One of the biggest obstacles to creating the life and future that you dream of, can be the occurrence of negative thoughts. Thinking of what has happened in the past, worries of what might happen in the future, these all have an impact on the way we feel in the present and therefore affect what we attract into our lives.

Even though we may know logically and consciously what we should be doing (ie thinking positive thoughts) sometimes it can be really difficult to know HOW to change our negative thinking and what we need to do to stop those thoughts when they arise.

Unfortunately we don't come with an instruction manual and we tend to find that the more we try not to do something, the harder it is to stop. One of the main reasons for this is that your unconscious mind doesn't recognise negatives, such as no, stop and don't. For example if someone were to say to you "Whatever you do, DON'T think about a pink elephant!" - you think of a pink elephant. You can't help it - in order to dismiss something, you have to first think about it.

When you look at something and you shout no at it, you include it into your vibration, when you say to yourself "DON'T think about that" you are actually telling yourself in fact think TO about it and including that into your thoughts. However when you change whatever you don't want into what you do want, for example, instead of "Don't forget your keys" you say "Remember your keys", you include remembering your keys into your experience. If you ever find yourself saying what you don't want to happen, use that to imagine what you do want, instead.

You can change how you feel about your thoughts, by using the way that your mind naturally processes information. When you think of a memory that you feel very strongly about, either positively or negatively, you experience it with your senses. You may get a visual image in your mind's eye, you may have sounds or voices connected to it, it may even have smells and tastes and you will also get a feeling that goes with it.

When you have a strong emotional reaction about something, those senses tend to be amplified, so the image will probably be a movie as opposed to a still image, brightly coloured, quite close and big and you may be imagining it through your own eyes. The sounds may be quite loud, clear and near and you may get a physical sensation in your body that matches the emotion.

If your thought is one that makes you feel strongly negative, you can adjust each one of those factors so that your brain interprets the information differently and therefore doesn't react in the same way. So for a negative visual image you can:

Imagine you can see yourself in the image instead of through your own eyes.
If it's a movie, make it into a still image.
Make the picture black and white, and push it further away.
Shrink the image or make it see through

For auditory elements, such as a negative internal dialogue, you can:

Turn the volume down
Make it come from further away from you or a different place
If it's an internal voice, change it into a funny voice, such as your favourite comedian or Donald Duck.
Make it softer and kinder

On the flip side, you can also use this to create compelling visual images of what you do want, which helps with manifesting your desires. To do this, reverse the above - make images more colourful, bigger, bring it closer and see through your own eyes. Turn sounds up, make them clearer and surround sound or give your image an inspiring or motivating soundtrack. When you say positive things to yourself, say them in your mind loudly in an excited, motivated tone of voice (or calm, relaxed etc).

Your mind is an incredible learning machine, and it doesn't take it very long to learn new ways of thinking about something. If you keep repeating your adjustments, your brain learns to think in the new way and does it automatically for you. Then by being able to adjust your thoughts so you can feel better right now, manifesting what you do want instead of what you don't, becomes a lot easier.