10 Ways To Train Your Mind to Think More Positively
Everyone in their lives goes through some setbacks and challenges. A positive attitude can make life easier and promote a happy and satisfied life.
Positive thinking, not only promotes happiness in a person’s life but is also essential for an individual’s mental health and overall well-being.
Not tackling life with a positive attitude can lead to psychological problems like anxiety, depression, and ultimately, the possibility of suicidal thoughts.
With the pace this world is advancing at, it becomes hard to focus on glass-half-full wisdom because our minds are wired to focus more on threats. This makes our minds wander away from positivity.
How To Train Your Mind To Think Positive
Simple techniques involving minor efforts and know-how can turn pessimistic tendencies and thoughts around. A brain needs a little help and training to defeat the negative inner voice.
Pay Attention To Your Thoughts
First begin with your thoughts. As you go about your day, whether in school or work, pay attention to your thoughts.
What’s running through your mind? Are you stressed? Thinking about that argument with you spouse? Anxious about something at work?
Using Positive Words
When talking, use positives words. Continually telling yourself, “I can’t” leads to believing something that’s not there in the first place. Replace the negative thoughts with positive ones.
Reminding yourself to do your best, or work hard, and implementing these strategies can lead you towards having a positive approach.
Push Away Negative Thoughts
Pushing all feelings aside that are not positive, and focusing on good things happening in life, even only for a few hours per day can be very helpful.
Techniques like directing your thoughts towards happy ones, a positive image, self-care, giving yourself positive motivation, are a few techniques recommended by psychotherapists to control the feelings of anxiety.
What should be kept in mind is that positive thinking doesn’t mean denying a situation or a feeling a person is going through.
Thinking about reasons that led to the current situation, coming up with a solution to avoid future mistakes, and most importantly, not beating yourself up.
Make Your Workplace a Happy Place
Instead of thinking of work as a stressful place, use it to look at things on a brighter side. At work, make your desk a “happy place” or your own “bubble.”
Put pictures of your loved ones up. A favorite destination you have visited or wish to visit, writing your future goals on post-its can remind you about all the positives around you. Set goals and focus on achieving them.
Sometimes when the situation seems like you can’t control it, the best way to deal with it is to relax and let things and time take their course.
Don’t Overthink Situations
Things can sometimes seem more significant than what they are in reality. So letting things happen can create a calming and a positive environment.
One of the many advisable strategies is to see things and your problems from another person’s point of view.
This helps you to figure out where you went wrong.
Sometimes we are feeling unnecessarily emotional, so the best possible solution is to sleep on a problem to look at it the next day with a fresh and positive mind.
Use A Gratitude Journal
Writing things down that you’re grateful for can help increase your mood and improve your sense of well-being and optimism.
Begin by writing down each day the things you are grateful for.
Then as you continue this practice, be more in depth and write about why you’re thankful for these people and things in your life.
Hang Around Positive People
When you spend time around negative people, their negativity can become contagious.
When people are in a bad mood they can bring everyone around them down. Ever hear of the saying “misery loves company”?
Being around someone who is positive and looks at the “brighter” side of things, can help you with your positive outlook on life.
It’s also been shown that the more time you spend with positive people, it can increase your self-esteem and help reach your goals.
Find as many people who are positive and uplifting and spend most of you time with them.
Positive Self-Talk
Who’s the hardest person or the most critical of you? The majority of the time we are our own worst critics.
We beat ourselves up, put ourselves down and think negatively of ourselves. No one puts us down more, than us ourselves.
After years of putting ourselves down, we begin to form a negative opinion of ourselves.
It’ll take time, effort and forgiveness of yourself to stop this negative self-talk.
Being mindful of your negative thoughts and slowly overtime changing your self-talk to a more positive tone, you’ll begin to feel better about yourself, have less stress and increase your self-esteem.
An example of rephrasing your negative self-talk would be: “I really screwed that up, I’m so stupid,” speaking in a positive way: “I didn’t do that quite right, but I’ll try a different way next time.”
Help Others
Helping others and being kind to them can increase your positivity.
Find a place where you can volunteer and help others, or even “pay it forward” to the person behind you, can make you feel good.
When you help others, you’ll be helping someone in need and small acts of kindness go a long way.
Positive Mindfulness Exercises
Practicing mindfulness and making it a habit will help your subconscious mind relax and stop doing all the thinking.
Come to the present moment and be conscious of your thoughts and decisions. Some examples are:
- What am I grateful for right now?
- How can I show gratitude?
- What will give and bring me joy?
- How can I make someone else happy?
Being mindful and bringing yourself into the present moment and not focusing on the past or future, will bring you positivity.
Take Away
Training your brain to think positive instead of negative will change your whole outlook on life.
You’ll see social improvements, improvements at work, you’ll feel better and your stress levels will decrease.
Thinking positive doesn’t happen over night. You’ve been thinking negative for a long time now and shifting away from that will take time.
Keep practicing positivity and down the road your brain will begin to think positively.