In fact, according to the National Science Foundation 80% of your thoughts in a day will most likely be negative and about 90-95% of them you have had before; that’s right, they’re repetitive.

Consider the impact those consistently spinning negative thoughts have on you over time. Fears, insecurities, and doubts digging a deeper groove into your psyche every day, holding you back from living your life to its fullest potential.

But while negative attraction may be the current natural inclination of the human mind, we can change it! The ability to change our thoughts has helped humanity evolve and continues to do so.

So now, take a moment to imagine if you could make your thoughts just 1% more positive, 5%, or even 10%. How much brighter life might be! More confidence, strength, and grounding not only to get you through tough times but propel you forward as well.

Guess what? It is possible! Here’s how…

Interested in learning about the 9 Hindu Gods every yoga teacher should know?

Yoga for the better mental health

Negative thoughts can be recognized and changed with some intentional focus and practice. How? Well, first you need to realize that you are not your thoughts – positive or negative, you are the awareness of the thoughts. If you can observe a thought, feeling, or emotion, you are obviously not them – you are something greater. You are the awareness of them. The same way the clouds are not the sky and only pass through as its by-product, we are not our thoughts. Thoughts are simply a by-product of our environment, past conditioning, and current molecular makeup. What’s more, we have the power to change these thoughts. We can change a negative thought into a positive and vice versa. Thoughts are interchangeable and the ability to do so is a healthy step in harnessing the power of the mind.

Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to give this a try. Take a minute and close your eyes. Observe and label any thoughts that come up. When you open your eyes, write down the thoughts you just had. For example, you may have thought, “this is silly, this will never work,” or you may have noticed a noise in the room, felt a body ache, etc. For each negative thought, cross it out and replace it with a positive. Doubt, replace with faith, boredom replace with interest, irritability replace with acceptance, and so on. Now try to do this mentally. Every time a negative thought comes up, switch it to a positive.

This simple practice is outlined in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and was developed more than 1800 years ago. It is also the premise behind modern success practices such as The Secret, as well as scientific studies around happiness. It all comes down to perspective. Change your perspective and remove the things that mentally don’t make you happy and voila, you’ve found the recipe for happiness. For happiness is nothing more than the absence of unhappiness. Much like Buddhism also says, you need only change your perspective, not the circumstance to remove suffering.

Want to learn more about the mental aspect of yoga? In all of our courses (200-Hour In-Person TTC, and 300-Hour YTTC) we explore the power of the mind, positivity, and cultivating healthy mental states.