Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by negative thoughts? Maybe you’re someone who wants to achieve so much but the constant stress is pulling you further away from your goals OR maybe you just want to live a normal life but are unable to get out of the rut.
Did you know that practicing positive thinking can help you live a happier, healthier life?
Believe it or not, ‘Positive thinking’ is the light switch to transform our lives. It can help us build better relationships, increase our happiness and overall well-being, and even improve our physical health.
However, positive thinking doesn’t come naturally to everyone and there’s a lot of fluff on the Internet about it, too. Sometimes it requires a little training and practice. In my opinion, however, the most important thing is the intentions behind how you think positively.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of ‘realistic’ positive thinking and provide tips for training your brain to think positively.
Understanding Negative Thinking Patterns
Let’s first address the elephant in the room – Do you ever find yourself stuck in a cycle of negative self-talk, unable to break free? No matter how positive you think, you still seem to end up with the same conclusions, with the same level of stress. If this is true, I believe it’s all down to your mindset.
In such cases, it’s the brain pulling tricks on us. For example, you might start feeling positive in a tense situation but then you remember a traumatic experience from the past, and those good feelings start to fade away slowly. This is what I call ‘False Positivity’.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad advice on the Internet, and ‘false positivity’ is one of them. What it does is force us to think positively instead of seeking solutions to the problem, in the first place. Positive Thinking won’t be effective if you just start thinking about good things and wait for the magic to happen.
Just like a light switch, you actually need to get up and turn it on. I’ve included 3 steps below to start thinking positively, this time with intention:
- Address the Problem: What is it that’s causing those negative thoughts? Write that down on a piece of paper
- Think of the Outcome: How do you want to feel instead? Write that down next to the problem
- Set Boundaries: Believe it or not, positive thinking is like a glass of water. Too many good thoughts and that misery will flow out again. Too little, and you won’t even be able to hydrate yourself
- Build your Plan of Action: Now that you know what the problem is, what the outcome should be like, and what your limits are, it’s time to start building your plan.Write down your favorite happy moments, thoughts, relationships, and anything that makes you feel happy, and from now on, you’ll only think about these moments when the negative thinking seeps back in.
Negative thinking can take many forms, from self-criticism to catastrophizing to black-and-white thinking. These patterns can have a significant impact on our lives, leading to increased stress, anxiety, and depression.
By recognizing these patterns and learning to replace negative thoughts with positive ones with intention, we can start to break the cycle of negativity and embrace a more positive mindset.
The Benefits of Positive Thinking
According to studies, the average person can have over 6,000 thoughts per day. The question is, how many of those thoughts are positive and well-intended? I like to do this, whenever I want to feel good, I think about a good moment that somewhere in my life made me feel a certain emotion.
Was it happiness or joy or laughter or thrill, I don’t just think about the thought, I think about the emotions that pour out because of it. And I recommend this to anyone who’s looking to get into ‘Mindful Positivity’.
What is Mindful Positivity? In my own words, it’s where you start thinking about positive things but are mindful that they don’t take you away from reality. That’s what happens when you are in a worrisome situation but you don’t seek the solution since a certain thought has you too relaxed to even bother.
If you’re looking to boost your mood, productivity, and overall well-being, it’s time to start paying attention to the power of positive thinking with intent (how many times have I repeated this haha)
Tips for Training Your Brain to Think Positively
Apart from the primary exercise of just thinking about good thoughts, there are a lot of other exercises that you can adapt to your daily life. You don’t need to spend 30 minutes thinking positively either. I promise all of these can be done for 5-10 minutes and will yield tremendous results over time.
- Practicing Gratitude: In my personal experience, this is the best way to start your day. Just keep a diary by your bed. And whenever you wake up, write down 5-10 things that you’re grateful for.
- Visualization Exercises: This one can be a bit tricky to get a hold of. For starters, think of a situation where you genuinely felt good. Now start visualizing that moment again and see if you can relive this in your brain. Take this up a notch with these 5 Ways for Effective Visualization.
- Positive Affirmations: I like to think of affirmations as a cousin of gratitude. Now, instead of writing down things you’re grateful for, you simply recall them out loud as clearly as possible.
Furthermore, surrounding yourself with positive people and media can also help to shift your mindset. By focusing on the good things in your life, and consciously replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, you will slowly start to rewire your brain for positivity.
Overcoming Obstacles and Staying Positive
Imagine waking up every day feeling energized, motivated, and confident in your ability to tackle whatever challenges come your way. With the right mindset, that could be your reality.
The exercises that we discussed above can be replicated easily for this as well. Whenever you’re doing a challenging task, try practicing gratitude that you even came that far. It will surely relieve much of the burden. A positive mindset is also something that will greatly benefit you in such situations.
When you approach a challenging situation with a positive mindset, you’ll be pre-wired for success. Instead of getting demotivated by the task at hand, instead, you’ll be excited about what awaits you when you’ll eventually finish it. At the same time, this kind of behavior will also affect others around you who will lift you up in times of distress.
At the same time, staying positive can be a challenge in the face of adversity. I want to tell you that it is ok to feel that way and in fact, you should feel down as it’s always out of the darkness that the most resilient people come out.
Just re-affirm this fact over and over again – I HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE ANYTHING!
Conclusion
Now that you’ve downed the treasure cover of thinking positive, it’s time to go out and preach this good news to the world. We need positivity anywhere and everywhere. Most importantly, we need people with good intentions to lead and innovate the world.
That person could be You or someone you inspire.
Zane James is a Digital Marketer who runs a freelance marketing practice alongside growing ProductivePreneur; a free newsletter for Entrepreneurs, Marketers & Designers helping them to reach peak productivity in a realistic and mindful way.