Being positive is not about sugar coating the sour events that happen in our lives, being overly optimistic and thinking to achieve the unreachable, giving a pretty pathetic version of ourselves. Instead, it is about believing in yourself and in your skills, it is about accepting failures and do better next time, it is about being resilient and overcome difficulties with a calm and proactive state of mind.
I think that positive thinking goes hand in hand with the attraction law. The attraction law states you will likely attract to you whatever you will put your energy and time on.
Essentially what happens to you is the result of what you actively think about during the day. If you think positively, than you will attract positive things in your life; if you practice negative thinking, then you’ll get crap.
There are many philosophical and psychological theories that widely accept the power of positive thinking and how this influence the law of attraction.
Paulo Coelho in his book “The Alchemist” describes the positive thinking and the law of attraction as a “mysterious force”:
“It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth. […] The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Hence, if we focus on positive thoughts and emotions, we will likely attract people and things that make us happy. Likewise, if we think negatively and put ourselves down we will attract negativity and misery in our life, setting us apart from what we truly want.
This is also highlighted in the buddhism, which states that every thing is subject to change, and that we are part of an eternal flow of energy, and as such we can decide at what frequency we can vibrate so that we can attract to us things that vibrate with our same frequency.
When we have a positive attitude we start to focus on what really matters in order to make our goal happen. At this point our brain acts as a filter, ignoring all the superfluous and unnecessary thoughts that would held us back from our goals. When we think positively we are able to pick up opportunities that present to us in very subtle ways, sometimes under the form of a person you know, under the form of a person you don’t know, an event, a meeting, an advertisement online, or a dream.
On the other hand, when we have negative thoughts we are soaked in a sense of self pity and we tend to concentrate on all the negative emotions that will only set us apart from our goal. Also, it doesn’t let us have an open mind to pick us favorable opportunities that may present to us in less obvious ways as described above.
Get Your Sh*t Together And Make It Happen
I can think of a plethora of examples in my life where positivity led to joy and happiness, and negativity led to misery and disappointment.
Of course thinking positive helps you to achieve your goals, but it is not the only factor. You also need to work for it! It is pretty useless to have positive thoughts but sitting on the sofa sipping your coffee and watching Netflix waiting for something amazing to happen in your life. You have to work for it! A positive mindset helps you to make the whole journey much easier, helping you to have your eyes fixed on your goal.
When I was younger I used to be religious, shifting from catholic to evangelist, but always believing in God and thinking that I was part of a plan and a bigger picture. I am not going into the nitty gritty about how I have realized that I was atheist the whole time, I will probably leave this story for another article. I used to work hard, and I was also pretty successful too. It was like I could achieve anything I wanted because I was asking for help in my prayers: admission to the music conservatoire? Bang, Pass!; finding seasonal jobs that could fund my summer trips abroad to learn English? Yes, here you have it!, my admission to medical school in Italy? Poof, admitted! Mind you, I wasn’t just praying and expecting Jesus to knock at my door giving me what I have asked him for, instead I worked my a*s off too: practicing endless hours playing piano, helping my brother out in the construction industry for paid, seasonal work, practicing admission tests over and over again. OK, that was easy as it was something partially within my control. However, believing in something really helped me in things that were out of my control: cancer diagnosis, deaths, and earthquakes that knocked our roof down. Even though in those circumstances I had all the reasons to be down, negative, sad and angry, these emotions lasted a very briefly because I knew that someone else (God) was already taking care of these things, and that something good was about to happen.
Today I don’t believe in God anymore, and looking back I am nothing but thankful to have believed in it because it has been a good way to get in the habit of being positive: believe that it will happen and work hard for it. It is extremely comforting to think that things will eventually work out the way you want because you believe that they will.
The Problem Is The Solution
In Italy we say
“Not all bad things come to hurt you“.
Negative things can and will happen, and this is not because you haven’t believed in yourself hard enough. Sometimes the problem is the solution! Can you think of any example when things didn’t work out the way you wanted and eventually (months or years later) realized that it was actually a good thing for you? Or when they didn’t happen when you were hoping for, and started to meet new people or developed new skills and more resilience that made it happen? I can think of at least a dozen of examples.
Sometimes life turns its back on you because this is its own way to help you.
Why is it difficult to think positive?
We as human beings have a predisposition towards negative thoughts. By default we are programmed to see the glass half-empty and this is something that we have been carrying ever since we were apes and it was once related to our survival instinct: running away from a branch on the ground that looked like a snake, and the avoidance of dark environment to avoid predators we could not see clearly – just to mention a few. Although many centuries have gone by and our ape brain has developed (hopefully) this predisposition towards negative thinking stayed with us, so we are more prone to give more attention to dark emotions like anger, sadness, disappointment, and jealousy than to bright emotions like happiness, joy, and thankfulness.
Dark emotions and negative thoughts stay with us far longer than positive thoughts or events. Just to put thing into perspective, consider the following examples:
Your boss just gave you a promotion, you start to feel happy, kind, proud – time to celebrate! But chances are that tomorrow you will feel as though nothing ever happened; Now consider the opposite, your boss made you redundant, you start to feel sad, angry, disappointed, been let down, do you think that tomorrow you will feel as though nothing ever happened? I don’t think so! It’s highly likely that you will feel the same dark emotions even though you are starting a new job and you will look at the company that made you redundant with a sour taste in your mouth, overriding the memory of joy and happiness you had when you received the promotion.
The negatives stay with us far longer than the positives do. More amazingly, it seems like we can easily switch from good to bad, but we can hardly switch from bad to good. There is an interesting research done in social psychology that took two groups of participants who were talked through a surgical procedure they had to do. Group 1 was told that the surgery had a 70% success rate, and Group 2 was told that the same procedure had 30% of failure. At this point Group 1 was happy to go for the procedure, and Group 2 declined.
But here’s the twist: participants in Group 1 were told that the procedure had a 30% chance of failure, and Group 2 were told that it would have a 70% rate of success. Whilst participants in Group 2 sticked with their original opinion (declining the operation), Group 1 changed their idea and decided to opt out.
Another theory of why we are more prone to think negatively is because there is always a sense of self pity associated with it. We like others to feel sorry for us and we also like to feel sorry for ourselves. We like to be heard, understood, and acknowledged that we are going through a (sometimes self-induced) tough time.
How to start thinking positively
Thinking positively is a habit, and as such it needs practice… a lot of practice since we have to overcome out primitive negative instinct. If you naturally have a negative attitude, don’t expect to become a positive and resilient person out of the blue. It needs patience, practice and… positivity.
Study show that simply writing a list of things that you are grateful for everyday drags you out of the negativity.
Try to train your mind to see the glass half full, and extrapolate the positives out of a negative outcome (there are always some positives!).
Also, surround yourself with positive people that can inspire and encourage you to be the best version of yourself. Negative people are well known to suck the energy out of you, and those are the ones that have a problem to every solution. Politely trace a line between you and them and learn to be immune to their negative aura and their stubbornness of not wanting to change.
Be kind! Remember, you harvest what you sow. If you practice hate, and jealousy it will hit you back in life in one way or the other. If you learn to be kind, gentle, and helpful then your hart will be filled with positive emotions and you will receive nothing else but good outcomes.