Susan Quilliam - Positive Thinking

Dorling Kindersley Limited

The Penguin Group

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First Published in paperback in 2008 by Dorling Kindersley Limited. ISBN: 9781405328364
Copyright 2003 Dorling Kindersley
Text Copyright 2003 Susan Quilliam

This Digital Edition published 2010. ISBN: 9781405371612
Digital conversion by DK Digital Content, London and DK Digital Media, Delhi.
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In todays challenging world it is vital to have energy, enthusiasm, and optimism in all areas of your life. Positive Thinking shows you how to transform your approach to living, so you can feel good about yourself, create worthwhile relationships, and perform successfully. Having helped you identify areas of negativity in your life, the guide shows you how to rethink negative beliefs, optimize self-esteem, and learn new mental and emotional strategies for affirmative, effective thinking. Self-assessment exercises enable you to evaluate your positivity. The guide then helps you apply these fundamental lessons to your life in the workplace, in love, for health, at play, and in friendship. A solid foundation of positivity will help you get the best from life.

Thinking positively helps you get the best out of life. The first step in making your life more positive is to become aware of your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.

Grasping the Key Concepts

To understand positive thinking, begin with an overview of its benefits and how it works. At work or play, with friends or family, positive people are happier and more successful than those with a negative approach. Put simply, positivity works.

Focus point

• Positive people achieve more, stay healthier, and have better relationships than negative thinkers.

What is positive thinking?

Positive thinking is about more than the thoughts that you have. It is an entire approach to life. It means focusing on the positives in any situation rather than the negatives. It means thinking well of yourself rather than constantly putting yourself down. It means thinking well of others, dealing with them in a positive way. It means expecting the best from the world, trusting it will provide.

Living with positivity

Positive thinkers look back on the past with satisfaction rather than regret, and into the future with optimism and hope.

Creating a positive world

To start thinking positively, it is important to realize that the way you experience something is determined by what you think about it. It may appear that events are intrinsically happy or sad, but in fact it is your responses that make them feel good or bad, pleasurable or painful. If you face the world with pessimism, cynicism, and self-criticism, you will experience life as negative; if you respond with optimism, excitement, and confidence, you will create a cycle of positivity that builds your energy and inspires others.

Responding to events

Tim has broken Amys vase. By reacting in a positive way, Amy can prevent an argument and preserve the friendship.

Appreciating positivity

Positive thinking means keeping sufficiently balanced in your awareness of problems to stay motivated, able to take action, and feel good about what you are doing. This does not mean you should ignore difficulties or be relentlessly optimistic. Ideally you should register problems perhaps a bad day at work or an upset with your partner and then, instead of getting locked in paralyzing loops of bad feeling, move quickly to take action to solve those difficulties.

Fact file

Studies made in 1953, 1984, 1990, 1993, and 2002 suggest that positive thinkers are more likely than negative people to stay healthy into middle age and to have successful careers. They are half as likely to quit their jobs, 30 times more likely to be happy and on average add 7.5 years to their life span.

Recognizing the Signs

Your mental approach to life is a combination of your feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Identifying and distinguishing these three elements is the first crucial step that you must take if you are to shift your outlook from negative to positive.

Focus point

• Recognize that thoughts apply to specific situations, while beliefs are universal, rooted in experiences.

Becoming aware of your feelings

The most basic indicators of your positivity or negativity are your emotions. The more aware you are of emotional signals, the more you will be able to move your feelings from negative to positive. Learn to recognize the physical sensations that accompany your emotions. For example, you may be aware of anxious butterflies in your stomach or excited tingles down your spine. Register the different responses that you have to your emotions, perhaps losing your temper when you feel irritated or being more generous than usual when contented.

Believing in yourself

The positive belief, I can be good at sport prompts the thought, I can win, and this motivates and energizes you into effective action. Your success generates positive expectations, reinforcing your self-belief and boosting your abilities.

Identifying your thoughts

When events trigger your emotions, there is always an accompanying thought. You may experience this as an inner image, a sound, or a self-talk phrase, such as, I am scared about this interview, He is angry with me, I bet the train is cancelled again. A thought may be about what happens in the present, a memory of the past, or a prediction of the future. The core strategy of positive thinking is to adapt these thoughts, emphasizing the positive and defusing the negative. Alter your thoughts and you automatically alter your emotions and redirect your actions.

Choosing positivity

There are always two ways of thinking about anything in life negatively or positively. The choice is yours.

Thinking negatively

• You see yourself as unlovable

• You think you always fail

• You feel helpless

Thinking positively

• You see that people value you

• You do the best you can

• You know you can take control

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.