Circular vs. Purpose driven thinking

I have found in my life that when I dwell on negative thinking, my mind tends to go in circles. I find after a little bit of thinking time, that I am back on a familiar path. That same negative thought that presented itself a few minutes ago, is suddenly here again. As soon as I follow it, I find myself continuing down an ever increasingly familiar path of worry, despair, hatred, anger or whatever other negative emotions I am attaching to these thoughts.

Every time I walk this thought-path, I am strengthening those neural pathways, making it easier and easier for me to believe the negative only, and more and more difficult to believe or even perceive the positive. Ultimately, if I spend enough time in these thought patterns, I will begin to build a set of thought-filters that will not allow any positive experience to enter my thoughts, without first being tainted by these negative filters.

This is a counterproductive use of thinking time.

When I create a positive image of an environment I want, and begin to spend time building that environment, devising plans, steps and tasks to develop that image into reality, things get better. Although there is also a certain amount of returning to familiar thoughts, I find that there are always new thoughts. I see new benefits in the environment I am creating, which I had not noticed before. I find new and innovative ideas on how to create that environment. Instead of filters that taint the positive, my mind begins to build sensitive receptors, looking for every opportunity, however small, and searching through every event for the positive material in that event, that can be gleaned and used to build the new environment.