Making an analogy to sports, the current economy has a lot of people playing hurt.

When you play hurt, you tend to lose your confidence and, carrying the metaphor a bit further, can do further injury to yourself by being tentative.

How can you fight the instinct to be overcautious when you are playing hurt? Here are some suggestions from writers and thinkers on the subject of mind control and discipline:

1. Recognize that your mind is not you. There is a space between thought and the person observing thought. You are the latter. You can exercise dominion over the thoughts in your mind with the first step being simply to take charge, distinguishing between thoughts in your mind and your ability to select those thoughts you wish to bring to the level of consciousness.

“The single most vital step on your journey … is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. … One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the contents of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.”

The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

2. See thoughts as things – as tangible objects. Napoleon Hill first made this point in 1936 when he wrote his very successful book, Think & Grow Rich. If you can accept the tangibility of thoughts, you can push them around. If a thought pops into your mind, some-thing not conducive to your positive energies, kick the sucker out – right then and there, like a misbehaving cat.

3. Some people find visualization helpful. Create an image in your mind of you on the other side of the tough stretch you are experiencing, and hang onto it. If you want to read a powerful book which speaks to visualization, pick up Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl spent three years in a concentration camp. He survived by developing an ability to visualize in great detail his life once the camp was liberated. He was actually able to transcend his dismal surroundings.

4. Since the mind can only process one dominant thought at a time, many suggest developing a mantra (e.g., “this too will pass”) to rely on whenever negative thoughts start rearing their ugly head. The Neuro-Linguistic Programmers (NLP) speak to an “anchor” – a thought or image to fall back on whenever you are feeling shaky. Anthony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) writes and speaks at length on imagery and visualization.

5. Fight off self-indulgence the second you feel it. Too many of us are good at self-indulgence, and in doing so allow a little negativism to blossom into a full-blown ugly. The goal is to learn to trip up harmful thoughts the instant they start to form. Don’t let them see the light of day, and they are thereby easier to overwhelm with positive thinking.

Jim Randel is the founder of The Skinny On book series. His next book, The Skinny on Success, will be in stores soon.