Use Positive Thinking In The New Year

“Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in experience and achievement.” ~Edward Rickenbacker

Believe it or not what a man thinks, he ultimately becomes.  This is what makes the power of positive thinking so important. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that declares to the mind thoughts, words and images that are advantageous to growth, expansion and success. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. A positive mind anticipates happiness, joy, health and a successful outcome of every situation and action. Whatever the mind expects, it finds.

The benefits of positive thinking and positive attitude are well documented. Researchers of Positive Psychology find that people with positive attitudes are happier, healthier, and live longer than those with negatives attitudes and habitual negative thinking.

If you’re a person whose first thoughts about the meaning of something that’s happened are negative thoughts, be encouraged by the knowledge that the first step toward a positive attitude and positive thinking is to simply think another thought. Thoughts are under your control. Your pessimistic way of thinking is habit; habits can be changed.
Learning to use positive affirmations will help, as will sharpening your awareness to nip negative thinking in the bud before it escalates. Learning to question and re-structure your thinking when it turns negative will help you think positively more often and stay that way.

It is important to note the positive thinking does not mean that you walk around wearing rose colored glasses. The bottom line is that reality happens. However, how you choose to handle it can come from a positive mindset.

As you go forward with this New Year, focus on developing your mind to have a more positive progressive mindset. You can become a better you just by the way you think.

Mind over matter: Benefits of positive thinking

With crises like the war in Iraq and the nation’s grim financial future looming, we truly live in frightening times. So perhaps there has never been a better opportunity to change our way of thinking than right now.
The power of positive thinking – or, seeing the glass half full rather than half empty – has long been the focus of how-to books and seminars. Not everyone accepts the theory; naysayers dismiss it as nonsense. Yet lately the methodology has been gaining in popularity, thanks in part to recent coverage on talk shows like Oprah Winfrey.

Positive thinking is essentially the mental attitude that anticipates good and successful outcomes of every situation and action, rather than seeing the negative. Proponents of positive thinking methods maintain that whatever the mind expects, it finds. We manifest in our physical body what our mental attitudes are.

No expensive books or seminars are needed to practice positive thinking; however it does take inner work and time. You need to persuade yourself to try it as much as possible to train your mind.

Here are some ways:

Always visualize only favorable situations.

Use positive words, both to others and in your inner dialogue.

Smile more!

Be persistent in trying to find the good in every situation. When a negative though or word enters your mind, push it away with a positive one.

And positive thinking is contagious. We all affect the people we come in contact with everyday, whether it is consciously or not. Don’t you find yourself gravitating towards the positive people in your life and shying a bit from the ones who are always negative? Just like water running downhill, it is passed on and on.

Positive thinking may not change your life immediately, but over time with perseverance you will notice a difference in the lightness of being.