When we're young, we are constantly told the magic words of "no", "don't" and "you can't". While these words can protect us from bad things happening to us, it starts a string of negative thoughts that can continue through childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood. Parents should decrease the amount of negative words and phrases as children grow older and replace them with words of encouragement as the need for protection decreases. I have observed that this is rarely the case.
It's difficult to break the cycle of negativity in anyone's life, including our own, because we have become conditioned to expect it. We are programmed, in a sense, to expect and think negative thoughts and have negative emotions. This conditioning, as it is stored in our brains, is similar to how we store and retrieve memories.
Have you ever been to a cafeteria or an "all you can eat" type of buffet restaurant? Do you remember how the plates are stacked in a cylinder with the freshest, cleanest plates being on top and the ones that have been out longer are pushed down toward the bottom of the cylinder? You can't get to the plates at the bottom and most people don't want to get to them. You pull the one off the top because it's the easiest to get to. Our memories and thought processes work the same way with the freshest thoughts and memories being the easiest to gain access to. Only after sifting through the freshest can we get to the ones that are not so fresh.
It's also a matter of balance. Imagine a bowl full of negative thoughts and memories. Now imagine a bowl halfway full of positive thoughts and memories. Hold the negative in your left hand and hold the positive in your right hand. If you're making a choice based on amount and weight, not knowing which one is which, which one would you draw from?
We need to practice thinking positive thoughts and spend time specifically recalling positive memories. We need to stack the new plates on top of the old ones to push the negativity further down the cylinder. We need to fill the positivity bowl to make it fuller and heavier than the negative one. Only then can we pull out the freshest, positive thoughts and memories which are nearest to the top and have the most weight in our lives.
Over the past few years, I have been practicing exactly those things. I believe it has enabled me to write about things that I consider positive and hesitate to write about things that are negative. I sleep better and sounder these days than I did ten years ago. I've learned to turn negative emotions into positive opportunities. Sometimes, I purposely write about negative thoughts, memories, emotions and experiences so that I can bring them out into the light and examine them closely. By doing so, I can apply age and wisdom to those items and store them back as more positive items.
This is the real power of positive thinking. It enables us to remove or replace the negative with the positive which further enables us to do things (and write things) that benefit us and not the other way around.
Perhaps, because I'm not an expert in the psychoanalytical field, I'm completely wrong in my analysis. What do you think? Is there a better way to explain it? Do you have a better analogy that's more precise? I'm all ears (or in this case, all eyes).
I practice thinking positive thoughts and I have little cards with positive affirmations on them. If there's a thought I need to work on, I write it down on post it notes and put it everywhere - on the fridge, on my desk, places I sit, on the tv screens, and even located in a strategic place in the bathroom. It's like an all out campaign. 
