The Power of Negative Thinking

 The other week I got an email from a writing guru that actually made some sense.

I call what he had to say — The Power of Negative Thinking.

Now you might be asking yourself, what the heck is The Power of Negative Thinking? And if you are, continue reading and I’ll explain.

We all know the importance of setting goals. We also know the importance of setting up steps to achieve those goals.

Our goal might be to write a novel in one year. To achieve that goal, we might set a secondary goal of writing 190 words a day. Now that doesn’t seem like much, but we work full-time; have a spouse, kids, dog, relatives, friends; there’s mowing the lawn and taking care of things around the house; and what have you. And all of those things want a piece of our time.

The standard advice is to set aside a block of time at the same time every day to write, and to write a certain amount of words. In our example, that would be 190. So, say, we decide to set aside 1 hour at 5 am to write those 190 words. Easy peasy, right?

So how many of us have done just that — and not gotten our book written?

C’mon now, raise your hand with me. Yep. Just as I thought. We’ve all been there.

Setting up a writing goal often is no different than making new year resolutions or resolving to lose those extra pounds: our resolve has gone out the window by week three. Or maybe earlier.

This is where The Power of Negative Thinking can help us. It turns on its head the conventional wisdom and often exposes the real reason we don’t achieve our goals.

The Power of Negative Thinking works like this. You set your goal of writing that novel in one year.

Then you ask yourself: how can I not reach my goal?

Go ahead, make a list of all the things that you can do to not write that novel in a year. By doing this, you have now identified your goal killers. The things that you subconsciously let derail you. The things that you subconsciously let stop you from reaching your goal.

Now, once these have been identified, you strategize on how to eliminate them. You plan how you will not let those things defeat you. Stop you from achieving your goal of writing that novel in a year.

By focusing on what is hindering you, you can very  often identify hidden fears that are short circuiting your success. That happened to me. By analyzing why I kept putting other things before writing, I came to realize that I was afraid of failing. And by failing I’d prove my parents right. That I was a failure. Once I realized that, I also realized I didn’t need their approval and I was free to write. Yippee! :)

Or you might discover that there are things more important to you than writing a novel. And that’s okay. Writing isn’t for everyone. Just like fishing, or tennis, or video games.

But you may also discover that you simply fritter away much of your time. That you let other things occupy you. In which case, you can then schedule those other things to be done in some other time frame than your time to write. Knowing that they will get attention when it’s their turn, will enable you to focus on writing.

Since I retired, my biggest time sucks are 

• other people demanding my attention in real life 
• social media
• TV
• Computer games

To get my books written, I minimize those hindrances. I schedule them away from my writing time. I avoid going to the living room, for example, during writing time so the TV doesn’t tempt me. Another is that I write long hand, in part, so I don’t have to have the computer on.

The Power of Negative Thinking is actually an old Stoic recommendation for dealing with all the crap life sends our way. And it works! Give it a try.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy Negative Thinking!