What is Positive Thinking?

Staying balanced in life can be difficult.  Sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason why things happen, and dealing with sudden, quick changes entering our reality makes it hard to understand if there is something we should or could be doing better.  In the end, shouldn’t we be happy? Shouldn’t our daily routines and struggles bring us personal satisfaction and make us feel valued as individuals?  I think that it should, and one way to do this is to practice positive thinking. But what exactly does that mean?

In a nutshell, the thoughts you entertain will dictate your reality and the enjoyment or discomfort you experience in each moment. The feeling you give credence will bring a corresponding emotional response, words, and actions into your life. Format your thoughts in a way that the results will be what you want. If you can’t control your mind and thoughts, someone or something else will.

What Positive Thinking Means To Me

We all have programming in our subconscious mind determined by our experiences. It takes our reality and interprets it in a way that makes sense to us and fits into what we know. The thoughts produced from this are automatic and consistent and will dictate everything in our lives. From the amount of success we have, the money we earn, and the love we have in life. Our ability to change these often negative thoughts into more positive ones is our number one weapon in creating the life we dream about every day.

Remember, your experience conditions your subconscious when you look at your past and draw conclusions about your abilities and worthiness. What you believe determines your ceiling of creative ability in your life. Until you choose to change, that choice is positive thinking.  In each moment, you can think in a more constructive and caring way about yourself. The decision to do this will allow you to grow.  From what I have read, most of these conditioning experiences happen early on in life, but all of life’s adventures can add to it.  Learning to recognize and ignore the negative comments from your past is the key to positive thinking to me and the catalyst for growth. 

It’s Not a Cover-Up

We all make choices that we know weren’t good.  I know I have, and in hindsight, I can’t believe how foolish and thoughtless some decisions were.  What was I thinking?  I used to beat myself up all the time about these choices, and they were a part of my daily existence.  A choice is a choice and to learn from the result is the desired experience. If your choice was wrong, forgive yourself. The decision may have hurt someone else, apologize, and ask for forgiveness.

Positive thinking does not mean to forget or overlook these negative/poor choices. It is a way to put them into proper perspective.  Accept that these things happened, then leave them in the past where they belong because no amount of second-guessing, longing, or fantasy replay in your head will change what happened in the past. But if you choose not to learn from it and seek a better future, then you are a fool. Positive thinking is knowing that you have the ability for growth and development.  Pursue it and find questions leading to your growth.  You can control the thoughts you think about any situation and experience. This choice doesn’t mean to sugarcoat things or ignore the negative, but deal with it and see the positives that can come from it.

Find A Positive Thought

I think that there are two schools of thought and emotion. They come from a place of love or a residence of fear. Fear brings hate, doubt, anger, jealousy, resentment, lies, inferiority, and ego. You can imagine that love brings with it peace, understanding, empathy, sympathy,  kindness, hope, truth, and, of course, love.

Positive thinking embraces the thoughts of love and limits the attention you give to the ideas of fear.  This consciousness doesn’t mean that you don’t have them because we all do.  Someone makes you mad or treats you poorly, and the thoughts of fear will arise.  You will always have a choice at this point, let them rule your actions, or recognize them, experience them, and don’t let them rule your actions. You are always in control of your thoughts if you choose to be. It starts with your conscious awareness of what you are thinking and where the view is coming from.  Anger is the open face of fear. It is a natural warning system to let everyone know you are experiencing anxiety on some level. Passion means your needs aren’t being met, or you are afraid they won’t be.

You can manage these thoughts by focusing on theories of understanding, empathy, and love. That is your choice always.

Seek Another Positive Thought

When I started to realize that I could entertain whatever thought I wanted, it changed the way I looked at the world and the people in it.  The power of knowing I was in charge of how I felt was a little overwhelming.  It made me want to learn more because experiencing life through this lens was much more fulfilling and enjoyable. Even if a little unnerving.

This learning led to more social experiments, and finding the reaction of others is almost always a mirror of the emotions you show to them.  Strangers smile and are friendly when you extend friendship.  People appreciate you when you show them appreciation.  It is not hard to look at what someone else does and enjoy the thought, time, and talent it took to create whatever it is.  Being positive about life on a surface level is more natural than negative, and it makes the world a better place. Being positive below the surface takes a lot more work, but the results will be a life you truly enjoy and create.

Be Positive About Outcomes

It never ceases to amaze me that when something happens to you, good, bad, or neutral, almost always there is a path, the growth or development in front of you; all you have to do is take it.  I have beat myself up and ridiculed myself for years about decisions in my past, only to realize I was wasting my time because of those things set in motion circumstances that greatly benefited me in the end.  I also realized that those benefits would have never been able to occur in any other way.

When we relax and let events play out, and accept what is happening, we can achieve greatness.  This letting go doesn’t mean we are off the hook on taking action because we always have a choice, and we can act.  Don’t be afraid to respond, but understand that your activity may end up in failure, but that failure may be the step you need to take to reach the highest potential that you have inside you. It can be in creativity, your career, or your relationships.

You Are Great. There is Really Nothing You Can Do About it!

Now it is time to stop blaming yourself for the past.  You made choices, you took your throws, and it didn’t turn out how you hoped.  Accept it, learn from it, and move on to the rest of your life.  You were not put on the Earth to let past programming dictate your ceiling of achievement.  You are here to be great!  Because you know what?  You are fantastic, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it! It is a matter of adjusting your thoughts to reflect that reality to the world.

Everyone is born with greatness inside of them, and some easily find it.  Some have to work harder because life is full of should haves, would haves, and could haves that will consume your mind.  Regrets shouldn’t happen because I can’t even conceive of the level of greatness inside you.  Only you can let it out.  That is about all anyone can hope for in their life.

Be conscious of your thoughts, pursue the positive about yourself, and counteract the negative, limiting ones. The thoughts you think and react to are all up to you.

“You are the only one who can control the way you think. Make sure you nourish the positive thoughts and weed out the negative ones!” Catherine Pulsifer

“In essence, the bulk of our negative self-talk comes from adopting a worldly standard and worldly values as the primary standard through which we filter our thinking.” – John Stange.

“I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.” James A. Baldwin

“Over the ensuing years, it was my positive attitude that allowed me to tackle and complete and compete in many diverse assignments.” Catherine Pulsifer

“A major factor in determining how our lives turn out is the way we choose to think. Everything that goes on inside the human mind in the form of thoughts, ideas, and information forms our personal philosophy.” – Jim Rohn.

This song by Stevie Wonder is an excellent guide for positive thinking. Enjoy!