“While you grumble that roses have thrones, I rejoice the fact that thorns have roses” – this is positive thinking.
Let’s suppose that there’s a glass in front of you. It’s not completely filled. What do you think of it?
This approach has been taken by many researchers throughout today. Some of us may answer that the glass is a bit or more empty; some will say that it’s filled to a point. Researchers gave name to these two groups of people, pessimists, and optimists respectively.
Pessimists are known for taking the negative side of every event into account, while optimists tend to look at the bright side. Some of us may find it questionable, however, most of today’s evidence support that it’s the optimists that lead a richer life. The word itself is derived from the Latin word ‘optimum’, which means the best.
Positive thinking is the only fact that differentiates the optimists from the pessimists. As said before, optimists tend to look at the brighter side of every event. While thorns make the roses untouchable, optimists think that it’s the roses that beautify the thorns. Yes, even if there’s a failure, they take the brighter side into account and say that they learned a lot. It broadens their mind and they tend to look for the good in everything. This makes them feel empowered and enhances their confidence level. This also helps them to keep a better health.
Pessimists, on the other hand, always look for the bad. They tend to filter out the positive outcomes of every situation and look for negative aspects. For example, Lucy got an A in her microeconomics class this semester. Her creative answering technique was highly praised by her faculty. While Lucy could have taken the compliments and feel a bit proud of herself, she started preparing for her next semester even before it started and ruined her semester break. This is called filtering.
Most of the time, they also take the blame on themselves. Like, June wanted to hang out with her friends. However, most of her friends were either busy or not that interested to go out since it was the season finale of Breaking Bad. She, on the other hand, thought that it must had been something that she did to depress them, and that’s why they wouldn’t go out with her anymore. It’s called personalizing.
They focus way too much on the worst side of an event. The results came out today and Alan failed. He immediately assumed that the day was going to be very bad (dubaidesignweek), even though it was his best friend, who was coming to town that day only to meet him. This is called catastrophizing.
Now tell me, would you like to be a pessimist? No, you’re not supposed to. It’s definitely not the way to a better life. It will only make you feel worse about yourself, lessen your confidence, and most likely, you’ll never achieve success and peace in life. However, even if you’re already a pessimist, there are certain ways you can change that.
Practice self-talk
Yes, talk to yourself. You are your best friend, and there’s none better to give you advice. Ask yourself the positive side of events along with the negative ones. Focus a bit more on the positive matters. It’s a failure, you must have learned something. Take them into account. Ask yourself what you can do with them in the future. Now think about the negative ones. Ask yourself how you can avoid such encounters.
Don’t emphasize on the fact that they made you fail. What is lost is lost. In economics, this is called sunk cost, and you should definitely not let things that happened in the past meddle with your decision regarding the present and the future. By doing this, you create a happy future, where you can picture yourself as successful. You’ll get yourself cheered up.
Try to meditate daily
Researches have showed that people, who meditate daily, tend to stay happier throughout the day than the people who do not. Meditating helps you to relax. You clean up certain thoughts from your mind and embrace the peacefulness. An experiment conducted by Barbara Lee Fredrickson, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, showed that meditation helps a person to gain long term personal skills. They tend to stay healthier, mindful, and social.
Read, write, and enjoy life
It’s completely undeniable that reading helps you gain knowledge. When we find out about something new and unknown, we gain new perspectives along with confidence. Reading regularly can clear the negative thoughts from your mind, and this will help you stay positive.
Writing is solely expressing what’s on the mind through written words. You don’t have to be a good writer; just write whatever you’re feeling. Like meditation, this will help you ease up your mind, so that you can look into the future.
Enjoy your life. Welcome humor. Most of us don’t go outside without purpose. Don’t do that. Go to a park. Walk a bit Try to endorse the clear sky and notice the happy things on the way. This will also help you to keep a better health. If it’s too hard to go outside, try the internet. Tons of cute stuff are out there as well. Try to surround yourself with positive people. Negative sides of people’s lives can provoke fear.
Visualize a bright future
Try to think what the new experience can do for you. Visualize a future, where you’re successful. There is a lot of exercise regarding this in the internet, look for them. This is a great tool that will help you stay positive.
Author Frank Outlaw once said,
“Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
