Photo Credit: Harry Cunningham
There are numerous articles and videos telling us the solution of every problem is to have positive outlook. The feeling of gratitude, positive belief and happiness leads to great results in life but such feelings only occur when think positive.
Expecting to be positive is a very easy statement to make but quite tough for average people like us to embrace positivity in life. There is no tutorial that teaches us the step by step process to accomplish this. How can a person whose brain has been developed thinking negative all of his/her life suddenly start thinking positive just because they have been told to!
So, let’s make the process simple by breaking them down into few points. They are just the few steps that will help us to become a positive person from a negative one:
1. If you can’t think positive and only negative thoughts surround you, just STOP thinking! Since thinking positive require lots of practice and mind training, the initial step is to stop thinking negative. Whenever your mind start thinking about negative situations, just stop over there, take a pause and start to do some work that automatically brings your attention and concentration on that work. It can be anything like playing a mobile game, solving a puzzle, watching a show or reading a book. This is just to divert your mind to something else. You have to do something consciously which would help you to stop having negative thoughts. Not thinking negative is the first step of becoming positive.
2. Avoid people who think negative and gossips around us. I had a friend who was always complaining to me about something and another who knew all the office rumours about my different colleagues who were getting promotion, good hikes and onsite. All these things bothered me a lot and I felt that I was losing out from everyone. I was losing my confidence and felt that there was nothing good happening with me. Then I decided to avoid these people. If it is not possible to avoid, at least try not to indulge yourself in gossiping with them or ignore what they are saying without worrying about them or thinking about it.
3. Avoid Social Media! In modern world, this is one of the reason why we are becoming more insecure and negative towards our lives. We watch people enjoying their vacations and posting scenic pictures, people showing their talents on social media and it often affect us mentally. Also, even watching people posting different opinions affect us! It becomes difficult to ignore negative posts, hate speeches, abuses etc. which people post frequently and are visible to us on our timelines/walls/pages. And the posts can be reactions of having difference of opinion, supporting a different political party or even supporting a different cricket team. The easiest is to either leave or become resistant of social media to achieve peace in life.
Apart from these steps, please try to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes of your day meditating, which can be as simple as chanting "Om" or listening to meditation music or guided meditation online. This will make you achieve a calm mind and positive thinking.