How to Reframe Your Negative Thoughts

Everyone has negative thoughts, but for some people, they can consume you and get in 
the way of your daily life. If you find that you are overwhelmed by negative, pessimistic 
thoughts to the point where you have trouble with your personal and work goals, it might 
be time to change them. The following methods can be very helpful at helping to 
reframe them so you have a positive outlook and improved mental health.

Examine Your Negative Thoughts

This may seem counterintuitive, but before you can reframe and move past all your 
negative thoughts, you need to embrace them and even analyze them further. The 
reason this helps is because in many cases, you realize the thoughts you are having 
are not very realistic, and that they come from other things, whether that is stress or 
irrational fear. Get out a notebook or journal and write down the biggest negative 
thoughts you are currently having. Next to each one, talk about what the thought is and 
how it got there. Can you trace it back to its origin? If you can, this can let you see what 
might have motivated you to think this way. It may very well be that you don’t have a lot 
of evidence to support the thought, helping you to let it go.

Start Keeping a Journal
This is one of the reasons having a journal is helpful, but definitely not the only reason. 
When you are trying to reframe your negative thoughts, you often want to work out what 
they are and come up with solutions for turning them into positive thoughts. This is 
when using a journal can be effective. Writing everything down in a journal on a daily 
basis gives you a healthy place to vent out your frustrations and often helps with the 
stress that has been overwhelming your mind. 
Brainstorm Your Thoughts
The next exercise you can try after really analyzing those negative thoughts is to 
brainstorm. This is when you take the thoughts and come up with a resolution that turns 
it into action. You want to find actions that can help you reframe it into a positive 
thought. If you find that you are over-stressed and thinking negatively about the holidays 
because of everything you have going on, is there something you can drop or get help 
with? Brainstorm ways to reduce how much is your responsibility, and you just mind find 
that with the stress receding, your thoughts are becoming more positive. 
