Life is not always like a fairy tale. Sometimes there are sad moments in it. And only by maintaining positivity in our souls are we able to gain strength and energize ourselves to fight difficulties, achieve our goals and make the right decisions.
Often we have to struggle with negative emotions, feel deeply unhappy, lonely and misunderstood. But it is very easy to change your life for the better - you just need to follow the simple rules of a positive person.
Positive thinking: what is it?
Positive thinking is a psychological concept, a method of motivational personal development and a useful habit, thanks to which a person can increase his level of psychological well-being and change his life for the better.
Many psychologists claim that positive thinking or mental positivism is a correct and completely new style of thinking that few people have thought about before.
An individual who has learned to think positively opens up a lot of new opportunities for himself to become a more successful, healthy, happy, wealthy and self-sufficient person. Such a person stops overthinking himself and giving free rein to negative thoughts, since he realized one simple truth: those ideas and thoughts on which he spent his energy and which he took seriously, sooner or later were embodied in his real life!
✔ If you think that everything is bad and nothing good can happen in your life, then it will be so.
✔ If you think that everything is fine and many more good things will happen in your life, then so it will be!
This is one of the fundamental laws of the Universe, which no person can change. We just need to accept the fact that our life as a whole was, is and will be the way we see it and subjectively perceive it.
The mental images that reign in the mind of an individual determine his actions and the way he acts. Actions determine the style, level and lifestyle. Remember the Coen brothers' movie "The Big Lebowski"? There, the carpet set the style for the main character’s entire room. So your thoughts, like a carpet, set the style of your entire life. Whether you believe it or not, this statement is a 100% axiom!
By lifting the mood of other people, we lift it ourselves
When we are in a bad mood, we do not want to do good deeds. We don’t see the point in this and withdraw into our shell. But, as life shows, even a tiny kind deed can change depression to a smile when we make loved ones and complete strangers happy. And it doesn’t have to be the rescue of a drowned tractor, or Batman’s flight over a crime-ridden city. It could be just a note in a couple of tender lines that you stuffed into your daughter's pocket. Or a culinary surprise for a husband who has been dreaming of meat stew with a cheese crust in a pot for so long.
The desire to make someone happier simply inevitably makes us happy.
Why learn to think positively?
➠ If a person thinks in outdated patterns and destructive stereotypes, takes a passive approach to the events taking place in his life, shifts responsibility to other people and doubts his own abilities, then it is not surprising that something joyful and good rarely happens in the life of such a person .
➠ Any life situation always has a neutral coloring. It is simply an event or a fait accompli. We ourselves give this or that color to this or that life situation. Negativity, having enormous energy potential, very quickly clings to those people who allow destructive thoughts to dominate their heads. The lightning-fast negativity is not only reinforced by unpleasant events that every now and then begin to happen in the lives of these people, but also gradually increases its power.
➠ Negatively thinking people lose faith in themselves and control over the events taking place in their lives, increasingly doubt themselves and their abilities, begin to go to extremes and sincerely believe that life will show them more than once where crayfish hibernate.
➠ To break out of a vicious circle and learn to think positively, you need to reconsider and rebuild your way of thinking. Positive thinking, in contrast to negative thinking, allows a person to feel like the master of his own life and build the reality that he really needs. Creative thoughts, like their destructive counterparts, have colossal power and strong energy.
➠ Once you get rid of destructive attitudes and learn to think positively, you will immediately feel this power and, over time, learn to control it.
Understanding the Positive
What is positivity and why is it important? To do this, let's take two equally competent, smart, hardworking people, but one of them will be positive and the other negative. When a positive person goes to work, he is happy with the weather, grateful to other people for their help, and notices the employee’s individual contribution to the overall result. A negative person will constantly complain about how busy they are at work, the traffic jams, and how stupid their bosses' decisions are.
A positive person always sees the glass as half full, while a negative person always sees it as half empty. An optimist has an affirmative bias, meaning he wants to focus on human potential and strengths. A pessimist decides to focus on problems and weaknesses.
You might think that a pessimist sees reality, that he is quick to spot potential threats or problems that an optimist misses. Here's something to make clear: having a positive attitude in the workplace doesn't mean you bury your head in the sand or ignore unpleasant realities or problems, it's just that when you see a problem, you go into solution mode rather than despair. You are not such a soft person that you never give critical feedback to anyone, but you balance constructive criticism.
Positivity is a well-researched way to get better results in the workplace while enjoying life to the fullest. Kim Cameron, in her book Positive Leadership, cites more than 40 studies illustrating consistent and compelling evidence that positive actions like the ones you'll learn in this article do have health benefits. Positivity helps us be more creative.
Research from the University of California, Berkeley School of Business found that managers with greater positivity were more accurate decision-makers, were more effective in interpersonal communication, and spread positivity to their entire team. Athletes whose coaches asked them to review tapes of their successful games performed better themselves than athletes who were asked to review their unsuccessful attempts.
When we focus on successes rather than failures, our performance improves. Health, creativity, effective leadership, increased productivity, all these benefits come when we carefully work on our thoughts.
Part one. Objective assessment of thoughts
Take responsibility for your own life
You need to understand and realize that you and only you are fully responsible for your attitude towards your own life. If you wake up with negative thoughts, think about bad things all day and fall asleep thinking that tomorrow will be worse than yesterday, then it is your own fault that your life has turned into a gray, boring and terribly annoying series of identical and tasteless days .
The first step towards changing your own life is realizing that a problem exists. Your problem in this case is that you do not know how to think positively. Once you realize that habitual negative thinking can be changed with the right approach, you will immediately experience relief.
Our reality is in our heads! Simple truth, isn't it? But it can be quite difficult to realize it.
Experience the benefits of positive thinking
Now think about the benefits, advantages and benefits of positive thinking. If you learn to think positively, you will take control of your life and enjoy every moment of it, you will be able to improve your adaptive abilities and increase your level of stress resistance, physical and mental health.
Awareness of all the benefits of positive thinking helps to develop motivation, which will not disappear over time, but will only increase.
Start keeping a thought journal
Be sure to keep a journal in which you record your daily thoughts. This way you can track the main trends in the formation of positive thinking. In the evening, write down all the thoughts that have crossed your mind over the past day, and then read carefully and monitor your feelings. Which of the thoughts you wrote in your journal brought back pleasant memories for you? What thoughts make you feel negative? Trust your intuition and don't try to deceive yourself, otherwise you won't succeed.
On Sunday, read all the notes you have made during the week, and then carefully analyze them and give an objective assessment. On a separate piece of paper, write down 4 to 6 predominant positive and negative thoughts that have most often visited your head over the past days.
Morning affirmations
How to set yourself up for positivity and good luck for the whole day? Very simple. Having thrown off the sleepy shackles, you can begin practical exercises. It may seem stupid at first and you may not notice a change right away. But it works. And the more you put positivity, positive emotions and energy into your spoken words, the better results they will give.
You can make several affirmations, but repeat them every day, and you will notice how your life will improve.
Part two. Fighting destructive thoughts
Identify your involuntary destructive thoughts
You need to know your enemy by sight, so you need to start the fight against negative thinking by identifying those destructive thoughts that involuntarily arise in your head as a first reaction to this or that news.
Example. A colleague secretly told you that there will be an extraordinary inspection at work tomorrow. If the first thought that came to your mind was the thought that you will not cope with this test and management will definitely fire you, then your way of thinking cannot be called positive. A person who knows how to think constructively would think that he will definitely be able to pass any test, because he is confident in himself and his qualifications.
Once you learn to identify and monitor your involuntary negative thoughts, you can challenge them and push them out of your head.
Analyze your negative thoughts
Mindset is a choice. And no one will make this choice for you. You can blame the government, foreigners, neighbors, Masons or aliens for all your troubles as much as you like, but you and only you decide whether to continue to think destructively or start fighting negative thoughts. If you have preferred a destructive way of thinking your entire adult life, this does not in any way oblige you to continue to behave that way. You can declare war on negativity at any time!
As soon as involuntary or conscious negative thoughts once again visit your head, immediately stop the internal dialogue and think about how true these thoughts are to reality. Are they really as accurate and truthful as you believe?
Take a piece of paper and write down the negative thought that comes to your mind. Analyze this thought objectively, and then say it out loud on behalf of some other person and think about how you would respond if that other person asked you to express your opinion on this matter. Many of us are able to easily refute the negative thoughts of other people, despite the fact that we often perceive our own negativity as the ultimate truth.
Example. If your head is often haunted by thoughts that you will not pass the next work test, then think about the fact that it is unlikely that you would still be working at this job if your negative thoughts were true. Why would management pay a salary to an incompetent employee? Answer this question for yourself and try to understand the fact that you are greatly exaggerating.
Change negative to positive!
Once you learn to identify and objectively analyze your negative thoughts, you can begin to replace the negative with the positive. Try to replace every negative thought that inhibits your personal growth with a positive thought that will help you achieve success and improve your quality of life.
Example. As soon as you think that you cannot pass the next work test, immediately stop your internal dialogue. You already know for sure that this thought is a negative thought and is not true. Therefore, it needs to be replaced with a positive thought. It is very important that this positive thought is not an example of self-confidence. Many people often confuse self-confidence and self-confidence and self-confidence.
✘ “I am an experienced and respected employee, without whom our company certainly cannot manage. I will definitely pass any test without any preparation, so my colleague might as well not share this information with me” - an example of a positive but self-confident thought. You definitely don’t need to think like that, otherwise you could end up without a job.
✔ “It’s very good that my colleague shared with me the information that tomorrow we will have to undergo another inspection. Today I will spend a little time preparing so that tomorrow everything will be at the highest level” - an example of the correct positive attitude.
Avoid or minimize contact with negative external factors
Constant contact with certain external factors can cause a negative impact on your mood and general condition. Therefore, it makes sense not to contact or minimize contact with violent or stressful factors.
Instead of aggressive and heavy music, listen to soothing and meditative melodies, replace violent video games and bloody films with reading classic books, walking or chatting with people you like. Such a pastime will not only relax your mind, but also put you in the right mood.
Say no! polarized thinking
Polarized or “black and white” thinking prevents an individual from thinking positively, as a person perceives everything either in a white or black light. He thinks he has to do everything perfectly (white) or do nothing (black). The absence of any alternatives (gray shades) leads to the fact that a person begins to think negatively, because nothing ideal exists in our world.
To get rid of polarized thinking, you need to learn to think in more than just two directions (positive and negative). Fill your life with all possible options for the development of events, because the situation is not always resolved one hundred percent positively or negatively.
Example. If tomorrow you have to undergo an extraordinary work test, then you don’t need to think that you will show the best results or fail and be forced to look for another job. Between these radically opposite options there are several more alternatives “hidden”: your result will be average, the test will be canceled, etc.
Part three. Developing an optimistic and positive outlook on life
Take care of your physical health
Positive thinking is a useful skill, the development of which requires not only some effort, reminders and systematic practice, but also time. You can't just wake up one day without any negative thoughts in your head. For this to happen, you need to constantly work on yourself and get rid of bad physical habits. For what? Is it possible to think about something positive if you have a mercilessly headache in the morning after another party, you are tormented by the chronic cough of a heavy smoker, or the extra pounds prevent you from calmly climbing to the third floor? That's it!
Once you improve your physical health, your mind will automatically begin to adapt to your new lifestyle. Watch your posture, get tested and visit the dentist 2-3 times a year, play sports, give up high-calorie foods, practice meditative techniques and do everything possible to get your body in order. Well, don’t forget to smile more often!
Unleash your creativity
Thanks to creativity, you can not only learn to think positively, but also go beyond everyday life, become a more creative and interesting person. If you have never thought about doing any kind of creativity before, then start correcting this annoying mistake now!
Take 20 – 30 minutes to explore your most original and crazy ideas and make something with your own hands. Don't be afraid to experiment! If all people were afraid to try something new, then we would still be sitting in caves!
A person who has found his own way of self-expression through creativity begins to think more positively. And there is nothing strange in this, because each of us wants to create something unique and authentic. Dare and don't be afraid of anything!
Set thoughtful and realistic goals
Thoughtless and unrealistic goals are very rarely realized. Therefore, a person who sets such goals for himself gradually loses his positive attitude and becomes a pessimist.
In order not to be disappointed in life and not to turn into an angry and eternally dissatisfied grumbler, each of your goals should be carefully thought through and checked for realism. If you have some kind of global goal, then it should be divided into several small tasks. Every small but completed task will inspire and motivate you to new achievements.
Communicate with positive and pleasant people
The people around us have a certain influence on us. And this is a fact that you cannot argue with. After communicating with some people, you want to fly on wings, smile and do good, but talking with other people leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, inner emptiness and impotent irritation.
People who kill motivation and absorb energy are not worth spending precious minutes of your life on. So give yourself a gift and stop communicating with toxic, unpleasant and pessimistic individuals. If you do not have the opportunity to completely break off such a connection, then try to reduce your communication to a minimum. Surround yourself with positive and pleasant people who you enjoy spending time with!
5. Have fun!
Have fun and be happy! Enjoy good weather, listen to the sound of rain, communicate with nice people, look for happiness in minor details, notice every little thing that can give you positive emotions. People who know how to rejoice and have fun never become despondent and do not think that life is a complete disappointment and a series of terrible tortures.
Humor helps not only to look at the current situation from a completely different perspective, but also to maintain peace of mind. Do not forget that some events in life happen on their own, so we cannot influence them in any way. This is our reality, and nothing can be done about it. Therefore, in critical situations, do not fall into despair and do not think that your life is over, but first try to find at least something positive, and then begin to find the optimal solution.
Happiness is in the little things
There is so much beauty in the world that no one notices! Humans are created by the smartest creatures to be optimistic. Happiness is everywhere, you just have to open your eyes and see it. What pleases a person most in life is love. If it is lost, then it can be replaced with the positive of the world around us. You can try to observe and admire:
- Blooming of your favorite flowers.
- Communication with pets who are always happy to see their owner.
- A walk in the fresh air or forest.
- Chatting with strangers on the street.
- Trying to smile at passersby.
- Spending time with your spouse in harmony and peace.
- Watching the sunset and sunrise.
- Taking water treatments that relax and give pleasure: a shower, a hot bath, a visit to the pool.
- Reading your favorite works.
- Going to a museum or art gallery.
There are a lot of options, the path to happiness is different for everyone, you just need to find it. If a person learns to receive joy from waking up in the morning, being able to observe and see the world around him, and calmly coming to any point in the city, this indicates his positive attitude, and this is how he should be.
Important! In psychology, it is recommended to teach a person to switch his problems and find a new meaning in life.
The child in the basin rejoices
