What to Do When Your Positive Thinking Turns Into Negative Thoughts Because of Negative Experiences

So here you are practicing positive thinking, focusing on the goodness that's in your life and that's coming into your life. You're feeling good about yourself and your future. Then it happens. Someone said something or something happened that triggered the memory of a past negative event or comment that really cut deep.

At first you tried to ignore it, but the pang of the pain starts bubbling up from inside you soon followed by a gushing outpouring of emotions. You find yourself absorbed with feelings of hurt, anger and depression over something which occurred months ago, maybe years ago. "What does it all mean?" You asked, "I thought I was all over that?"

These emotions many times come from unresolved issues; perhaps you never resolved the issue with the other person or even within yourself. Yes, you moved on but the roots of the problem were never dealt with, was never uprooted. And when the right conditions came, like deep roots come alive and begin to surface in spring, up came those memories and the emotions that belong to them.

3 common mistakes and 3 resolutions to turn your negative experiences into positive lessons.

Mistake #1 - Shoving it under the rug.

The worst thing you could do at this point is to shove the memory under the rug and pretend like it never happened, because it did and now you're reliving it over again in your mind and emotions. You may try to cover it up like soil covering up old roots in the garden. Guess what will soon happen? The roots will find their way, break through to the top soil and continue to grow.

Resolution #1 - Face it and deal with it.

When you find unwanted roots in your garden, what do you do? You dig deeper and begin to uproot the unwanted roots. It doesn't matter so much as to how they got there as to the fact that they are there and you don't want them.

Face yourself, look at the situation, acknowledge how you felt and feel about it and consciously uproot the pain of it and release it from your life. Like garden roots that extend across the length of the garden, you need to keep digging and uprooting until you've got it all out. Sometimes this process may take some time depending on how willing and persistent you are in releasing the hurt, the negative past experience from your life.

Look out tomorrow for the other 2 mistakes and 2 resolutions to turn your negative experiences into positive lessons.