How To Get Rid Of Negative Thinking?

Let’s face it. Even with good intentions, we all think negatively sometimes. Beating yourself up when you think in a negative way? It’s not going to bring you any positive outcome. So, what’s the point?

The key thing is to find ways of transforming the thinking pattern so that it doesn’t eat up the rest of your day. But how?

In September last year, I happened to see Dr Karl Kruszelnicki at Dymocks city bookstore on a book-signing event, for his latest book entitled: Karl, The Universe and Everything.

I’ve always been drawn by his wit and in-depth knowledge of many things – good, bad, beautiful and ugly. Sometimes even stuff you feel shy, embarrassed or ashamed to talk about, he writes about it.

Out of curiosity, I went to pick up one copy and had a quick browse while there. One chapter called Earworm really struck me.

I was fascinated by the well-researched information, particularly some good tips on how to get rid of earworms. To my surprise, chewing gum is said to be the most effective way to date.

If you don’t know what earworm means, according to Cambridge Dictionary, it means a song that you keep hearing in your head.

In my previous experience, an annoying song (I won’t name it here) was playing in my head again and again. It was spinning like a broken record, just driving me insane. It happened while I was out and about around a beach. All up, it lasted two hours.

How did I stop it eventually? As soon as I got home, I turned on my stereo and played one of my favourite songs on repeat. It was an instant cure! A gentle and effective way to kill an earworm, with no side effects! Of course, that song I played didn’t become another earworm. Even if it had, it wouldn’t have bothered me.

Well, that’s not the end of the story. To satisfy my inquiring mind, I wanted to know more. I wanted to find out if there’s a correlation between negative thoughts and earworms.

What if we start treating negative thoughts like earworms? Try chewing gum? Will playing my favourite 80’s songs help? Interesting huh? Well, that’ll be my next project. Watch this space.

For now, I’m going to leave you with something to chew on here. Till next time, stay tuned!