The impact of negative beliefs extends beyond simple negative thinking. Holding negative beliefs about ourselves, our abilities, and our future poses a lot of limitations. This can significantly impact our ability to pursue and manifest the things we desire. The following outlines 6 of these effects and how these limit our ability to obtain what we desire.
1. Poor Mental Health
We might think negatively from time to time. However, a negative thought can expand to become a negative belief. This may cause detrimental impacts on mental health. If we engage in continual negative thinking, prolonged bouts of anger, anxiety and depression may happen.
Stress created from negative thinking might lead us to acquiring mental disorders such as ADHD, schizophrenia, and various mood disorders. Poor mental health impacts our ability to obtain the things we desire. This is because it hinders our ability to reason, analyze, and make sound decisions. In turn, we lack the ability to process the information, take risks, and make decisions that will push us towards our goals.
2. Poor Physical Health
Our physical health can be greatly impacted by negative beliefs and thinking. When we think negative thoughts, our brains trigger a response in our bodies as if we were in real danger.
We experience real physical stress such as a rapid heartbeat and raised blood pressure. Negative thinking causing stress can also overstimulate our body’s response system. This will lead to a weakening of the immune system and increased instances of disease.
Without physical stamina and health we are unable to do the work needed to help us achieve our dreams.
3. Impact of Increased Stress Levels
Research suggests that there is a link between negative thoughts and reported increases in levels of stress. Engaging in regular patterns of negative thinking cause us to perceive situations through a negative lens. This may cause us to experience situations negatively. Thus, they often experience poor concentration and poor judgement.
Inability To Make Decisions
Increased levels of stress also have a negative impact on our ability to make decisions. Feeling stressed changes how we weigh risks and rewards. When we are under stress, we pay more attention to positive information and discount negative information.
This could translate to recklessness on our part when making decisions. We look more at the upsides of the alternatives rather than the downsides. It could be detrimental, as not enough weight is given to the potential negative impacts of a decision. Decisions may be made hastily without careful consideration of all potential outcomes.
Decreased task performance
An increased level of negative thoughts led to disruption in performance of tasks. So when the brain is faced with complex tasks, negative thinking impairs the ability to process information clearly and quickly.
The impact of stress and impairing decision-making means an inability to make the right decisions that will lead us to our desires. We are more inclined to become inactive and procrastinate due to stress. We make poor decisions that keep us further from rather than push us closer to our goals.
4. Fixed Mindset
Engaging in continual negative thinking causes us to possess a fixed mindset. Having a fixed mindset, we believe that we are only born with that much knowledge and ability. We believe that we cannot improve in areas of weakness. Fixed mindsets are highly detrimental in the pursuit of our desires.
A fixed mindset:
- Limit our awareness
- Breed complacency and mediocrity
- Hinder our ability to cope with change
- Foster an environment where we become stagnant
Awareness is limited because we reject feedback from others, viewing it as a personal attack rather than a constructive means of critique.
Complacency and stagnancy result from this decreased awareness. A fixed mindset results in an inability to see the need to improve in certain areas. Having a fixed mindset also means believing that no new knowledge or skills can be obtained. Thus, no growth can occur.
This limits us from reaching our full potential, which in turn limits our achievements to what we are naturally skilled at.
We tend to stray away from those things which require more knowledge or effort. That’s how a fixed mindset keeps us from meeting our goals and achieving our dreams.
5. Low Self-Esteem
Having a fixed mindset may lead low self-esteem or depression. That is because we tend to remember negative events. This memory of negative events led to an increase in helplessness. In turn, this may increase depression.
Different mindsets led us to set goals of different natures. Having a fixed mindset may lead us to set validation goals. We might focus on being acknowledged by others, or look for recognition.
However, with a growth mindset, we tend to set growth goals, which focus on learning and making progress. We tend to lean towards more problem solving when faced with negative circumstances.
This is opposed to setting validation goals which may cause depression. We are less involved in problem-solving. Instead, when things didn’t work out, we respond to circumstances negatively.
A fixed mindset is essentially a negative core belief about our abilities. This may decrease our self-confidence. This lack of belief in ourselves keeps us from taking risks and taking steps that will guide us towards our goals.
6. Poor Self-Actualization
Self-actualization is the full realization of a person’s creative, intellectual, and/or social potential. Negative beliefs hinder self-actualization as it distorts the ways our minds convince us of untruths.
These distortions cause us to create negative thoughts about ourselves, our abilities and our lives. Further, they reinforce negative thoughts we hold by repeating them on a never-ending loop.
These distortions interfere with what we know as the Law of Attraction. Thus negative belief would cause us to focus our attention on negative things. We would be in emotional harmony with negative beliefs! As a result, we would attract negative things into our lives.