What is positive thinking?
Thinking has power and is best described by positive thinking. I do not want to omit the negative emotions which are part of us. By focusing on the positive you will attract the positive and by focusing on the negative you will attract the negative in your life. By focusing on the positive you will be mentally healthy. By having a habit of focusing on the negative you will not have good mental health. By negative emotions I mean fear, anxiety, worry, and anger which are not related to losing someone or divorcing. Instead of focusing on the negative, you will focus on your goals and you will not have time for the negative one.
Change “need” to “like” or “want”. If you look properly “need” dependency is applied too often in our lives. More appropriate would be to replace them with “like” and “want”. There are things we need but not so many as we tell ourselves.
Change “awful” to “inconvenient” Awful means something bed happen. Inconvenient is a word that causes just a bit of nuisance. To deal with awful we use contingency plans so that things are not going the way we want to: trains will run late, people will let you down, job will take longer. We need to recognize life for what it is, not for what we wanted to be. Saying the word awful is also judgemental and keeps the negative emotions alive, something we do not want to.
Change “must” or “should” to “could”. It is important to re-examine values, actions and beliefs, sometimes because they were put in us by some other people. “Must” or “should” bring a sense of duty, but “could” brings an element of choice that we need.
Change “judge” and “evaluate” to “observe”. By being judgemental you keep the negative emotions alive. And by observing them you use the highest form of intelligence assigned to the human race. Evaluating is unavoidable like values. We do not obtain values if we are not evaluating. Reserving judgment until there is way more data is a way to behave.
Change “hurt” to ” teach”. We have to recognize that we often learn more from people who want to hurt us, than from nice people. To allow to be hurt is to allow the person with intent to achieve their purpose. But it also gives us the opportunity to look at ourselves: ready to take offense: : unrealistic expectations: that others will not treat us the way we want to.
Change “embarrass” to “amuse”. Embarrassment is a fear that we would be laughed at. As to be seen as a buffoon is not what we want, an incompetent person that is. You would not like your self-imaging to be at the mercy of someone else. Embarrassment is a fear that enters our life around 4 or five years. Also the more embarrassed we feel the more we invite others to laugh. And the more we can laugh at ourselves, the less we are going to be laughed at. So change embarrassment to amusement and see the joke with everybody else.
Change “scare” to “confront.” One way in dealing with fear is to confront the fear. By confronting the fear we see things differently and we are not paralyzed by fear. Life is not a secure business. By facing fear we learn from that and we develop our human potential. Also, observe that the emotion of fear who does not want to see fear will be in your spirit. Once you recognize that, you will face fear.
Change “discourage” to “challenge”. Discourage means doing things has gone out of you. A way of dealing with discouragement is to change it to “challenge”. Challenge is uplifting and it generates its own energy. A challenge is something you rise to.
More about the power of thinking and the power of words
People who have a psychological problem use words such as: “awful”, “bad”, “hurt”, “embarrassed”, etc. They also use evaluations and judgment in their daily life. Life is seen as intimidating, overwhelming and dangerous and has a vocabulary of incompetence and failure. You can compare these messages about yourself with messages sent by someone who sends deprecating comments all he time. You will feel inadequate, a failure, and low in confidence that you do not amount to much.
About the power of words. If we want to change psychologically we need to use the right words. Words have power and you begin to recognize this by covering this blog(posts). Words are symbols that represent reality. The power of suggestion for example when you say to yourself that you are stupid all the time, you will believe you are stupid.
If you believe that you are worthy and valuable, and you tell that numerous times you believe you are worthy. The verb “to be” or “I am”, is the verb that helps us in viewing the power of words, “I am tired”, “I am depressed”, “I am worried”, and “I am helpless”. They represent me temporarily and not me permanently. A more appropriate word would be: “I feel depressed”, “I feel sad”, or “I feel helpless”. Another area to consider is the power of words as adjectives. E.g: “stupid”, “idiot” etc. Use adverbs and you will see the difference. He acted stupidly, He acted like an idiot. This is the difference between actions and labels. Actions are temporary and labels are permanent
Avoid distorted thinking like: Over generalisation. For one wrong event you make it general. This is over generalization failing a test in mathematics, makes me a bad mathematic student.
Personalization. When things have nothing to do with us, but in our imagination would be directed at us. She did not turn up for the meeting because she was sick and believes that the reason she did not turn up is that she does not like him.
False conclusions. By basing the conclusions on isolated events. Fails the test, I will fail the whole subject. Or by basing the conclusion on no event at all failing one subject and I will fail the whole course.
Exaggeration and magnification. This is the process where minor events are seen as having major importance. She forgets his birthday and he accuses her of not loving him. Obviously, he does not understand what love is.
Polarized thinking. It is the tendency to ignore the middle ground., things are either black or white, not grey. The compromise is discarded and the debate does not take place.
Avoid comparisons. We obtain useful information through comparison. But when it becomes a habit and involves evaluations they are unnecessary. Our old friend self-esteem is the culprit again and is too low. It was not as good as last time. It was not as good as George’s. There should be individual satisfaction following the performance and accurate assessment of the performance. This comparison stays in the way of the full understanding of one own’s capabilities. You can not be as good as “X” because you are different, you have different life experiences, different opportunities, and different upbringing, and you should be as good as you.
In another simplistic way at looking at distorted thinking as comparisons, you always compare your ego with another ego, the opinions of other people to your performance. Like comparing Segovia with BB King, they are both masters, who are to say that one is better than the other? Working on distorted thinking and false comparisons and trigger thoughts we can now work on other general problems such as lack of assertiveness, inability to be open, selfishness, difficulty in accepting others etc.
Selfishness is my opinion is the top of parade problem. The trigger thoughts associated with selfishness are: “I must hang on to what is mine”, “Other people do not give anything to me”, “If I give things will regret afterward”, and “Giving involves losing never living”. “If someone has less than me is their fault”, and “If everybody works as hard as me they would not need anything from me”. Such a life does not contain the understanding that giving has its own rewards. That the more you give the more there is to go around. Some people are low on their luck. People are not equal at birth in terms of opportunity and teaching to base their life.
Difficulty in accepting others. Why others are not like I want them to be. this is the main topic for people who have difficulty accepting others. No one has the right to dictate to others the way to think and feel. If everybody wanted people to be the same, it would be boring and also a recipe for disaster.
Inability to open. These four problems lack of assertiveness, inability to open up, selfishness, and difficulty in accepting others are part of social intelligence, one of the most important intelligence, your ability to get on well with others, your ability to blend with others. As mentioned before, 85% of success comes from happy involvement with other people. People who do not open up about themselves have the following trigger thoughts: “No one is interested in hearing about me”, “Telling other people my real thoughts give them power over me. “, “If people knew what I am really like I will lose their friendship”, for some showing your feelings is a sign of weakness.
Lack of assertion. Trigger thoughts of people who lack in assertion are: “I will make him angry with me”, “I shall look silly”, “I will always end up tongue tight if I try to speak up for myself”. These trigger thoughts arise from early childhood, we have the right to stand up for ourselves. That we must do what they like without answering back. The inner rules need to be replaced by more appropriate ones. Standing up for your rights is good for everybody. We shall be weary of over-assertive people. By asserting ourselves, bit by bit, we will manage to fully assert ourselves.
Anger like fear was put there by mother nature. To assert yourselves over people who trample over you. It was put there to stand up for our rights, or to tell people they crossed the boundary. Anger is an expression of fear, of anxiety. In today’s society anger is not accepted e.g. anger with your boss, anger with your parents. Anger poison the system and needs to be taken out. Anger is associated with fight and fear with flight. What gives rise to anger is a threat that can be real or imaginary. Threats can be our authority, property, security, and so on. Anger when used verbally can have an effect on relationships, it can upset people, he/she can discard respect, etc. Anger depends on the habit of blaming. As I mentioned before anger poison the system, and we need to deal with it. With your kicks you can get rid of anger, with shout you can express your anger, with your hands you can kick, and with your teeth, you can bite. This is how you deal with anger which cannot be expressed because of society’s requirements. Some trigger thoughts are : “How dare you do that I am going to get you”, “How dare she try to get what is mine”, and “How dare she/he say that to me”. The best way to deal with anger is to recognize the distorted inner-thinking and regulations which give rise to anger and to work on trigger thoughts. Self-control is something else you can use, although it does not get rid of anger. You are entitled to anger with your boss, but you cannot express it, you need to find another way to do it. As covered so far you need to write the letter and burn it. So you need to work with anger. Stress that is externally oriented and forces you to do something, is not good. But stress that is goal oriented is positive and give you vitality.