Negative Thoughts Can Help Create a Miracle

Did you know that in the past 15 years, the number of people seeking treatment for depression in the U.S has doubled? That is now 25 million a year. This statistic is disconcerting, but what is worse is that according to recent research, 90% of these people left their doctor’s offices with a prescription for anti-depressants.

According to a 2008 study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine, antidepressants could be no more effective than a sugar pill.  On top of the fact that often the side-effects one can be afflicted with far outweigh the initial symptoms of the ailment they are supposedly treating.

There are other solutions to this problem if we stop labeling sadness as a disease.

Look at your bouts of sadness and despair as something that can be beneficial to you.  Negative thoughts can actually help us flourish; they can spur on change where the results can be beautiful beyond our imaginings.  Let the negative thoughts you experience help you gauge where you need to make changes in your life and not merely settle for a mediocre existence.
A thought is just a thought and a thought can be changed.  If your thoughts are no longer serving you – change them.

Positive thoughts by nature are subtle and fleeting, because like all things our lives are ever-evolving and changing. And what we want is to not deny the negatives in our lives but to increase the quantity and quality of the positives.  We have to find balance between these emotions.

When we shut ourselves off from emotional discomfort, we stop miracles and new opportunities from happening.

Think about this:
When you are feeling negative and your automated response is “I can’t do anything about it”, take comfort in the thought that something can always be done; there is always another way.  No one situation lasts forever, because things are constantly changing.  As the Rav so deftly states, “There’s neither happiness, nor misery in the world.  There’s only the comparison of one state to the other.”

Sadness is sometimes good, it is the realization of where we are, where we need to go and what we need to change to get there.

JOURNAL
1.    What negative thoughts no longer serve you?
2.    How are these negative thoughts demanding your attention?
3.    Pay attention to them and change them.