What are Negative thoughts? How to control it?

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What are negative thoughts in a simple understanding? When the mind is thinking about all the wrongs, what went wrong, what is going wrong and what could go wrong. All the mind thinks is how the situation could be worse. And surprisingly most of the times it's just an exaggeration of thoughts. The simplest example which all of us could relate to is when one of our loved one is not picking the phone or is not yet back home after a regular timing of return. We start calling the person on their phone and they miss to pick it once, then maybe twice or thrice. They could be in a meeting, their phone could be on silent mode or they might be driving back home. Or better still they might be out shopping or ordering something to surprise you and intentionally do not pick so as to not ruin the surprise. But.. But.. But.. Holy shit has started to race in our minds and mind you, none of them is good, none of them makes you feel happy. Every single thought, every single emotion makes you feel worse. What if something mis-happened, what if he/she is cheating on me, what if they are never returning back? Yes, right? This is what we feel. The heart is pounding, sweat beads are on the forehead, the body feels like collapsing. Every car feels it's their car, every sound feels that they are knocking on the door, every foot-step is their footstep. We all must have had this feeling at least once in our lives.
Have you noticed that somehow the frequency of Negative thoughts increases while praying, studying, while mediating, while manifesting, when high, or when trying to sleep. Personally I had struggles with such barrage of thoughts just before sleeping. It was intense, all the ghosts of past bad memories haunted me when I was trying to sleep. Every decision that I regretted, every mistake that I committed, every thing that I had missed out on. All these thoughts came rushing every night, without fail, and did not leave soon. Sometimes I could not sleep the entire night, innumerable nights were spent weeping, soaking the pillow with tears.
When we are in sleep mode, or meditating or praying or manifesting, what is the common factor in the situation? We are still, resting, not moving, or focusing on something. Our entire concentration is on one thing. When we are physically moving, or working our bodily functions and energies are equally distributed and being consumed to fuel the activities we are involved in. No wonder when we go on a run, or are lifting weights or busy with that assignment deadline, we don't have time for negative thoughts, because we do not have the energy or concentration for anything else, our entire body, mind, concentration, consciousness is on running and keeping the terrain on mind, or being cautious not to hurt ourselves lifting those heavy weights or crunching data or finishing that pending report. But when we are sleeping, being quiet, being calm we are actually making our mind go into an overdrive. the mind is like, 'give me something to visualize, something to do'. And of course, our inherent nature to recall our mistakes and regrets makes it even worse, as a human specie we gain experiences and use that result in our forthcoming decisions to analyse whether to go ahead with it or not. Quite interestingly, artificial intelligence, machine learning to be more precise, also works on a similar principle where past experience (datasets in circumstances) helps a machine predict a probable outcome. Obviously we will think about why I did not get that promotion/project or why our love story is not as happy as it should be or why our professional and personal ambitions are not being fulfilled.
The effects are multi-fold, most obvious one being us becoming restless, hopeless, feeling doomed. There is a vicious cycle of overthinking, we all must have felt it. for a simple example, we have an exam/interview the next day. the thought process begins with what if something goes wrong, or what if I answer wrong and then we think about the failure in that interview, then we feel that an opportunity is lost and then we build it up to our future and we end up feeling like, I have destroyed everything. But, if we introspect none of it has happened as yet, not even a single thing. we have not even reached the venue of the event, forget about failure and being doomed forever. Similarly, for past events, we go back to something in our past, something that did not work out or something that could have been better, we recall every single wrong/bad thing we did then, not an iota of positive memory pops in our mind. we think and think and think and our energy falls and falls and falls. now, if we introspect on this, it has already happened, it is already over. we cannot change it, unless we know to time travel then of course it will take a different course. But what we can do is take that experience as a lesson on how we can make things better for us now. If that event if ongoing in our lives, how we can make it better or we can use the experience gained for similar situations in future.
There are studies that show that our mental thoughts affect our health and well being also to a great extent. If we continue thinking, i am sick, I am unwell, i am unhappy, we tend to become precisely that. Low energy anyway leads to lower motivation towards daily activities. We will ignore our health, not do physical activities, and not eat proper food leading to lack of nutrients hereby hampering our body organs to function properly which will lead to health consequences. The thoughts also directly influence our hormone secretions which are co-related to our mood, and body functions. Too many negative thoughts end up unbalancing our hormone secretions leading to health repercussions too.
Remedies and ways to remove negative thoughts are simple as well as complex. First and foremost, it will not happen in a day. When we start exercising to lose weight, do we see the results in a single day? No, it does not happen unless we are having a plastic surgery. Controlling thoughts and meditation are quite effective in helping us come out of this cycle. Again, I emphasize it will not happen in a day, as we have been negative thinking for years and years the habit will take time to break but it will definitely not take years. First and foremost, brooding over past and future events is not that meaningful if we think about it. Taking a past and future event and then building up a whole scenario of what all went wrong or what all is going to be wrong makes no sense, unless we are using it to improve the situation. Trying to shift our focus from the negative thought to something else is also beneficial, even for a short while initially. Listen to some nice, happy music, watch a video that makes you smile. Have you noticed, if we are sad and then we are listening to sad songs as well, for example, someone is going through a breakup and then they listen to songs that are sad, how the partner betrayed them or songs about longing for the partner, these songs just heighten the feeling of longing, betrayal. So do we have to come out of that feeling or go deeper in that feeling? Doing things that make us feel happy and better should be done rather than going back to the same feeling. Meditation is a great way to control our thoughts. Do not attach religious connotations to mediation, it is about controlling our thoughts. Although it is easier said than done, but small steps are to be take. There are many good videos on YouTube that can guide to meditate. Correct method to meditate or the one that works for an individual may differ but the effects are the same. Begin with 30 seconds a day and build it up, it will be life-changing I promise. Physical activities also help us in being and feeling healthy and happy. A good jog always feels refreshing, energizing, a sweating workout session is so satisfying, a yoga session is so calming. Its all the play of hormones that are secreted in these activities. The idea is to be calm and satisfied, not living in an exaggerated, false world of doom and negatives that happened in the past or may happen in the future.
Yes, I do accept and acknowledge that it is very easy to preach than to practice but what is the harm in trying to do it! And it also not a miracle that it will happen right here right now, but one thing is for sure, it will definitely happen, that feeling of doom will for sure transform to something calmer and better. But one will have to do it, consistently, to see the results. And there is no harm in trying it, we can build a castle in our thoughts we can burn a castle in our thoughts!!

Disclaimer:The views expressed are that of the author and should not be construed as medical advice.