For the most part of our home, we have robot’s that take care of cleaning. We have this gym area where we have gym carpets and this iRobot can’t go near that area. In the meantime I used to use regular broom to clean sweep the area. But the thing with regular broom sweeping is you can’t get rid of the dust. Dust needs to be vacuumed. I always felt half-heartedly when broom had to be used for cleaning the gym carpet area. I always felt we moved the dust to other area of the room by sweeping instead of cleaning that area. Thankfully the iRobot took care of the dust that used to fall off on the other side while sweeping the gym carpet area.
Finally Ram found the vacuum just for the gym carpet area and he ordered it online. I was super excited to get that for the gym area cleaning as I know the struggles of cleaning that area for so long with ordinary broom.
As I was vacuuming the gym carpet area, Ram saw me and said –“Mahima, how about vacuuming the negative thoughts” that sentence struck a chord in my heart and this blog was born from that sentence. This blog is birthed out of Ram’s conversation with Jesus.
Negative self-talk is the recording that plays over and over in our mind that changes the environment of positivity or the blessings from the lord and changes the perspective of our surroundings.
When a person is struggling with negative self-talk, their mind engages in a regular pattern of reminding them of a variety of negative things. Self-talk tends to be rather repetitive in nature. For starters, they will probably spend long periods of time dwelling on their shortcomings.
In their mind, they will keep pointing out where they fell short of some perceived or arbitrary standard. From there, they'll take some time to re-live and re-hash past mistakes. They'll go over the scenarios and the conversations that took place in their lowest moments.
They'll remind themselves of just how embarrassed they felt at the time and then convince themselves that this is all other people think about when they're thinking of them. Then they'll take some time to dwell on their imperfections.
The sad reality of negative self-talk is that it really has a way of becoming your dominant perspective instead of a temporary nuisance. Once it's allowed to take root in your mind, it starts to spread to all areas of your thinking until it begins to dominate your worldview.
And the worst effect of its growth is that it can (and often does) impact that way you start to see God.
Instead of reminding yourself that He is the perfection of love, patience, forbearance, grace, mercy and compassion, you'll start seeing Him through the same negative lens you see yourself. You'll begin thinking of Him in mean and angry terms.
You'll tell yourself that the primary way He responds to you and His children is through harsh judgment and you'll completely forget that God delights in showing kindness toward His struggling children because it's His kindness that leads us toward repentance. Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
(Romans 2:4) But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for weary souls. We may be adept at beating ourselves up and dragging ourselves down, but Jesus grants us His strength and He delights in redeeming our minds from a worldly and negative perspective.
At this situation of Covid pandemic we tend to hear all negativity from news and fill our minds that our business is going to close or we are going to lose our job but this is not the plan of God in our life. His love, grace and mercy is beyond these temporal situations. God is not angry with us. It is not his plan for us to go through this crisis. God is in control of this situation and he is blessing our providence in every area of life.
Negative thoughts can actually turn God’s gifts in our lives as a curse instead of blessings. Our perspective, attitude, response, thoughts can be the driving force whether we embrace God’s gifts as blessings or resent it as a curse.