The Psychology of Positive Thinking

Understanding the Psychology of Positive Thinking and How It Can Help YOU. 

You may have heard about positive thinking, but do not really know enough about it to know exactly how it works. Positive thinking can provide many benefits in your life such as improving your health, opportunities in life, the way you relate to others and the way you see yourself.

The psychology behind the power of positive thinking is that you are more apt to take on life with a positive outlook and have more positive results than if you face the world negatively. That does not mean that you should gloss over the obvious, but it does mean that a bad circumstance can be made much brighter than viewing them in a negative way.

Some psychologists view positive thinking as how you explain what happens in your life. If you have an optimistic attitude, you are more likely to explain away bad things that happen by blaming something else for the circumstance. You are also more apt to view a negative happening as outside the norm or a temporary circumstance.

Abraham Lincoln once commented, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” When you make up your mind to approach life’s challenges with a positive attitude, you are not ignoring the bad stuff in the world, but it does mean that you are attempting to see the best both in people and in situations.

Positive thinking and positive psychology are often thought to be the same, but they are really not. With positive psychology, the focus is definitely on positive thinking, but most psychologists tend to think it is more beneficial to think realistically.

For example, positive thinking might lead a person to take risks that he or she should not, such as investing money in a business that is extremely risky or thinking positively that you can swim across the lake without taking into consideration the distance.

However, it is clear that thinking more positively will ensure more positive outcomes in your life. The best thing you can do is to pay attention to your self-talk and realistically assess whether it is better to think that way – or not.

As you practice positive thinking, you will become more adept at culling out the positive thoughts that are not realistic as opposed to the thoughts that can have a positive impact on your life.

You are in control and you CAN choose to change negative thinking into more positive thinking. Try for a few days to stop every negative thought in its tracks, by changing the thought into a more positive one, and see how that changes your outlook. The more you do this, the better you will feel and it costs you absolutely nothing! 

With thanks to Maria McMahon cogni-fusion.com