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The Importance of Congruence: How to Manage Your Thoughts

A term you might’ve heard a lot nowadays is how you shouldn’t “bottle up” your thoughts, let alone your emotions. This means that you’re deliberately holding back from expressing a thought. Especially if it worries or concerns you because you don’t wish to face the emotions that will follow.

There are many harmful effects caused by you bottling up your thoughts. Just a couple include: 

  • Feeling anxious. As you’re trying to trick yourself into not confronting what’s on your mind, your anxiety levels will increase. 
  • Developing harmful coping mechanisms. To avoid the thoughts that are bothering you, you may find yourself eating or drinking and, if you smoke, smoking more than before. 
  • Following from the previous point, these habits can lead to not just weight gain or loss, and digestive issues as well. 

This article will explain how you should not bottle up those thoughts by confronting and accepting that you’ve been having them. 

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Write Things Down

Writing can help you to understand your thoughts.

Although it sounds simple, writing down your thoughts is an effective technique. It’s even proven that it helps create catharsis

Whether you’re using putting a pen to paper or typing on a computer, there are several ways in which you could do this. It could be a diary or journal entry, or even a letter to a person who might be bothering you. Remember not to send that letter, as it’s only being used for self-therapy. 

As you write, your thoughts will properly take shape and become a lot clearer to you. They can become more personal than you expect. But writing will help you understand them more and give you a proper idea as to why you’ve been thinking about them. 

Exercise 

At first glance, you might be thinking “if I decide to exercise, won’t I be avoiding confronting my thoughts?”

No matter what method of exercise you engage in or how long you’ll be doing it, you’ll have the space to focus on what’s on your mind. This can be as simple as going for a walk, or going to the gym and lifting weights. Regardless, exercise gives you a chance to reflect on your thoughts and emotions. 

After all, the brain is often likened to being a muscle, so you’ll be exercising that as well as you move around. 

Read Now: Surprising Benefits of Exercise: Confidence and Creativity

Consider Why You’re Bottling Up


Negative thoughts can be difficult to deal with alone.

Sometimes, you are already fully aware of why you’ve been bottling things up. 

There are a variety of reasons for doing this. You could be angry or upset (or a combination of the two) over someone or something, which can cause emotional distress. Thinking about and focusing on these thoughts might feel as though you’re reliving the initial experience that led to you having them in the first place. This can lead to you not wanting to go through them again, but ignoring them won’t make them go away.

By choosing to ignore the problem itself, you’re going to cause yourself numerous harmful repercussions. The biggest side effect of not challenging those thoughts is the increase in your anxiety levels, which can eventually make you feel anxious all the time. 

Express Yourself Creatively

There are times when you just feel as though you want to express yourself, but you don’t want to downright say what’s on your mind. The thoughts can be negative or positive. But, that won’t stop them from being intrusive and possibly distracting you from whatever you’re doing. 

There are many creative ways for you to convey your thoughts and ideas. Some methods include: 

  • Writing: We’ve already mentioned writing a letter or diary entry, but you could also write a story. It doesn’t matter if it’s too short or too long – go for it! 
  • Drawing or painting: It can be a pencil on paper or a paintbrush on a canvas; it will reveal how dedicated you can be when creating something. 
  • Listening or dancing to music: The latter is especially effective, as your moves will help you let out any suppressed emotions you might have. 
  • Cooking or baking: Whether it’s a treat or a meal you’ve always wanted to make, you’ll be surprised by the enthusiasm you’ll have due to the anticipation of seeing the finished product. 

Talk 

A problem shared is a problem halved!

This sounds like the simplest thing to do, doesn’t it? But just saying “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” is not easy for some people. If you’re an introvert, or you don’t want to confront your thoughts and the connected emotions, then talking won’t be easy for you. 

But, this is the most effective way to relieve yourself of stress. It doesn’t matter who you decide to talk to – it could be a friend, a family member, a work colleague, or even a stranger. Just as long as you speak to someone and say what’s on your mind, you’ll feel the burden go away. 

Read Now: How to Practice Active Listening

This was just a small number of ways to prevent you from bottling up your thoughts. If you’d like to know more on this topic, or perhaps an entirely different one altogether, please contact us today at Ceed. 

Neuroplasticity: Better Your Brain with Positive Thinking

When we think about how the brain develops, it may seem like common sense that development stops after childhood. We all grow up with the understanding that at around eighteen, our personality traits are set in stone, our learning ability slows down and we become ‘us’ for good. 

Traditional forms of therapy are built on this view, often characterising us as doomed to repeat patterns throughout our lives. But over the past thirty years, neuroplasticity has informed modern behavioural therapy and come to transform how we understand the brain.  

Get a fresh outlook with neuroplasticity!

The most popular form of modern therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), focuses on changing patterns of thought and behaviour through repetition – by tapping into neuroplasticity.

When we understand how neuroplasticity works, we can see that positive thinking isn’t just a buzzword. Our happiness, outlook and sense of self can change dramatically through how we choose to use our brains.  

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What is Neuroplasticity? 

Something has plasticity when it can be bent, shaped and altered. Neuroplasticity describes the changeable nature of our brains. 

The building blocks of our brains are neurons, which connect to form neural pathways. These pathways pass information around the brain, constantly firing in different combinations. A pathway grows stronger when we use it more and weaker when we use it less, much like a muscle can grow stronger or waste away.

When we feel hopeful, neurons responsible for hope fire together and bond, creating a stronger pathway. So, the more we feel hopeful, the stronger that pathway grows and the more our brain will take that well-exercised route.  

Positive mental habits can guide us through life!

Positive Thinking – Not Just a Buzzword 

Positive thinking has a bad reputation with many as just a surface-level fix for problems. However, neuroplasticity and an understanding of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) show us that positive thinking has the right idea

Thanks to neuroplasticity, we know that the brain can make dramatic changes at any point in our lifetime if we change our environment and what we input enough.

Thinking positive thoughts alone is unlikely to create lasting change, especially if you’re coming from a rut, or a place of feeling stuck. Instead, creating a structure to exercise your brain in this way can produce visible effects and help you to persevere.  

Read Now: How to Uncover Inspiration

3 Ways to Think Positive

When done right, positive thinking can call on little-used neural pathways and form brand new connections, drastically changing our experience of life.  

Here are three ways to use positive thinking and neuroplasticity. 

1. Daily Gratitude  

Taking time daily to cultivate gratitude is an effective and short-term way to see a meaningful shift in mindset. Daily gratitude involves spending time listing aloud or preferably writing down the things you are grateful for.  

You should ideally do this once a day, either morning or night.  It can include big, sweeping statements about your life, or very small things like the pen you’re writing with. Begin each sentence with “I am grateful for”, for example: 

  • I am grateful for the dinner I ate this evening.
  • I am grateful for the sun coming out on my way home today.
  • I am grateful for the people in my life.
Expressing gratitude trains the brain to look for the good in life.

Spending time focusing on gratitude practices framing life in a positive light. It’s less about creating a well-written list that will stand the test of time, and more about spending time actively looking for the good around us.  

In time, expressing gratitude for life daily rewires the brain to place its focus on what makes us happy, rather than what’s not enough in our lives.  

2. Reframing Difficult Situations  

When faced with a problem, the best thing to do is to work out how to tackle it. Instead of jumping to negative dead-end conclusions, try to break down the problem at hand and perceive it in a manageable way. By doing so, the brain learns to creatively find answers and solutions.   

A great way of making difficult situations more manageable is to try interpreting them in a different way. For example, instead of becoming frustrated when your route home is delayed, you could choose to focus instead on how you have more time to listen to that new podcast you’ve been meaning to tune into. Or perhaps you could take a different route home and experience something new.  

The more we can adopt an optimistic approach to our everyday problems, the better. With practice, you’ll find that your brain is less likely to go down negative pathways in the future. 

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3. Repeating Positive Affirmations  

A positive affirmation is a phrase you can say to yourself to remind yourself of your value and ability. Positive affirmations move your thinking along a neural pathway connected to a positive feeling such as hope, self-belief or love, and strengthen these pathways

They are both useful to repeat when you find yourself agreeing with negative thoughts about yourself, and when you are feeling confident and optimistic, in order to reinforce this outlook

In order for an affirmation to work, the brain has to really believe it, and this means tailoring affirmations to apply to your experience rather than something generic. Here are some tips to find personal affirmations that your brain truly believes:   

Boost your mindset with positive affirmations!
  • List a few of your good qualities – “I am…”  
  • Identify a problem you are facing, what qualities are needed to tackle it, and affirm that you have those qualities – “I can…”  
  • Think about something you’d like to achieve – “I will…”  

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To Sum Up… 

Neuroplasticity brings the wonderful knowledge that far more is possible than we thought. The science of neuroplasticity shows us an optimistic view of human nature with a real sense of opportunity.  

By creating a structure around yourself that supports thinking and acting in joyful, positive ways, you can build a dynamic and happy brain able to take on any challenge. 

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Need help building new habits and making a change in your lifestyle? Feel free to reach out and contact us at Ceed today! 

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