The way people normally deal with unpleasant thoughts, feelings and emotions is to push them away or ignore them. It’s easy to do that today. Distractions are available all around us – TV, music, food, alcohol, shopping etc. And for the moment it seems to work perfectly.

You have an argument with your best friend, later on you realise that in your anger, you’ve said something hurtful to them.  Even though, you’ve apologised, the feelings of regret and guilt do not leave you alone. You turn on the TV and watch a funny movie. And for the moment you forget all about the situation. It’s all gone, isn’t it?

For the moment, maybe. But it will come back, again and again. In fact, it will come back every time you have an argument with anybody else.

Why?

Because, instead of dealing with those negative feelings, you’ve stored them both in your mind and in your body.

We think with our minds, but we feel with our bodies.

Let’s say you have an important presentation to give. You are quite anxious about it. And so, when you think about it, your heartbeat starts to accelerate, your palms begin to sweat and anxiety sweeps all over you.

I bet, you feel in a similar way, every time before a speaking event. And the reason is that most likely, years ago, maybe even at school, you gave a presentation or a talk of some kind, and it didn’t go well. From that moment onwards, you decided that you are bad at public speaking and started avoiding it like the plague. Nevertheless, every now and then, you are required to speak – at school or at work. And in those moments, when speaking is unavoidable, all of those old thoughts and emotions flood in.

And the worse thing is that we store every single negative thought, feeling or emotion that has ever touched us.

I believe the reason behind storing mostly negative information is due to the survival mechanism of our brains. In the past, when we used to live in caves, we needed to remember all of the bear encounters and dangers altogether. But today, we live in particularly safe world, no wild beasts chase us, and there aren’t very many life threatening situations – not at school and not at office.

So what our minds do, they turn mediocre arguments, public speaking events, exams, work interviews etc, into high-risk situations. Hence, they make us remember every small detail of such events.

Every single person today carries those negative feelings, thoughts and emotions with them as a heavy burden at all times. Eckhart Tolle calls this burden “pain body”.  

So every time something bad happens to you, you store it, you make your pain body grow bigger and bigger. At the same time, you habitually pull out negative memories, thoughts and emotions from it. And unknowingly you make seemingly innocent situations escalate.

Don’t judge or make it worse than it is by overthinking , thoughts are often notorious. They can make a mountain out of a molehill. When a thought surface, don’t entertain it, don’t argue or agree with it, instead just relax and let it go. 

Thoughts are often notorious. They can make a mountain out of a molehill. When a thought surface, don’t entertain it, don’t argue or agree with it, instead just let it go. 

Well, there is a way to do that. And that way is through engaging with regular meditation practice. As we spend more and more time sitting quietly and developing the skill to ignore  that annoying voice buzzing in our head continuously, and divert our attention elsewhere, we simultaneously learn to become better aware of our thoughts and emotions.

It’s pretty much like watching yourself on a videotape. Meditation and mindfulness allow you to play the video in a slow motion, hit pause on the bloopers and insert a brand new perfect recording In their places. It’s magic really. 

Don’t try to suppress your thoughts and emotions. Instead, surrender to them, Feel them in your body and let them dissipate on their own. Sometimes, when emotions are too strong, it feels as if they have taken over us. But actually that’s not the case. Imagine a storm in the ocean. Emotions are like waves—they rise, crest, and fall. No storm lasts forever; eventually, the waters calm. Likewise, your emotions will fade, if instead of bottling them up, you let them rise and express themselves fully.

That’s it girl! Use these 3 steps every time you encounter a challenge. At the beginning you will run into resistance, your mind will want to revert to old patterns. But persevere! And soon you will become an expert in dealing with negativity.