When you are not actively focused, your mind seems to brew up a storm of unpleasant thoughts in your head.
Your inner negative self-talk can keep on torturing you with criticism all day. It can try to talk you out of commitment, make up a senseless scenario, or confess your deepest darkest fear to you.
A gateway to hell.
Sometimes it gets difficult to get out of this vicious cycle and concentrate on anything. That continuous negging whisper in your head never lets you be at ease.
Such self-talk often chimes in at the wrong time, sending your brain into overdrive. While harboring such demoralizing self-talk, it increasingly becomes harder to keep your concentration on the task at hand.
What is Negative Self-Talk?
Negative self-talk is a type of automated negative thought that appears in your head unintentionally as a form of the defense mechanism of your brain when you are in an unknown situation or danger.
They can emerge out of nowhere whether you are working, strolling in the park, or reeling.
It is common to have negative self-talk every day. Whether as a lead narrator or just background noise.
Stress and anxiety often trigger such pessimist thoughts. But, if entertained for a longer period, it is cemented into our heads and turns into a bad habit that can affect our mental well-being.
A daily pattern of negative thinking makes this habit stronger. Like, when you train a particular muscle every day, it becomes stronger. Just like that, a daily dose of self-criticism makes this habit stronger.
Succumbing to it will only make you lose your equilibrium and make it difficult to take any decisions due to the lack of concentration.
What Causes Negative Self-Talk?
Negative self-talk can be triggered by many reasons. The most common cause is mental conditions like depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem, or stress. Often unexpected turns of events can structure your thoughts in a negative pattern.
When you go through some unpleasant experience or unknown situation, your brain’s reaction is to alert you by going into a spiral of negative thinking or making up worst-case scenarios in your head.
Like “I knew this would happen to me” or “I had a bad feeling about this from the start.”
This way of self-talk always gets to you by further fixing that nagging doubt in you.
Making catty remarks weakens your self-esteem and the concentration that is needed to perform important tasks.
7 Ways You Can Silence Negative Self-Talk and Increase Concentration
1. Train Your Brain
Ever wondered about training your brain to focus more?
Well, there are psychologically proven tricks you can try to achieve that concentration boost.
Train your brain with memory games that require your most attention.
Participate in brain games that can train your brain to increase concentration and cancel noise.
Playing mind games involves part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is related to complex cognitive behavior, decision-making, a person’s sense of orientation, and concentration.
Playing memory games like puzzles, sudoku, word games, or even better learning something new like language can strengthen your prefrontal cortex.
These games are like an exercise for your brain. It can encourage neuroplasticity which is your brain’s ability to adapt and recognize the structure and any information.
2. Try Mindful Meditation
Our mind is flooded with a constant stream of thoughts all the time, and 80 percent of them are negative.
It has been researched that 47 percent of the time your mind keeps wandering. This makes it difficult to try to focus on a particular task at a time.
Your inner rambling is mostly a reflection of your feelings related to depression, anxiety, and stress.
Mindfulness is the single best tool to keep those inner voices at bay and boost concentration.
A few minutes of practicing mindful meditation every day has proven to keep negative feelings in check and increase concentration for longer periods of time.
3. Stay Active
You already know staying active and engaging in exercises like jogging, aerobics, and yoga is good for your physical health. But did you know it is also good for your concentration?
When you exercise your brain gets a dopamine charge. It is a hormone associated with a higher level of concentration, alertness, and focus.
A good dose of dopamine helps improve your mood and combat depression and anxiety. Which can, in turn, help cancel out all the negative self-talk by affecting focus and attention.
photo by annie-spratt on unspalash
4. Have Adequate Sleep
In today’s hectic living, sleep deprivation and insomnia have become common lifestyle aftereffects in people.
Working for long hours and the pressure of meeting deadlines has put immense work stress on a person. It has contributed to disturbed sleeping patterns among many individuals.
Inadequate sleep is related to increased worry and stress, which can be blamed on intrusive thoughts and the absence of concentration.
Having sufficient sleep alleviates those frequent mental distress which is the prime culprit of negative thinking.
5. Avoid Multitasking
One of the main concentration killers is multitasking.
You might feel like by multitasking, you are getting more things done, but what your brain is doing is shifting focus from one task to another. The shift is so rapid that you can’t even notice it.
Our human brain is wired to concentrate on one task at a time. By multitasking, you are dividing your brain’s attention and task-processing rules.
In the haste of completing more work sooner, you put yourself in a more stressful position which can trigger negative self-talk and waver your concentration.
6. Tone It Down
One direct way a person deals with negative self-talk is by directly suppressing them.
A negative thought is a byproduct of stress. Our everyday encounter with stressful situations triggers and gives rise to intrusive thoughts.
So, Instead of straight away killing them, try turning their volume down till it becomes the background noise you can easily avoid.
Because the more you concentrate on stifling them, the more it resurfaces and makes it difficult to focus on any task.
photo by aaron-burden on unsplash
7. Filter Your Thoughts
When your mental health is concerned, guarding your thoughts against negativity becomes a difficult task.
Your thoughts and actions are correlated To each other. Whenever you have any self-talk in your head, it synchronizes with your mood and affects your attention density.
Continued negative self-talk can create a default response system to any situation.
Replacing your negative self-talk with positive thoughts lessens any stress related to them and boosts concentration.
Lastly
Your inner Self-talk is not always negative. They can be optimistic sometimes. And can play an important role in decision-making by contemplating them. But, minding their route is important.
If negative self-talk is left unattended, it can cost you your mental stability. Controlling your thoughts is difficult sometimes. So, keeping them as visitors that come and go as quickly might get the job done for you as long as they are not dwelled upon.
