Sometimes, when people tell me to “think positive,” I go a little nuts. I’m not saying that positive thinking doesn’t work for some people. I know it does. Just not for me. For a lot of my life, people have told me that * “You’ll see it when you believe it!” * “You’re only limited by what you believe is possible!” * “You can do anything if you just believe hard enough!” * “You can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought!” * “Send out your intention, and the universe will bring it to you!” …and so on. But when I try to be positive, I find myself remembering all the times I’ve “thought positive” and failed anyway, and how devastating some of those failures have been. If you’re like me, you’ve tried “positive thinking,” and you’ve whipped yourself up into believing that something is possible, only to have it all come crashing down… …and, after a while, those failures make it really hard to “think positive” about your future. Nowhere is this more true than when you are trying to get motivated about your health. If you want to lose weight or take other action to improve your health, the conventional wisdom is that you need to get yourself into the frame of mind where you believe, with certainty, that “you can do it!” I’d like to offer you an alternative to “positive thinking” that might work better for you. I call it “neutral thinking.” The failure of positive thinking “Positive thinking” is built around the idea that the universe wants you to succeed, and that all you need to do is ask, and believe, and the universe will support you in manifesting what you want. That’s great when it works. But when it doesn’t work, it’s easy to starting thinking that the problem must be =====>you. You’re not being positive enough. You end up feeling like the universe is trying to give you what you want, and your negative thinking is messing it all up. And that doesn’t help you take inspired action. If you’ve experienced a lot of disappointments in your life—for instance, if you’ve tried to lose weight or improve your health, and its never worked out—then hearing that “you’re not being positive enough” is simply more shaming. The thing is, if you’re tried to improve your health and failed, you actually have evidence—your past failures—that the universe is not “for you” in your developing the health you want. Positive thinking asks, “is the universe for you? Is the universe actively supporting you in achieving your goals?” If you can answer “yes” to that, you’ll find yourself motivated to take action toward your goals and congratulations! You’re a successful positive thinker. However, if you’ve had discouraging failures in the past, you may actually feel like the answer to that question is “no.” You may feel like the universe is not supporting you in achieving your goals—after all, if it was, you would have had more success in achieving them. If your answer to the question of positive thinking is, “no, the universe is not for me,” then positive thinking will do more harm than good. The power of neutral thinking Neutral thinking is different. Instead of asking if the universe if for you, neutral thinking asks, “is the universe against you, and is the universe actively blocking you from achieving your goals?” Rather than pursuing being optimistic (positive thinking), we are, instead, pursuing the neutral state of not being pessimistic. After all, if the universe is designed to prevent you from achieving your goals, then you might as well give up now, and go eat a bunch of cookies. But if the universe is simply neutral to you achieving your goals, then rock on! The universe is not actively trying to stop you. That would mean that achieving your goals is possible. That’s a big difference. Neutral thinking and improving your health So let’s look at neutral thinking from the point of view of your health. Say you’ve tried to lose weight and develop the body that you long for, and that you specifically want to make better food choices. But you’ve failed a bunch of times in making that change, and you can’t see a way forward. The question you should not ask is the positive thinking question: “Can you count on the universe to help you make good food choices?” Because, if you’ve failed in the past, you already have evidence that the answer to that question is “no.” Instead, ask the neutral thinking question: “is the universe actually structured to prevent me from making good food choices?” In fact, I suggest you ask the question like this: “Is it true that the universe is
Source: How to get sane with food by breaking up with positive thinking