Positive thinking is the practice of concentrating on the positive side in every situation with an optimistic attitude.

Positive thinking does not mean ignoring reality or living in a fancy world. It also does not mean underestimating problems. Rather, it is an attitude of approaching the life situations with optimism that things will go well.

Positive Thinking benefits

Positive thinking is claimed by many authors to have a good impact on mental physical and mental health. But anyway, there is no downside to staying optimistic.

Some of these benefits include:

Better life expectancy

Lower heart problems

Greater immunity to infections

Better controlled blood pressure

Improved pain tolerance

In addition to improved creativity, better skills at problem-solving, improved coping, better concentration, positive impact on depression and better mood stability.

Pessimism

Pessimistic people can learn the skills of positive thinking, according to research.

In one study, people were taught to meditate daily on positive thoughts. They were found to start feeling more optimistic and more positive.

In other studies positive thinking was found to help people manage ill health and improve depression, whether they were naturally pessimistic or not.

First, Manage the Negative Thoughts

Start with managing your negative thoughts before putting positive thinking into action. Following are some ways of negative thinking:

Filtering: Do you concentrate on the negative while ignoring the positive?

Blaming self: do you blame yourself when things got wrong?

Catastrophizing: This happens when you expect everything to turn bad. This usually happens after some setback.

All or Nothing Thinking: Do you tend to see things as either bad or good with no middle grade? So if things are not perfect they automatically become bad.

Other forms of negative thoughts include overgeneralization, personalization, Magnification or minimization and should statements.

When you notice a negative thought, try to stop it. If stopping it is not easy, try shifting your focus to some other thought. Argue with yourself, explore all explanations, rationalize the thought and check what would advise a friend if he comes to you with the same thought.

Negative thoughts don’t go away easily. You need a lot of practice and focus to learn managing them. With time will have more positive thoughts.

Always remember, don’t ignore or overlook the facts, just get the good facts included.

Practice Positive Thinking

After learning to manage negative thoughts, start practicing the positive ones. Following are some ways to do that:

Smile more often:

Studies found that people who were smiling during a stressful task felt more positive afterwards. The more genuine the smile, the more benefit you have. Have humor sense and spend more time with people who makes you laugh.

Reframe: when bad things happen, they are usually outside or control. Instead of getting upset try to look for any positive side. For example, in a traffic jam, focusing on the time made available for you to listen to your favorite music.

Gratitude journal: assigning a time every day to sit and write down the things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the good things in your life. Practice the three good things exercise every night before going to sleep. Studies found that people who practice gratitude exercises have more positive thinking and optimistic attitudes.

Visualize the best possible future: Think in deep about a bright picture of the future in terms of relationships, health and career. Write it down. Research suggests that when people imagine the best of their future you become happier and more positive in the present time.

Use your strengths: for a week try to focus on one of your personal strengths. These are things like discipline, creativity, kindness or organization. That day write down a plan to use that strength in different ways and proceed to act on this plan. Studies show benefit of this technique in both short- and long-term periods.

With time and practice, you will develop many ways to think positively and enrich your emotional life.