’ll be faking it – which won’t have any effect on your fears at all, unfortunately.

Instead, learn to practice gratitude in order to become truly thankful for what you have. Put aside thoughts of your fears, and see becoming a more grateful person as something completely separate from your goal of conquering your fears.

In time, your newly positive mind-set will naturally contribute towards helping you view your fears in a more optimistic light, subsequently enabling you to be in a better position to overcome them.

At the initial point, practicing gratitude will for many people mean that a conscious effort has to be made. If you have fallen foul of negative thought pat- terns and chronic pessimism, it’s going to be difficult for you to begin to change these habits and start to be more thankful for what you have and think positively about the future.

Begin by making small changes and using strategies such as taking five minutes out of your day to write down everything that you’re thankful for right now. Even if you’re having a particularly bad day, you’d be surprised at all the things which you can still be thankful for.

Some days you may only feel thankful that you’ve got your health or a roof over your head – but these are things that many people don’t have. Practicing gratitude helps you to learn not to take things for granted. In turn, you’ll begin to see everything more positively – even the worst of your fears.

Changing the Tone of Your Thoughts

Changing your mind-set to one which is more positive is absolutely crucial to conquering your fears. If you think negatively most of the time, feeling fearful will naturally become more intensified with negative thoughts and emotions such as ‘I can’t do this’, or ‘if I do this, something bad will happen’.

Learning how to change the tone of your thoughts is all down to knowing how to recognize negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. As with practicing gratitude, this will also take a conscious effort on your part.

For example, you could write a ‘thought swap list’ which could read something like this:

• ‘I can’t do this’ – swap for: ‘I will try my best to do this’

• ‘Why is this happening?’ – swap for: ‘This is happening for a reason, and I’ll find that reason’

• ‘I’m a failure’ – swap for: ‘I’m not ready to give up trying’

• ‘I’m going to have a hard time adjusting to this’ – swap for: ‘I’m ready to tackle the challenges I’m about to face!’’

In your list, include all the negative thoughts which you frequently find pop- ping into your mind, and come up with a more positive alternative. Each time you start to think negatively, you’ll know exactly what you should be focusing on thinking instead. It’ll take time to get used to but eventually, you’ll begin to view things more positively as a force of habit.

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