Madeleine Hull
A mental diet is a way of monitoring and controlling your thoughts, similar to how a regular diet controls the food you eat. The concept was popularised by manifesting teacher Neville Goddard, who suggested that a mental diet consists of feeding yourself positive content and refusing to entertain any negative thoughts. This can be achieved through various techniques, such as meditation, mindfulness, and thought control. The goal of a mental diet is to gain control over your thoughts and emotions, improve your mental well-being, and ultimately change your life for the better.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Monitoring thoughts | Acknowledging negative thoughts and moving on |
| Feeding yourself positive content | Thinking thoughts that are useful and help you move towards your goals |
| Discipline | Rejecting thoughts that cause strain, stress, and unhappiness |
| Attention | Focusing on the present moment |
| Concentration | Gaining inner strength to focus your mind on the thoughts of your choice |
| Short stints | Following a mental diet for a short period to kickstart a new way of thinking |
| Thought control | Recognizing patterns that create difficult emotions and negative moods |
| Meditation | Noting thoughts and using breathing techniques to return to the present moment |
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What You'll Learn
Recognise negative thought patterns
Recognising negative thought patterns is the first step to changing them. Negative thoughts can consume your life, contributing to depression, relationship issues, disconnection from reality, and even high blood pressure. They can also lead to poor self-esteem, anxiety, and stress.
Negative thoughts can happen automatically and unconsciously, so they can be difficult to recognise. They can also be the result of distorted and unrealistic thinking patterns, such as being more influenced by negative experiences than positive ones. These thoughts can affect your mood and behaviour and are often the root cause of some of our negative behaviour.
Some common negative thinking patterns include:
- All-or-nothing thinking: Seeing things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
- Overgeneralization: Seeing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
- Mental filter: Picking out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your entire reality becomes darkened.
- Discounting the positive: Recognising something good in your life and then rejecting it as irrelevant.
- Jumping to conclusions: Making negative interpretations without facts to back them up.
- Mind reading: Interpreting an action or response and concluding that you are not liked or that someone is angry with you.
- Fortune-telling: Anticipating that things will turn out badly and feeling like your prediction is already a fact.
If you can identify with at least three of these negative thinking patterns, you may be experiencing negative thoughts. It is important to note that this is mostly an unconscious process, so it can be challenging to recognise. However, by practising mindfulness and self-compassion, you can learn to detach yourself from your thoughts and emotions and view them as an outside observer. This will help you build greater self-awareness and change your relationship with your thoughts.
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Refuse to entertain negative thoughts
Refusing to entertain negative thoughts is a key part of a mental diet. The aim is to refuse to indulge in any thoughts that run contrary to your aim or goals. When you notice inner thoughts telling a negative story, you should immediately replace them. This requires discipline and attention, and it can be helpful to do this in short stints to kickstart a new way of thinking.
To refuse to entertain negative thoughts, you must first notice the difference between being stuck in your thoughts and experiencing the present moment through your five senses. Ask yourself: was I arguing with myself? Was I struggling with disproving negative or critical self-evaluations? Was I trying to push unpleasant thoughts or images out of my head? Then, ask yourself whether this mental struggle is serving you well. If it isn't, try to step back and label your thoughts as they are, without attempting to soften, change, or avoid them. For example, you might practice slowing down your thoughts and adding to them the stem, "I am having the thought that...".
Another way to refuse to entertain negative thoughts is to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of detaching yourself from your thoughts and emotions and viewing them as an outside observer. It can help you become more conscious of your thoughts and build greater self-awareness. As you observe your thoughts, work on identifying and labelling cognitive distortions and negativity. For example, if you tend to view everything in black-and-white, you are engaging in "all-or-nothing" thinking. Other negative thinking patterns include jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst (catastrophizing), emotional reasoning, and personalization and blame.
Therapy can be helpful for changing negative thoughts, but you can also learn how to change your thought patterns on your own.
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Focus on the present moment
The present moment is all we truly have, yet so often our minds wander to the past or future, which can lead to negative thoughts and emotions. By focusing on the present, you can quieten mental noise and gain inner peace and mental focus.
Meditation is a powerful tool to help you focus on the present moment. It teaches practitioners to notice what they are feeling in each moment, be it easy, difficult, painful, and/or joyful. When meditating, you can gently close your eyes and put your stream of thoughts aside. You can then use your breath to bring you back to the present moment.
Another way to focus on the present is to practice mindfulness. This means paying attention to the present moment, including your thoughts and feelings, your body and the world around you. You can practice mindfulness anytime, anywhere. For example, you could focus on the sensation of brushing your teeth or the taste of your morning coffee.
You can also try spending time in nature, which has been shown to improve mental health. This could be going for a walk, sitting in a park, or simply opening a window and listening to the sounds outside.
By focusing on the present moment, you can gain control over your thoughts and choose to entertain only those that are positive and constructive.
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Identify limiting beliefs
A mental diet is a practice of monitoring your thoughts and feeding yourself positive content. It involves refusing to entertain any negative thoughts and immediately replacing them with positive ones. This process requires discipline and attention, and it is typically done in short stints to kickstart a new way of thinking.
Limiting beliefs are negative or fear-based beliefs that hold you back and limit your potential. They are often based on past pains and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, others, and the world around us. These beliefs can be influenced by our social circles, society's standards, and religious teachings.
To identify your limiting beliefs, start by selecting a specific area of your life where you feel you are struggling. For example, this could be related to your role as a parent, employee, or any other aspect of your life. Then, consider the story you are telling yourself about this struggle. Ask yourself if this story is true and how it might be holding you back. For instance, the belief "I am too old to pursue a different career" is a limiting belief that might cause you to dismiss opportunities without actively pursuing them.
Another way to identify limiting beliefs is to think about the things you would like to achieve but are not currently working towards. Examine the justifications you give yourself for not pursuing these goals. These justifications often contain limiting beliefs. For example, the thought "Good things happen to other people, not me" could influence you to stay in unhappy situations and limit the chances you take because you don't believe your efforts will pay off.
Writing down your thoughts and separating facts from stories can also help you identify limiting beliefs. Additionally, speaking to trusted friends, family, or mentors can provide valuable insight and support in uncovering and overcoming these beliefs.
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Acknowledge and address unhelpful thoughts
A mental diet is a way of monitoring your thoughts and feeding yourself positive content. It involves acknowledging and addressing unhelpful thoughts, refusing to entertain any negative thoughts, and replacing them with positive ones.
To acknowledge and address unhelpful thoughts, it is important to first identify and recognize the patterns that create difficult emotions and negative moods. Ask yourself whether the thoughts you are thinking are useful and can help you in any way. For example, ask yourself: "Is this a useful thought for me? Is it moving me forward towards the person I want to be? Is it holding me back?". If the thought is not useful, it is considered a limiting belief that may be hindering your progress.
Once you have identified a limiting belief, simply acknowledge it and move on. It can be helpful to write these thoughts down so that you can address them later. Try to be aware of your thoughts and practice self-discipline to reduce the time spent on unnecessary or unhelpful thoughts.
Meditation is another technique that can help you acknowledge and address unhelpful thoughts. It teaches practitioners to focus on the present moment and to notice and acknowledge their feelings without ignoring or suppressing them. By improving your concentration through meditation, you can gain the inner strength necessary to focus your mind on the thoughts of your choice and ignore thoughts that you do not want.
Remember, gaining control of your thoughts takes discipline and attention, and it is a gradual process. Start by recognizing and addressing unhelpful thoughts, and gradually work towards replacing them with more positive and constructive patterns of thinking.
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Frequently asked questions
A mental diet is a way of monitoring your thoughts and feeding yourself positive content. It involves rejecting negative thoughts and focusing on thoughts that empower you and help you move towards your goals.
A mental diet is important because it can help you manifest the world of your dreams. By gaining control of your thoughts and focusing on positive patterns, you can change your life and achieve your desired state.
Starting a mental diet can be as simple as taking a day to figure out your thoughts on a daily basis. Identify any limiting beliefs and ask yourself if they are useful and helping you move towards the person you want to be. Write them down and then acknowledge and address them later.
One of the main tools of a mental diet is concentration. By improving your concentration, you can gain the inner strength to focus your mind on the thoughts of your choice and ignore unwanted thoughts. Meditation is also a great way to focus on the present moment and improve your mental well-being.
In addition to a mental diet, you can also improve your mental health by eating a healthy diet, staying physically active, spending time in nature, avoiding cigarettes and alcohol, and developing good sleep habits. Eating meals with others can also provide psychological, social, and biological benefits.
