Power of Positive Thinking is a book written by Norment Vincent Peale. Many people followed the written techniques as well to overcome their stressful life, or to achieve set desired goal. But let’s understand Positive Thinking with the psychologically first.
How do you think positively when everything is grey? Especially, when you going through some traumatic situations in life. And you feel just merely by thinking positively, really things are working in a positive direction? Of course, your doubt is correct. Merely thinking positively never changes the outcome.
In fact when all is Grey in life then thinking positively is something to explain Red Colour to a Blind Man. And that is the reason I have tried to give you a satisfactory answer. Let’s today you learn something from this piece of content and apply it to see some changes. But before this Do not forget “Change is Always Hard but It Bears Great Fruits”
What is the meaning of positive thinking?
Positive thinking means you deliberately select or choose what you want to feel. If giving you an example when you are facing an issue of Divorce or separation or some financial loss or death of someone to whom you loved most. But you feel yourself with the negative feelings of sadness, unhappiness, anxiety, fear, depression, etc. Because you do not want to accept pain. Because you do not want to feel the pain.
You do not want to experience pain and hence your conscious mind gives you limited information. Limited to past beliefs, memories, and experiences. That leads to a narrow understanding. You deliberately never choose to think differently but you think what you want to think, see the things which you want to see and feel what you do not want to feel. Because of your beliefs, assumptions, rules and regulations about you and your world.
Positive Thought Comes from Positive Feelings and Behaviours
Your mind is alerting you while you feel negative. And your body symptoms are alarming you. You think positively but you feel and behave negatively it never serves your purpose. Rather it creates chaos. Chaos creates messiness in your mind. It sabotages you and makes you believe that you are not self-sufficient.
So a few steps help you to think positively and get positive results.
Find your Beliefs:
It is a new concept for many people to find self-belief. Beliefs are created from self-fulfilling prophecies, experiences and memories. It is not difficult to find what you believe. But once you find what you believe about yourself and above this world. You start recognizing your self-stopping thoughts.
Because we all are driven by our past experience and so you are. As I mentioned earlier we do not want to feel pain we try to avoid it or we try to hit hard. So situation of fight-flight has been created. Once you know your belief you try to see the things apart from your self-fulfilling prophecy, which you have never seen. For example, a student is very good at academics. And everyone from his family praised him for his scores because no other person from his family had achieved what he achieved.
Now slowly parents developed expectations on a student. And a student also started feeling pressure to score well. He will then be anxious about his results. His anxiousness reaches a level where he feels tremendous pressure and judges his parents in all conversations. Even in normal conversation like in giving some good health advice misunderstood by a student and correlated with his scores. Here, he misjudged and correlated all matters with his anxious thoughts about his scores.
May be possible you also face similar issues. So it is important to understand belief. And writing down those beliefs gives you more clarity. It is difficult to change beliefs but one can get professional support.
Choose and be definite about what you want to think:
As I mentioned above, how to think positively when everything is grey? But the choice is yours. Even in bad shape, you can select your most inspired thoughts. You can select to be motivated and slowly the needle moves in the direction of feeling good. You think differently means you want to prove your thoughts you are right and hence you want to find some supporting incidents for the same. When you think positively you look for something which gives relief by selecting positive thoughts. To do so you may choose some activities to make those conscious efforts.
When you get negative thoughts your heart shakes. Or you may feel some other physical symptoms. Switch over to exact opposite thoughts or to think some other thoughts along with new behaviours. After a few minutes when you feel relaxed, you analyse your thought pattern. You feel it was for a moment. If you can handle your predictions and judgements before you act. You actually get results by converting them into actions. So find your belief and before you become judgmental and predict or attached to the outcome just perform.
The same actions never give the same results:
Now you may learn new things from the above details. If you think positively but behave similarly then you get no new results. But rather you frustrated and become unfocused. Tired of the same actions. And you start procrastinating and prolonging things. Remember FEAR AND ANXIETY BRINGS UNPRODUCTIVE MOMENTS. But the new selection of thoughts and behaviours gives some other results. As you have read an example of a student
He misjudged everyone with his anxiety about a higher score or being the best in academics. He chooses to pressure himself. He started blaming himself and pressurized himself more to study. Eventually, he feels inattentive and prolongs his studies. But if he chose to see and perceive things as it is without becoming judgmental. He performs not only well but he studies smartly. If he also counters his anxiety helps him to understand his misjudgment.
To behave differently it is important to counter your beliefs and choose different actions to bear new fruits. If you choose to behave differently. There is always great measurement one can measure the connection between THOUGHTS-BEHAVIOURS, THOUGHTS – FEELINGS AND BEHAVIOURS – FEELINGS.
Deliberately Create What You Want?
You become creative when you understand yourself better. If you select to be happy in the worst condition means you are not victimizing your situation. But rather you want to accept and face the fears. When you deliberately choose what you want to feel you start behaving in the same way. Because your heart tells you that you feel good when you do some activities which increase your feel-good factor. To prove your feel-good factor you can see an opportunity lie in a stressful situation.
That is how you choose to see solution but not a problem. You deliberately create what you want. For example, you have some bad news today or you have a tough day at your work. Of course, you want to tell someone that today your day is tough. You want to report or complain about situations or people. But here you select to relax in your armchair and listen to some music with a great cup of coffee. You dwell in the aroma of coffee and listen to deep lyrics of music. Your needle moves to feel good feelings.
With that, you see a bad day definitely gave some opportunity to find. Because here you have deliberately chosen what you want. Rather than complain you select to relax and leave the matter as it was. You get your energy back and start feeling better. These are very basic self-help. You can always apply when you are mentally disturbed. Even very tough days will teach you to change your thoughts and feelings. And you want them as well.
ACT – Acceptance- Commitment Therapy:
Here, I am not saying you just be positive. But committed to self that you accept what it is as it is. Then you get your power back. As mentioned earlier if a student misjudged his parents for their normal health conversation. He needs to talk freely if he really misunderstands. Before he selects negative self-talk or annoyed with parents by indulging in hot discussion. He has to accept that his own self-expectations put him down.
Rather he is complaining about his parents or prolonging his studies he needs to accept his anxiety. Once you fully accept the feelings you feel you are in power to change it. But when you do not accept it means you resist it and you lose power to change the same. It is foremost important to accept and then commit to yourself about your thoughts, feelings and behaviours all in a row.
Important Tips to Develop Positive Thinking:
- Introspect daily how many complaints you did
- Do you consciously select your thoughts and feelings or it depends on situations?
- Make a list of beliefs about self and others
- Make a list of beliefs others have about you
- Develop Faith in yourself by Journaling and prayers
- Only positive thinking never changes but your attitude changes your feelings
- Become action-oriented not thoughts oriented
- Work with your If-Then
- Practice Self-Confidence
I love to cure your mental health-related issues. Life is precious and you get this for a limited time. Either you waste it by concerning and negative feelings or you choose wisely what you want. Book a session to learn more about yourself. Happy to cure you.