Applying Positive Thinking About Your Life
Use the light of positive thinking about your life to keep a positive outlook
As life goes on, you will hardly find a time when you're standing still. Whether you are in a changing moment of your life, or dealing with a problem, or you are busy striving for something better, you can use positive thinking to see your life under a positive light.
Positive thinking about your life is helpful to put anything in perspective and to balance what we normally consider as terrible situations.
You can use positive thinking to create a better life, little by little.
Positive thinking about your life
You can use positive thinking for the following:
- For your present situation: if something is "not quite right" in your life at present, you can choose to think that all is well and all has a reason to be there.
It can be very interesting to find the positive side to a negative situation!
At a certain time of my life I had conflict with my boss and I had to find ways to keep positive (find out more in From Conflict To Calm). I had quite a lot of fun writing a list of all the positive things that I could find about what I was living - then I kept it in an email that I would read often. This always uplifted me. - For your past: if you carry an emotional wound because of something that happened to you in the past, you can choose to make peace with it and create closure (you'll have to, at some point, if you want to live a joyful life - why not start now).
It is important to process the experiences we go through - it is healthy to understand the stages of trauma, for instance, to know where you might be at and have a sense of direction.
It is also equally important to move on. See, whatever happened in the past cannot be changed - but you can choose to think differently about it.
Maybe you can look at it with kinder eyes. Maybe you can extract all the positive lessons about it. Maybe you can appreciate the fact that you are now stronger thanks to that experience. - For your future: you can use positive thinking about your life to change the direction of your thoughts if you tend to worry about the future.
The Dalai Lama talks about worrying in 'The art of happiness': "If the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no need to worry about it. [...] Alternatively, if there is no way out, no solution, no possibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you can't do anything about it anyway."
Just like you have the ability to project a worse-feeling future, you also have the ability to project a better-feeling future.
In any case, you really don't know what the future might bring. If you're going to think about it, why not think about it in a way that leaves you feeling good? What do you gain by worrying about something that hasn't even happened?
I find it quite fun to spend time thinking about the sort of things, people and experiences I want in my life, and the way I would feel when I had them.
Spending time this way makes me feel good, and in occasions it also helped me to define better what I did want - which then turned out to be even nicer than what I had imagined, like in the case of my job dealing with people who complained about doctors. - To accept. Imagine how it would feel like if you could accept everything that happens, rather than fighting against it.
Imagine how much less stress you would have if instead of being so upset because so and so happened, you just said "Oh, well" and dealt with it in the best way possible, focusing on a positive outcome.
Thing is, most of us need to "have things under control" and have reality delivered to us in a certain way. When things don't go our way, we get upset (from not finding a parking place, to a friend not replying to an email, to plans being dropped...).
Try this exercise for a couple of days to really apply positive thinking about your life: accept all that is.
Don't judge it, don't take part, just accept it. Accept it happily if you can. You will notice how the quality of your life increases because you don't get upset as much.
Apply these key points of positive thinking about your life and enjoy a life of joy and possibilities.
"I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it. I think if you are determined enough and willing to pay the price, you can get it done."
Mike Ditka