“A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.”– Key Keyes Jr.

Positive thinking is all about an emotional and mental attitude that focuses on the good and expects results that will benefit you. It’s about anticipating and foreseeing happiness, health, and success by way of training yourself to adopt an abundance mindset, cultivating gratitude for your own successes, and then celebrating the success of others.

The power of positive thinking is so important that it can make or break an individual. Your thoughts affect your actions. Your actions then translate into whether or not you succeed in your field, as well as influence the quality of your personal relationships and finally how you view the world at large.

Positive thinking can be cultivated by the following steps:

1. Take control of your state

Positive thinking is as much about your body as it is about your mind. Take control of your physiology by taking full pride in how you present yourself and then do project positive thinking. Do work on your posture to give those around non-verbal cues that you are feeling strong and positive, and are prepared to listen to them.

Do try to nip the nervous habits, like fidgeting or twirling your hair, in the bud. The key is to hold your body in a power pose after which positive thinking will flow more freely. You will then be able to focus on others and do things to find out how you can give to the world and others.

2. Adjusting your mindset

Adjusting your physiology is only one part of the puzzle; it is highly critical to catch the other negativity trigger in its very opening stages as well. Your mindset governs what thoughts flow through your head and how you feel and react to each one of them. If your mindset is poor, everything around you will also seem to be worse.

You can choose to focus on the negatives or the positives of any scenario, but if you choose to focus on what is bothering you, it will begin to negatively impact your life. You will also attract more negative situations and in turn negative people. You will then forget that you can empower yourself to tackle any situation and start believing that positive thinking is out of your reach. By consciously choosing to focus on positive moments; you reframe your thoughts, cultivating a mindset that is open rather than closed off.

3. Study your habits and form new ones

You will not be able to form new habits and harness the power of positive thinking if you are totally unaware of your current ones. Are there situations that set you into a negative spiral of self-doubt? Do you react to situations openly or utilize defense mechanisms?

Self-doubt is almost always rooted in fear that is often the fear of failure. If you do give in to these negative thoughts, you might not fail but you will stagnate, which is even worse. If you are not growing, you are dying. If you fail, at least you learn something. If you stagnate, you will not.

So, instead of getting swayed into the pattern of negative thoughts, you can completely reemphasize your energy by developing empowering habits that do encourage positive thinking. Do stop the spiral of doubt by blocking it with positive thoughts.

4. Choose your words carefully

One habit that is most essential to positive thinking is to transform your vocabulary. The words you choose both in conversation and in your own mind do have a deep impact on your mindset. Positive self-talk improves the psychological states, helps people regulate their emotions too.

Before you can choose different words, you need to recognize what words you are already using. When you recall your vocabulary and use words that are less emotionally loaded, you will find your mindset becoming attuned to more positive thinking.

Do you find this aspect of positive thinking overwhelming? Start with just one area of your life that causes the negative thoughts, like work or your relationship status. Catch yourself in those moments, and build from there.

5. Look to those you admire

Think of someone who has a profound impact on your life. Maybe a close friend, family member or someone you have never met, like a celebrity, a professional athlete or a renowned entrepreneur. Have they unlocked extraordinary lives due to positive thinking habits?

They do use the power of positive thinking to find the success they seek and you can, too. When you feel yourself falling into negative habits and cannot quite seem to figure out how to think positively, do pull up a quotation from someone you respect. Read it to determine how you can best encapsulate it.

“Even if you stumble you are still moving forward.” – Victor Kiam

Thought is energy. By having certain thoughts in our minds and by concentrating on them and putting emotional energy into them, they do become powerful. Energy does not perish in nature. These thoughts do induce some kind of pressure on the energy level around us, causing these energies to move and then act.

Even our health responds in a beneficial way. We walk tall plus our voice is so powerful. Our body language does show the way we feel within. Affirmations work both ways, to build us and to destroy is. They are a kind of a neutral power.

Creating Positive Attitude: The Healthy Way Forward

Repetition

One method to employ positive attitude is the repetition of affirmations. A method resembling creative visualization the same can be used in conjunction with it. However, repeating affirmations positively some minutes during the day, and then thinking negatively, does neutralize the effects making the positive affirmations useless!

Practical Instructions

Please remember: The power of thoughts is a mighty power that is perpetually shaping our life. This shaping is done subconsciously, but the process can be made a conscious one too. Completely ignore what others might say or think about you, if they happen to discover that you are changing the way you think. Smile a lot more, as this helps to think positively.

Avoid Negative Thoughts

Once a negative thought does your mind, you have to be aware and endeavour to replace it with a constructive thought. The negative thought will try to enter your mind again, and then you have to replace it again with a positive one. Please note: It is as if there are two pictures in front of you, and you choose to look at one of them and disregard the other. Persistence in time will teach your mind to think positively and ignore the negative thoughts. Think positively, expect only favourable results and situations, and circumstances will change accordingly.

Achievers

Optimists are far more likely to be high achievers, enjoy physical health and suffer much less anxiety and depression than pessimists do. This is primarily because they persevere even in the face of major failures and this confidence plus resilience often becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Mediate about the benefits of being an optimist and persuade your mind to try it.

If you want to fly give up everything that weighs you down.

Attitude Versus Thinking: The Daily Grind

Positive attitude helps one function more easily with the daily affairs of life. It brings optimism into your life, by way of avoiding worry and negative thinking. If you adopt it as a way of life, it will bring constructive changes by making you happier, brighter and more successful.

Positive thinking people are never daunted by failures and obstacles. If things do not turn out as expected they will definitely try again and again. True positive thinking is not just saying that everything will be okay, as a lip service, and at the same time think about constant failure. Positive thinking has to become your prominent mental attitude throughout the day!  It has to turn into a way of life.

The Positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. – Winston Churchill

Positive thinking is a mental attitude that does admit towards mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive towards the growth, expansion and more success. A positive mind engages in happiness, health and a successful outcome during every situation and action. Do avoid sentences like ‘I wish I could have’ or ‘I wish I should have’. Past is gone and future comes when it does come. Present is what we do have so we must make the most out of it. Focusing on what you have will make give you way more happiness instead of pondering over what you lack. Do go on to develop a positive thinking in your life by making it a way of your life!

Trishna Patnaik, a BSc (in Life Sciences) and MBA (in Marketing) by qualification but an artist by choice. A self-taught artist based in Mumbai, Trishna has been practicing art for over 14 years. After she had a professional stint in various reputed corporates, she realized that she wanted to do something more meaningful. She found her true calling in her passion that is painting. Trishna is now a full-time professional painter pursuing her passion to create and explore to the fullest. She says, “It’s a road less traveled but a journey that I look forward to every day.” Trishna also conducts painting workshops across Mumbai and other metropolitan cities of India.

Image courtesy of Andre Furtado.