The Mechanics of Positive Thinking:
How to Think Positively
The importance of "Positive thinking" has caused heated debates over the years. Some evangelize its power to create unbelievable miracles; others dismiss it as unrealistic wishful thinking that is at best naive and possibly dangerous.
From examining the research, working with clients, and observing patterns in my own life, I strongly believe that positive thinking really does have incredible power to transform our lives and the lives of others.
 Before we begin, I'd like to ask you to stop and reflect for a moment.
- How does your own thinking influence your life?
- When you think positive thoughts, what happens?
- When you think negative thoughts, what happens?
Whether you see a pattern or not, keep your own experience in your mind as you read this article.
This article is not meant to be an academic justification of positive thinking, although we will briefly touch on that. Rather, this article aims to help you transform the way thoughts affect your life.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson gracefully noted:
Sow a thought and you reap an action;
Sow an act and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit and you reap a character;
Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
The Case for Positive Thinking
You can easily find volumes of self-help literature espousing the power and practices of positive thinking. Most recently, the movie and book The Secret created a world-wide movement of people using positive thinking to attract good things into their lives.
That said, while some self-help literature is unsubstantiated fluff, positive thinking really does have serious academic work to back it up.
Psychologists, in several different subfields of psychology, discuss the power of our thoughts to shape our reality.
Researchers in positive psychology, the academic pillar supporting thinking positively, study human joy, thriving, and happiness. They have scientifically concluded that, yes indeed, positive thoughts and emotions make a significant difference in our experience of life. Barbara Frederickson, a prominent positive psychologist from the University of North Carolina, has demonstrated through her research that positive emotions help people "broaden and build" their network of resources - social, emotional, intellectual - that bring happiness and resilience in the face of difficulty.
Martin Seligman, former head of the APA and a positive psychology professor and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, reports that "Optimism and hope cause better resistance to depression when bad events strike, better performance at work, and better physical health." (1)
In addition, the field of cognitive behavioral psychology led by Albert Ellis, creator of rational emotive therapy, argues that it's not events that make us happy or unhappy, it's the beliefs we hold about events that make us happy or unhappy. Change your beliefs and you change the outcome. Much of therapy uses this technique.
So it seems, inspiring quotations and The Secret aside, the importance of positive thinking has the support of solid research.
How Positive Thinking Works
In short, your thinking creates your reality.
As Henry Ford so aptly put it:
"If you think you can or you think you can't,
Either way you're right."
- Henry Ford
To explain a little more, thoughts create both particular feelings and particular world-views. These feelings and world-views influence the type of action you take and often become a self-fulfilling prophecy .
For example, if you think, "I'm a failure, I'll never amount to anything, I'll never get a job," you probably will feel sad depressed. These feelings and this world-view might cause you to take no action, which will certainly not lead to a job. Or, it might cause you to take unskillful or half-hearted action, such as skipping or appearing sullen in a job interview, which probably will not lead to a job either.
In this way, your world-views become a self-fulfilling prophecy and your initial thought has been validated.
 Recent discoveries from the field of neuro-plasticity also demonstrate that patterns of thought actually change the structure of your brain. Literally, patterns of thought create stronger neural connections and deeper grooves in your brain. If you're thinking positive thoughts, this works for you; if you're thinking negative thoughts, this works against you.
In addition, thoughts and feelings create energy fields around your body. You may have heard of this referred to as your aura, or your energy field. Regardless of whether you believe in this, know that researchers can actually measure your body's electromagnetic field up to ten feet away.(2) Feelings of gratitude, love, and appreciation register very differently than feelings of anger, fear, and sadness.
But you don't need scientists to tell you this. Think about your own experience.
Have you ever walked in a room just after two people were fighting and just known something was not right? Or have you ever been feeling great and noticed how nice people seemed to be to you that day? Or felt awful and noticed how the day spiraled down? Generally, if you are thinking positively and feeling good, you transmit this to others. Animals and children are particularly sensitive to this type of energy.
Now, you may be familiar with the very popular movie and book espousing positive thinking called The Secret. The idea in The Secret is that thoughts become things. Thoughts create an energy field, and since you are part of the universal energy field and also subject to the Law of Attraction, good thoughts magnetically attract good things to you. So do bad thoughts.
Whether the ideas presented in the Secret are objectively true or not, and the universe works like that, I have no idea.
But, in my own life and in my work with numerous clients, I see very clearly that thinking patterns create world-views, these thoughts and world-views create patterns of feeling, and these patterns influence the way we take action in the world . Positive thoughts leads to skillful action; negative thoughts lead to unskillful action.
"If you think you can or you think you can't,
Either way you're right."
How To Develop Positive Thinking Skills
Research from Martin Selgiman and other positive psychologists demonstrate that optimism and positive thinking can be learned and developed. Here are some excellent strategies:
- Focus on what you want. Set your intention. The clearer the intention the clearer the result. Now, when doing this, be careful to focus on what you want, not on what you don't want. That is, instead of thinking "I want to eliminate stress," think "I want to be healthy and relaxed," or something else positive. As you know, what you resist persists and we tend to see what we look for. Here are some excellent practices to help you focus on what you want.
- Create a "vision board" with pictures that clearly represent what you want out of life
- Write a letter to yourself dated 6 months from now congratulating you and explaining all the reasons for your success.
- Learn to re-program your self-talk and write new, positive, life-affirming stories
- Focus on What's Working: We see what we look for. If you look for bad things, you'll find them. If you look for good things, you'll find those too. Now, this does not mean stick your head in the sand and ignore bad things; sometimes you will have to deal with them. What it means is that, in general, make a deliberate choice to see the good in people, situations, and things. You'll be much happier, and the people you interact with will thank you for it.
- Keep A Gratitude Journal: Each night, make a list of three things that went well that day and what you did to bring them about. Or, simply list your blessings. Researchers in positive psychology have found that gratitude and optimism can be increased through this practice.
- Practice Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness trains you to notice your thoughts without getting caught up wrestling them. The practice helps you keep your focus on enjoying the nuances of the present moment, instead of being lost in thoughts about the past or future.
- Learn Heartmath: This meditation technique will transform both your thinking and your feeling. Please see my types of meditation page for more info.
In addition to these daily practices to cultivate positive thinking, you can learn to catch yourself in the moment to change negative thinking to positive thinking. To do this, you must first become aware of your own thoughts. An excellent practice to do this is mindfulness meditation.
Another way to become aware of your thoughts is to watch your feelings. Your feelings will tell you what you're thinking.
When you catch yourself feeling bad in the moment, identify your thoughts. Asking yourself, "What am I thinking now?" will snap you back into present moment awareness.
From there, you can shift the energy, much the way a car would "shift gears."
Here are some great things you can use to break the lock negative thoughts have on you and shift your energy:
- Exercise
- Music
- Nature
- Humor
- Someone you love
- Pleasant memories
- Thinking about pleasant future events
Also, know that feelings of love and gratitude are the most powerful ways to shift your energy. One excellent technique, called the Freeze Frame technique from Heartmath, trains you to cultivate a positive feeling/thought in the area around your heart, and then focus on it and let it grow. As you do this, your energy will change. Please see my types of meditation page for this technique.
Now, when you practice this energy shifting technique, please understand that you are neither running from nor fighting your negative thoughts.
When you run from or fight negative thoughts, they tend to become stronger. As Carl Jung says, "What you resist persists." Instead, simply notice your thoughts and then, and only then, shift your attention and awareness to something different. Here's how to do it:
- 1: Notice your negative thoughts and feelings. Do NOT try to change them immediately. Let them be there a while. "What you resist persists." So, just let them be there. They are part of your consciousness and should be welcomed as such. Just watch them, as a neutral observer.
- 2: As you let them be there and simply watch them, they will begin to lose their bite. As this happens, begin to GENTLY shift your attention and awareness to something positive. Feelings of loving and gratitude are the most powerful things to shift to. If you can shift physically and do something else (exercise, chores, something you like), that can be very helpful and more powerful than simply changing your thinking.
Use Your Positive Thinking to Take Action
Positive Thinking sets the stage and gives you the right frame of mind, literally, to take skillful action.
But, take skillful action. Thinking alone will rarely transform your world. Reality seems to rewards action and the bold people who take it.
So, first transform your thinking. Then take skillful action. Richard Strozzi, who is a 7th degree Aikido blackbelt, somatic psychologist, and founder of the Strozzi Institute, sums it up well in a saying he uses to conclude his workshops:
"Take it easy. But take it."
Conclusion:
To conclude, I'd like to leave you with a wonderful little poem called the Optimist's Creed, by Christian Larson, written in 1912 in his book called Your Forces and How to Use Them:
Promise Yourself. . .
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come
true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the
best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about
your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.
To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
Good luck! And remember, "If you think you can or you think you can't, either way you're right."
Cheers!
Leave Positive Thinking and Return to Mind Exercises Leave Positive Thinking and Return to BPGR Home Related Articles
|
Subscribe To This Site
