You need to make sure you remain afloat with positive energy and positive thoughts to save yourself from shortening your life. If you are constantly thinking and speaking negatively, you are indeed shortening your telomeres and speeding up cellular ageing, writes, Vinita Alvares Fernandes
Have you heard of Telomeres?
Telomeres — are the protective tips at the end of each chromosome.
They shorten with each cell division, determining how fast your cells age, wear down or die.
Shorter telomeres mean faster aging of cells.
Do you know your Telomeres are listening to you at all times?
What you think, what you speak, they absorb the instructions you give out.
If you are constantly thinking and speaking negatively, you are indeed shortening your Telomeres and speeding up cellular aging or vice versa.
The Telomere Effect: The New Science Of Living Younger
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Elissa Epel.
The pandemic world spanning two years has been a culprit of creating negative thoughts in even the most positive humans.
Negative thoughts or identified pessimism are one of the five types of toxic thought patterns usually associated with shortening Telomeres.
So if you are experiencing a change in thoughts, or personality traits form being a positive thinker to a negative over thinker, or have always been a negative over thinker, its time you make the change.
Break the cycle.
How do we break the cycle of overthinking?
How do you feel about life?
Do you spend a lot of your day thinking about —
The future of your life?
The future of your loved ones?
The future of humanity?
The future of the planet?
Your answers are an indication of your long-term health or lifespan.
Research says, “People who are strongly pessimistic about the future are at greater risk of dying earlier especially from cardiovascular diseases, than those who are positive thinkers.”
As I said earlier, shorter Telomeres = shorter life expectancy.
While it is normal and signs of a healthy conscience to definitely think of more than just your own existence, and do your share towards a better world, you also need to make sure you remain afloat with positive energy and positive thoughts to save yourself from shortening your life.
Even if you are generally a positive person it is impossible to banish negative thoughts totally, but choosing to look at the bright side of life at all costs does happen with training yourself to do so. Optimism won’t necessarily increase your life expectancy but being overly pessimistic is likely to shorten your life by two years.
What is over thinking?
If you find yourself unable to sleep because the same thought is circulating round and round in your head.
If you find past situations replaying over and over again plagued by regret.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time worrying about a future event, which may or may not come to pass.
If you keep questioning ‘what if,’ constantly analyzing situations, to a level that is harmful to your mental health.
You might be an over thinker.
For many people, its more to do in social situations, preparing you for a social situation, which is normal, when certain thoughts get fixated and take over the rest of your day leaving you worried, it becomes detrimental to your well being.
Lets train us to be positive thinkers versus negative over thinkers —
- The saying, ‘An idle mind is a devils workshop,’ holds true for over thinkers, keep engaging yourself in multiple stimulating activities so you do not obsess over a single topic. Beware of nighttime being a culprit of a wandering mind.
- Getting fixated on small insignificant things in your life can crowd your mind, take a step back, reassess whether this fixation is goal driven and a good thing or leading to feelings of heightened stress and anxiety.
- Analaysis Paralysis is a condition where your mind fixates on a thought or specific subject, the bigger it seems, the worse you feel, leaving you feeling in a paralyzed state of emotion that you are unable to get past. At the first sign of this unhealthy fixation, the rolling thought dwelling in your mind, quickly change your focus to other engaging activities.
- Take action — when you find yourself overthinking and the situation is circling in your mind, spring into action instead of leaving it a thought. You will slip or land on your feet. Either way you win.
- Follow the simple pattern to get the thoughts out of your head – recognize that the pattern is not serving you any good, verify by confiding in a family member or trust worthy friend or therapist, then find a practical resolve to what is really troubling you.
- Nothing like indulging in your favourite pass times — exercise, painting, reading, music, something that sucks you in the moment, that requires your full concentration. It will push away those self-destructing thoughts.
- Practice mindfulness— it’s the art of self-care, concentrate on your eating, breathing, slow down your mind several times during the day, think of only what’s on your plate, chew well, enjoy the flavours of your plate. Breathing patterns or just deep breathing, do it a minimum of twice a day. This improves your gut instinct and will reduce overthinking.
- Write a journal, all that is worrying you, write it down and move to the next situation, then go back to your journal the next day at the time assigned ponder a bit and move on yet again. This way you don’t let thoughts spiral in your head, its like spitting out negative thoughts from your mind. It gives you more control and makes thoughts manageable.
If you are a negative thinker, a pessimist or an over thinker always looking at life as a glass half full, finding yourself unable to stop playing imagined situations, have difficulty concentrating on situations you are actually in, often preoccupied with assessing, dissecting, and observing everything around you.
Whether stress and anxiety is the cause or effect is like ‘the chicken and the egg situation’ — we really don’t know what came first.
The bottom line is to do whatever it takes to declutter the mind and make room for creativity.
Creativity finds solutions. It’s the power of positive thinking at play.
Turn the coin.
Don’t let life take its toll.
Be a happy-go-lucky person.
