Hello and welcome back to practicing human the podcast where every day we are getting a little better at life

I am your host Corey mascara and in this episode. I am going to share seven tricks to work through thoughts

Specifically negative thoughts or to come on that in a moment

But first it is two bell Tuesday

So I am going to ring the bells twice you listen for the full duration of the sound of the bell

And let it serve as a mini meditation before we go into our episode. Here they are

Okay, so in this episode we're going to be talking about working with the thinking mind

Specifically, those negative thoughts that can arise that are often stubborn, frustrating, and cause extra stress and

Anxiety we all deal with these thoughts from time to time and how to work with them is one of the biggest questions that I receive

Now before I go into the seven strategies I would recommend I do just want to acknowledge that in times of

Tragedy or great pain or abrupt difficult experiences

It's normal to have negative thoughts and the the tips I'm going to offer here are

Less for those times which I think are experiences that just require more feeling in space and letting the mind do what it's going to do and

More for those times where we're just caught in these difficult

Ruminative loops or we get caught up in stressful thoughts before something we anticipate that scares us or when we're just

Trying to get better at working with thoughts in general

So now that we have that framing let's get into the seven strategies

The first is one you've probably heard before in this podcast and is our usual default way of working with difficult thoughts

And this is simply to redirect your focus. This is what we tend to do in a basic meditation practice

Maybe focus on the breath. We notice the mind wander and we practice bringing it back to the breath

That redirection is kind of like a bicep curl for your brain

You're getting better and stronger and not being swept away by the neurotic chatter of the mind and actually

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