Positive thinking is a choice. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. It brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness and satisfaction. It also radiates to people around you, and one way or the other, they are influenced by it.
Why is it so much easier to have a negative attitude than a positive one? The situations and challenges we face in the world each day expose us to negative thinking which, in turn, pull us down. When these situations and challenges enter our minds, they generate negative thoughts and feelings. These negative thoughts begin to rule our minds the moment we choose to believe them.
The BIG question is ‘How do we develop a satisfactory positive mind?’ The following tips will help you develop one.
1. Be conscious of your thoughts.
Examine critically what you think about. Our negative actions and words often come from our negative thoughts – what goes into our minds. Like I said at the opening of this article, positive thinking is a choice. We have the ability to choose our thoughts, regardless of our beliefs. As soon as a negative thought comes into our minds, we should purposefully make it a point of duty to replace it with a positive one. This may seem difficult the first time, but with persistence and determination, it will become easy and doable.
2. Write your thoughts in a thought dairy.
Keep a list of your thoughts, attitudes and actions. Write them down as soon as you notice them. Later, critically analyse them.
3. Challenge the negative thoughts.
The purpose of challenging our negative thoughts is to be able to see quickly whether the thoughts are wrong or whether they have some reasonable contents in them. This will enable us to determine the degree of positivity in every negativity. This will also enable us to take appropriate actions. However, we should always make sure that our negative thoughts are genuinely important to achieving your goals.
4. Use positive affirmations to counter negative thoughts.
This requires constant practice. With constant practice, positive thinking, powered by positive affirmations, will begin to flow from inside us to outside, to give us a positive self image. It will give us sweet satisfaction to face the numerous challenges of life with ease and determination. Take some time to write strong, life-giving, positive affirmation statements, and repeat them to yourself without ceasing. Tell yourself that you’re making progress, even if you are not, and believe in your heart that you are making progress.
5. See things in a positive way.
Having positive eyes helps us to develop positive thoughts. No matter how bitter or difficult we see things, we should try and see them in positive ways. It becomes easier to do this when we take caution to look for the positive aspect in the situation. If you are able to identify this aspect, you can develop it to your advantage. The fact is every cloud has a silver lining.
6. Keep your mind focused on important things.
Set goals and priorities for what you think and do. Have a scale of preference and do important things first. This will help you stay organized and achieve the most important goals first. One advantage of this is that if there is not enough time to do everything, you will have spent the available time on important things. Then you will have no regrets, no blames, no discouragement, no negativity; but satisfactory positivity.
7. Dream of success.
Before you start any plan or action, clearly focus your mind on a successful outcome. This will bring you amazing results. Avoid negative reactions and statements. Quickly find adequate solutions to problems or challenges as soon as they occur, rather than reacting negatively to them.
8. Look for positive people to associate with.
Be careful the company you keep. It is good to be around positive thinking people who radiate positive attitudes. However, encountering a positive person may seem a difficult task. Not to worry, persistent searching (on the Net and visiting blogs such as The Change Blog) will make you meet people with positive minds. To be candid, there are numerous positive people, only if you will ‘look’ for them.
9. Stop associating with negative people.
Stop hanging around with people who do nothing but utter negative statements. Let negative minded people keep their own company. After all, birds of a feather flock together. You don’t belong there!
10. Develop new habits.
Our present attitudes are habits, built from the feedback of parents, friends, society and self, that forms our self-image and our world-image. We can develop new habits and start a new life of positive thinking. Negative attitudes and thinking should be replaced with positive ones. Mind you, old habits die hard. However, be determined. Determination is a requirement for positive thinking.
Photo by *Zara
Positive thinking has truly changed my life. I used to be a very negative person and at some point, about 10 years ago, I decided now what the time to change my life. This completely works. Thanks for the list of points.
There’s a great exercise I’ve heard for helping people to become more positive. For every negative reaction or thought, you need to tell yourself at least three more positive ones.
In 2005 Fredrickson and Losada published an article in American Psychologist to suggest that positivity ratios above about 3-to-1 and below about 11-to-1 are what humans need to flourish.
I agree that there are definite benefits to staying positive, but apparently there may be negatives to too much positivity.
How very true. i think the negative here would be denial and therefore not dealing with an issue.
This is a fantastic post and I couldn’t agree more. Positive thinking has helped me overcome many difficulties. I believe positive thinking has made me a better partner too. There is no right or wrong. I feel more compassion for people because of positive thinking. I also feel more compassion for myself. I feel that life has just become easier due to positive thinking. I hope people can see the overwhelming benefits due to changing your thoughts. Thanks for writing this important peice. Great work!
Dandy
All long as we keep our persona optimistic, we cannot miss life wonders, because we end enjoying life,s appraisal of pawning our negative emotions into positive momentum.
A very good list of point you have to consider being successful in your life in general and in your business. The most difficult part is the block some carry with them. Blocks that they might not be aware of. If you have them, you can try hard and you can’t make it and wonder why. What you say, that one should just be persistent, think positiv, do visualizations (dream your success, etc.), affiliate with successful people and get rid of the negative thinkers, is a way to get out of the blocked path, but it is the hard way.
There’s some nice points here Olusegun.
My only point to add on Affirmations is that you need embody what you’re saying, physically. Mind and body are linked so if you state your positive affirmation with a miserable voice tone and rubbish body posture, your unconscious mind will never get hold of the statement.
You have to make sure your body, focus and language are aligned for affirmations to truly work.
i like how you arranged the advice in this order and in clear points
thank u :)
This is a great post, and the only thing I’d add is to practice gratitude on a daily basis. Consciously focusing on the amazing things already present in your life is a great way to shift your thinking from negative to positive, and you can then leverage this positive state of mind to boost the benefit you get from other positivity tools such as positive thoughts and affirmations. Thanks for sharing this post.
Monitoring and changing the way you think is in my opinion the single most important task anyone can do to make positive changes in their life. Your thoughts are not idle harmless concepts passing through your mind. Thoughts are things. Things that once absorbed into the subconscious guide your emotions and experiences every single day. Think positively and you will begin to notice positive experiences growing more present in your life.
It seems like I am just getting started on my journey for positivity but it has a been a long maybe four years. Mostly I can contribute a lot of that to trying to be a positive force around so many negative people. I need to build myself up and live the life I was truly destined for in order to have an influence like that. I have limited friends now. And again I am going to separate with another. It just feels lonely not having people to talk to sometimes. I will make more friends who think like me. I know I can. I just have to try harder.
This is a great writing It really helps me a lot because I was a very negative person.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, and have been focused on it over the last few years with great success. I recently find myself in a job working in close quarters with a very negative, gossipy person. Suggestions on how to deal with her? I usually just reject her negativity to myself and try not to encourage it, but I find myself drawn into it more often than I’d like. Any ideas? Thanks!
Hello Olusegun.
Hope you are doing fine.
I neither think myself as inferior nor superior to others. I think everbody has a different life. So, 2 people’s achievements or failures can’t be compared, as their lives are very different from each other.
This is my story :
I’m a 2013 graduate in Bachelor of Technology. I’m looking for jobs & I’m at home since April, searching for jobs. You can understand how difficult it is for me to stay positive during this period of my life. You would feel somewhat better if people would motivate you. But, you start to feel very bad when people start to compare you with someone or negate your thoughts by pointing out only your failures & mistakes, & never your good points. You won’t believe that these “people” here are my parents ! Instead of motivating, they just think that I’m not serious enough in my job-search, and that is why I’m not getting a job. So, in most of my conversations with my parents at home, they either scold me hard for any of my mistakes (be it small or huge), or compare me with someone, or both. My engineering branch has a very low chances of job-openings, compared to my friends’, & I’ve told my parents that this is the reason I don’t have a job. But, they don’t undertsand it. I’m so fed up about this that now don’t feel trying to make them understand about it anymore. I just sit there and listen. They don’t know how bad I feel when they talk to me like this. They also obviously don’t know how bad I’m feeling now due to my current unemployed state.
Please advice on how to stay positive, ispite of all this.