Psychology

Have you ever been around someone who is constantly unhappy, complaining all the time, and who seems to always have dark clouds hanging over his head? Likewise, have you ever known someone who is so cheery and upbeat that you would purposely seek them out when you are feeling down, because their positive attitude always makes you feel better?

With both these types of people around us, our lives tend to be in alignment with our chronic ways of thinking. Though, our habitual positive or negative thoughts serve consistently in creating positive or negative circumstances in our life. It is not always the long term thoughts that get us, but the short-term thoughts that drive us through dynamic exposures.

People around us sense our aura and get affected by our thoughts. Is it any wonder that we want to be around positive people and not negative ones? People are more disposed to help us only if we are positive as they dislike and avoid anyone broadcasting negativity, as it is certainly less appealing to us all to have a negative tone.
Whether we have very strong negative or positive thoughts about something, our thinking would become the dominant driving force and something will manifest out of that eventually.

Generally two of the key features of negative thinking that predominantly exist in our life are practiced by personalising certain events, like when something bad occurs, we automatically blame ourselves. For example, a person hears that an evening out with friends has been cancelled. As he is quite attached to the coming event, he assumes that the change in plans has occurred only because no one wants to be around him. So he blames his fate for missing out on a moment of joy with loved ones. Another common practice is blur thinking or catastrophising, which means automatically anticipating the worst i.e. a single alteration in one’s daily routine leads him to think the entire day will be a disaster. Here, if you are a positive thinker and look at the brighter side of things, your life will get better.

Though becoming a positive thinker is not always easy. You have to let go of a lot of past negativity and beliefs before you are able to move forward. Attitude and thoughts do not change overnight. We should always visualise only favourable and beneficial situations, by using positive words in our conversation with others and smiling a bit more than usual, as this could help us think positively.

Another very important aspect of rational thinking is self talk which is is the endless stream of thoughts that continuously run through our head every day. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some self talk comes from logic and reason. Other may arise from misconceptions that one creates because of lack of information. Practicing positive self talk will improve our outlook. When our state of mind is generally optimistic, we are able to handle everyday stress in a constructive way, which also contributes widely to our mental health. One may also become less critical of the world around them.

Thoughts, whether they are positive or negative, will colour our experiences from that point forward. No matter what your circumstances are at the present moment. Think positively, expect favourable results and situations, and circumstances will change accordingly. It may take some time for the changes to take place, but eventually it works. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that gets absorbed gradually into thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success.

Knowing the fact that our thoughts will come back eventually in the form of positive or negative experiences in our life, why would we allow ourselves to have an unpleasant thought when it comes back to us? Thinking positively can escalate us smoothly through our day to day life as well as aid the plans we have made for the rest of our life.