How to think positively: 14 exercises to change your life

Mahatma Gandhi once said one very wise phrase:

“Man is a product of his own thinking. He becomes a reflection of his own thoughts."

You can’t argue with this statement, since our thoughts really determine the style of our life.

But how can you think positively if in the world every now and then there are some kind of disasters, pandemics, wars and other unpleasant events that we hear about every day from TV screens, read on the Internet and print media? Do you really need to turn into an insensitive and heartless cynic?

Many people, trying to get rid of the negative thoughts that visit their heads, do not always realize that a positively thinking person is not a frivolous and flighty optimist or an always joyful and happy person who doesn’t give a damn. Positive people understand perfectly well that they do not live in a fairy tale, and the reality around them is far from a paradise.

A person who knows how to think positively considers all the difficulties that arise on his life path through the prism of possibilities. Trying to solve another problem, such a person will first look at the situation from different angles, and then, using creative approaches and controlling thinking with his own willpower, he will begin to look for the most optimal solution!

Learning to think positively is not that difficult. You just need to change your attitude towards the events happening in life. How to do it? Now we'll tell you!

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!

Draw your dream

At first glance, it seems that these are all little things, but it’s these little things that make up life. Allowing yourself even small pleasures - be it a cake or a walk in the woods - can make you happier and your attitude towards life will become more positive. You can go further and draw your dream or hang in a prominent place photographs of the place where you want to visit: the mountains, if you dream of skiing, the Eiffel Tower, if you dream of going to Paris... Such photographs will set you up for the positive, and you will what to strive for.

Remember that a positive attitude helps not only achieve your goals, but also overcome serious difficulties: many doctors, including oncologists and surgeons, claim that optimistic patients’ wounds heal faster, they tolerate treatment better and recover faster.

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.

The meaning of positive thinking

Positive thinking is a stage in the development of the thought process, based on the perception of the surrounding world in the most favorable light.

A positive attitude allows an individual to experiment, learn new aspects of life, and open up opportunities for personal growth.

Due to the fact that optimists focus only on the positive side of the subject, even in moments of failure, they remain winners.

A positive attitude allows people to win where there seems to be no way out.

Positive thinking helps people make discoveries. The movement of humanity forward depends entirely on individuals with a positive attitude.

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 4-6 predominant positive and negative thoughts that have most often visited your head over the past days.

How to learn to be positive and enjoy life

It is very important to learn positivity and instill in yourself the ability to enjoy life, because this greatly affects its quality. A lot really depends on your well-being and mood. Our world is like a mirror, what you show it is reflected in it. If you go through life with aggression, fear and negativity towards other people, then they will behave the same way towards you. And vice versa, when you are in a great mood, the sun seems to shine brighter and the birds are singing, and you even want to live more. And the people around you have been replaced, they smile at you, they serve you politely in cafes and shops, they praise you at work, and your spouse gives you compliments. It would seem, where is the connection? The connection between what you send to the world and what you receive in return is the most direct and essential. Conduct a little experiment: stand in front of the mirror and first make a serious and sad face, and then a happy and cheerful one. Which one do you like best? Which person would you be more polite and smiling with? We rarely analyze rationally our attitudes and behavior with other people. Very often these are spontaneous, automatic reactions. Your body reacts first. When you see a person who looks at you aggressively and stands in a threatening position, then you will respond in the same way. Your muscles will become more tense, and your whole body will become more concentrated in order to escape or repel an attack. There is no time for smiles and affectionate treatment. The same scheme works in the opposite direction. You may not even notice that you are smiling at people who smile at you. This happens without your conscious intervention, that's how we are designed.

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.

Overcoming difficult situations

I hope you have adopted a few strategies from this article to increase your positive feelings in the workplace. But what to do with those people who constantly sow negativity around us? Here are some tips for you:

Sometimes the most appropriate response to other people's complaints and negativity is simple empathy. Don't take their complaints to heart and don't sympathize. Sympathy does not solve problems, it connects.
Keep your distance. We deserve to be happy, and when others try to steal that joy from us, a little distance is considered acceptable. Long distance is not always an option, so what then? Imagine a shield that goes up so that you can see and hear, but are not infected by the toxicity of negativity.
Gratitude game. Sometimes we just want to tell a person “hey, stop being so negative!” But I promise you that this will not help. Instead, ask, “tell me three good things that happened today?” This approach is called the gratitude game.

Yes, sometimes life gets complicated. Positive feelings must be genuine. This is not a fake smile, a game of happiness in times of tragedy or intense sadness. When life is hard, you will feel bad. Developing positive habits will help you sustain yourself during dark times, but it won't make your pain go away.

When things get bad, be alert and think about what could be worse. Pay attention to extreme words like “always,” “never,” and “worst.” Are you always late with your work? Is this really the worst day of your life? Is it true that your boss never notices your hard work? Ask yourself these kinds of questions before you start setting yourself up for negative emotions.

When we lose someone in our life, we grieve. Give yourself time and space to move through all five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

Keep in mind that emotions are only one part of Dr. Seligman's five elements of happiness model: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. Although positive emotions may not be possible at some points in our lives, we can still focus on the other four patterns. Focus on what matters to you: rely on strong relationships, recognize and enjoy your successes in other areas of your life, and more.

Conclusion

I have listed all the positive mood strategies at the end of this article. There you will also find an action plan that you can use in your experiments with different approaches. Try to maintain your optimism and charge other people with it. This will have an immediate positive effect on your career. Follow the advice from the article to protect yourself from the negative emotions of people around you.

Action plan for becoming a positive person

You may find it helpful to take a few notes on each of the 21 strategies to help you remember each one.

Reducing the number of negative thoughts in our head

calculate the worst, best and most likely options;
reject negative thoughts;
change your perspective on a negative situation.

Increasing the number of positive thoughts in our head

gratitude journal;
create a portfolio of positive moments;
Find a specific point in your life that you associate positive thinking with.

We create a positive environment

Change your physical space;
Take a break from your daily movement;
Take a social media sabbatical.

Creating Positive Relationships

Emotional constructive question;
Give more positive reviews than negative ones.
Practice random acts of kindness.

Creating positive habits

Balance of work and play activities;
Find joy in your work;
Use your natural strengths.

Attitude towards negative people

Showing empathy;
Keep your distance;
Gratitude game.

Actions in difficult times

Stick to extreme words;
Give yourself space to get through the difficult phase;
Focus on what matters to you.

After reading the article, use this action plan to record your experiments with

different approaches.

Strategy

Dates when the strategy was applied in the allotted 2 weeks

Your application experience

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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!

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.

How to reconfigure your brain from negative to positive in 30 seconds - a technique from neuropsychology

The human brain is “charged” with negativity. He loves to generate bad thoughts and forget about all the good things. At some moments (for example, when the whole world falls into mass panic and despondency due to a crisis), this especially interferes with working, generating ideas for business, and living in general. Here's how to fix it in just 30 seconds.

"Negative bias"

You just spoke with one of your most important customers, but he is not interested in your proposal. The deal of the century that you have been working towards for so long has finally fallen through.

Two weeks ago, you pitched your project to 10 potential investors - and they all said they were interested. Now you refresh your email every hour in hopes of seeing some real offers. But there is no news from investors.

How will you behave in these situations? The reaction of most people is predictable: the consciousness begins to fill with negativity. In your case it could be:

“Looks like we really are doing crap.”
“Perhaps we should take a break?”
“Maybe there’s something wrong with me?”

Neuroscientists call the brain's habit of generating bad thoughts "negative bias." This is an adaptive feature of the human psyche - it helped our ancestors survive 120 thousand years ago, when they still hunted with spears in the savannah.

Mechanisms developed long ago in the modern world force us to react to complex negotiations or refusal by e-mail as if it were a direct threat to life. Stress hormones are released, we become fixated on potential danger and lose all ability to look at the situation soberly, to see the whole picture.

How to speed up your brain: five steps to super intelligence

Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson makes a great analogy in his book Buddha's Brain: “Your brain is like Velcro for negative emotions and Teflon for positive ones.” When deals fall through, investors don’t call back and hundreds of other troubles happen every day, we reconfigure ourselves - we forget about all the good things and plunge into the negative.

How to change the “factory settings” of the brain

There is an effective technique for changing default settings. Remember three words: recognize - switch - reconfigure.

This tactic is based on the major revolutionary development in neuropsychology of the last 30 years. Canadian scientist Donald Hebb put it this way: “Neurons that fire together wire together.” In other words, the human brain is changeable. We, like sculptors, create our own habits and use in the process not rough plaster, but clay - a material strong enough to withstand pressure from the outside, but at the same time malleable and changing shape if you consistently apply effort.

This is the magic of three words: recognize - switch - reconfigure. If you do this exercise for at least a few seconds every day, you can train your brain to switch from a negative bias to a working state. It is better to remind yourself of your own achievements, celebrate your strengths and look at life as a series of upcoming opportunities, than to be dragged through a veil of failures and disappointments by inertia.

Velcro for positivity

Here's how you can implement the above practice into your daily life:

1. Try to recognize “negative bias”

First of all, start paying attention to this habit of your psyche. Try to catch the thought at the moment when it wanders towards doubts, soul-searching, anxieties and fears. Catch yourself when you involuntarily begin to think through worst-case scenarios and imagine how all your plans will go down the drain.

2. Switch to pleasant memories

Every time you recognize your “negative bias,” the space for new neural pathways to be created expands. By switching, it can be filled with productive thinking. The most effective way is “a few seconds of gratitude.” Remember at least one thing for which you are grateful to fate to this day. House. Job. Health. Family. Your talents and abilities. Something that gives you energy.

3. Rewire your brain

This is where the real work on yourself begins. Rick Hanson calls it "the act of enjoying." Stay on a positive wave for at least 15 seconds - this is already enough to firmly sew new attitudes into the structure of consciousness.

The last step is needed in order to change the habit and stop ignoring all the good things. At this stage, we transform the brain’s reaction to positive events - now it will work not like Teflon, but like Velcro. In just a few seconds, you can root memories of pleasant moments in life in your mind and turn the work of neurons upside down.

This practice is effective, accessible to everyone, and only requires about 30 seconds of your time. You can reconfigure your brain anywhere and anytime, and the effect of changing your way of thinking is immediately noticeable. Life will change in that very second - you just have to change your life attitudes. You will be able to see your goals more clearly, look forward to meeting new challenges, and move through life with optimism.

Try this exercise once a day for a week and see the results.

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Test to identify the predominant type of thinking

Take the test to find out what type of thinking you have. You have three possible answers - yes, sometimes and no. Answer as you see fit:

Do you feel younger than you appear on your documents?
Do you have self-confidence?
Do you suffer when you need to work?
Do you love classical music?
Do you like communicating with other people?
Do you have an inferiority complex?
Can you cope with any given task?
Do you like to start and implement global projects?
Do you often solve complex problems?
Do you consider yourself an optimist?
How often do you achieve your goals?
Does despair happen to you?
Are you open to new things?
Are you ever absolutely happy?
Are you ready to challenge fate?

For every yes answer you give yourself 2 points, for every “sometimes” answer you get 1 point, for every “no” answer you get no points. Count how many you have and read the description.

0-10 points – Pessimist

You don't wait for gifts from fate. The usual reality for you is a constant struggle for a place in the sun. Even on a normal day, you can find things that throw you off track. Because you constantly expect something bad to happen, you constantly overwork.

Most likely, you have excellent professional skills, but a lack of faith in yourself and your strengths prevents you from moving up the career ladder. Frequent worries have a bad effect on your well-being, so health problems are possible.

You are used to complaining about circumstances and life. Because of this, it is difficult for people to communicate with you, since hopelessness is heard in everything.

11-20 points – Realist

You try to control everything, but at the same time you take into account everything that happens around you. You take into account not only positive, but also negative factors, which gives you the right to control the situation. You don't expect the worst, and you know how to enjoy the moment. But if times get tough, you will do everything to improve the situation.

Hard work is the main factor that takes you to success. You can encourage others and tell them that they can succeed if they work hard. You want to do what is right and just, but this does not always work out, so your conscience may torment you.

21-30 points – An optimist with rose-colored glasses

You tend to exaggerate the positive in life, which often prevents you from making the right decisions. For you, the glass is always full, even when it is empty. You unconditionally believe in the best, but do not always take responsibility for your own actions. Sometimes you run away from problems instead of solving them. You may take on important matters, overestimating your strength. As a result, situations may arise that lead to conflict.