Any business begins with the desire to do it. The mood sets the tone for the entire future event. If you initially do not believe in possible success, then achieving it becomes almost impossible. A positive attitude significantly increases your chances of winning. But is it worth absolutizing this phenomenon? What other prerequisites are needed for success? Is there anything more important on this path than attitude? How can you increase it on your own? Are there techniques to help you attract success? Let's talk about all this now.
What is positive thinking?
Positive thinking is a set of habits and thinking patterns that make you see things in a more positive light. One common example is to see the failures you experience as lessons and opportunities for further growth.
Positive thinking includes many actions and has a great impact on our lives. It can contribute to the following changes:
- How do you communicate with people;
- You will begin to attract more people who want to get to know you better;
- How you inspire and encourage others, both directly and indirectly;
- Your productivity methods and work capabilities;
- Your stress level and how you cope with it.
From this description, you can conclude that positive thinking is very similar to a lifestyle. The more positive you are, the more good things will appear around you, even in situations where you face setbacks or difficulties.
Another way to look at positive thinking is to find opportunities to motivate yourself, thereby breaking the habit of giving in to challenges. For example, how many times have you told yourself “I can’t complete this task” or “I will never achieve my goal”?
By definition, this type of thinking ensures that you will avoid the task and put less effort into achieving that goal. On the other hand, by thinking, “I can accomplish this task” or “Someday I will achieve this goal,” you will be motivated to work toward those goals.
How to be positive?
There are many ways and techniques that help a person look into the future with optimism. Conventionally, they can be divided into two types: external and internal incentives. A positive attitude can appear as a result of encouragement from the outside, or in the process of self-hypnosis. It’s even better when these two processes complement each other, reinforcing each other.
The main “magnets” that attract a positive attitude include:
- Symbols and rituals;
- Affirmations;
- Positive environment;
- Proactive thinking;
- Humor in all its forms;
- Positive life experience;
- Strong motivation.
Now let's look at them separately.
Symbols and rituals.
Superstition is certainly not man's best ally. But even they can be used to help yourself. For example, come up with a morning ritual that will give you a positive attitude for the day. It can also be an amulet or talisman that brings good luck. You can use internationally recognized methods for these purposes, or invent your own. A horseshoe, four-leaf clover, acorn and much more instill confidence in its owner, significantly increasing his spirit of victory.
Affirmations.
Self-hypnosis is the most effective technique to help you become an optimist. Its advantage is that it does not require external incentives. There are not always people nearby who want to cheer you up. An amulet or talisman can also be lost or forgotten at home. But af. With their help, you can improve your mood anytime, anywhere. It is enough to simply repeat a positive attitude to yourself until it is firmly rooted in the subconscious, bearing the “fruits” of confidence and optimism.
Take the test: optimist or pessimist
Positive environment.
People who are nearby have a powerful psychological impact on a person. If you surround yourself with those who support and develop a positive attitude, it is much easier to look forward to the future with optimism. Such collective affirmation has a more powerful effect. Whoever you hang out with, that's how you'll gain. You should carefully choose your environment, leaving in it people aimed at positivity and success.
Proactive thinking.
The moment a person realizes that victory depends entirely on himself, he begins to understand full responsibility for his future. A positive attitude is an integral component of proactivity. If there is success, it is the merit of a specific person. In case of failure, it is also his fault. Understanding the power over current events, a person feels his inner strength, which gives him determination and perseverance in achieving his goals.
Humor.
Humor in itself does not guarantee success. Rather, it creates a positive emotional atmosphere that has a beneficial effect on the human psyche, giving him the necessary strength and energy. The mood for victory often appears after emotional recharging, the role of which is played by laughter. You can get this boost from a variety of sources: concerts, films, programs, books, songs, etc. Laughter helps you overcome difficulties and achieve success faster. Most leaders are people with a developed sense of humor.
Life experience.
By accumulating positive events in life, a person subconsciously sets himself up for future success. For these purposes, it is reasonable to start a Success Diary, in which you need to record all, no matter how small, victories. By regularly re-reading it, the diary author reminds himself that he has already won many times, thereby developing a positive attitude for the future.
How to deal with negative thoughts
Another key aspect of positive thinking is that positive thinking is not about eliminating all negativity from your life. There are negative events in our lives, you will make mistakes and fail. However, it is important to strike a balance between being aware of reality, accepting your surroundings, and thinking optimistically.
To maintain this balance, try to adhere to the following recommendations:
- Follow the guide to developing positive thinking , which we'll talk about a little further.
- Learn about your thinking style . Do you think logically or emotionally? Are you focused on the short term or the long term? Do positive or negative thoughts predominate in your head? Identifying all of this will help you understand how your mind works before you start changing it.
- Watch out for negative thoughts . View negative thoughts as something interesting rather than something harmful. When a negative thought comes, try writing it down and thinking about it for a few minutes. Why did this idea arise? Why do you look at this thing negatively? How can you turn this thought into something positive?
Positive attitude and health
The belief that a positive attitude can prolong life or improve health seems ubiquitous. This is a point of view that is constantly reproduced by the popular media and permeated countless pages of books encouraging self-improvement to achieve happiness, prosperity, optimism, and so on. But is there evidence of a direct relationship between health and life expectancy and optimism and correct behavior? Can personal faith really influence how a chronic illness progresses?
Popular generalizations
Consider this statement from Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz and Dr. Michael Fredric Roizen in The Healthy Living section of The Huffington Post:
“Having the right attitude is more important to your body than wearing sunscreen every day and going to the spa every two weeks—it's definitely important. Humor improves the functioning of immune cells, helps you ward off illness, reduces the likelihood of cancer, and apparently improves your chances of surviving a heart attack. Not bad at all!"
This is a finding based on a Danish study of 607 heart patients. According to Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen, the researchers "found that patients whose mood was always more or less cheerful were 58 percent more likely to live at least five more years than others." “Scientists,” Oz and Roizen continue, “can’t say for sure whether a positive mindset helped you exercise effectively or whether physical activity improved your mood, but we argue that in both cases the main conclusion is the same: positive thinking and Regular physical activity is really important for life (and also for beauty).”
My father has been slowly dying due to cardiomyopathy and left bundle branch block for the past six years. Wonderful doctors supported him and I will always feel indebted to them. Statements like the one made by Oz and Roizen piqued my interest.
The authors of the study that served as the basis for the rhetoric of famous doctors, analyzing the findings, concluded that “patients with increased levels of positive mood performed better in exercise and were at lower risk of dying over the next five years, exercising exercise mediating the relationship between positive mood and risk of dying.” . The researchers clearly state that “patients who exercised were less likely to die later” and that “patients with increased levels of positive mood were more likely to exercise.” However, the study does not say that a positive attitude or humor “increases your chances of surviving an exacerbation of cardiovascular disease.” An emphasis on improving mood may help to exercise more, which in turn may improve mood, but the biggest factor in increasing my father's chances of survival, according to this study, is exercise.
Many people who, like me, live with a chronic illness and a dying family member find that only by focusing on the bright side of life can they confront the dark side. However, I think it is important to be careful when making generalizations about a positive attitude. Otherwise, it will turn out, as in the example above: the statement that “for patients whose mood is always more or less cheerful, the likelihood of living at least another five years is 58 percent higher than for others” is an incorrect interpretation of the facts. When such generalizations appear on popular media platforms in the form of medical recommendations, they cannot but have serious social and cultural consequences.
Cream tires and crunchy pain in the morning, Doorbells and injection delivery for this week, Wild brochures on the side effects of methotrexate - Here are some of my favorite things.
A little satire to ease the pain
About a year ago, a relative of mine told me that all I needed to get rid of rheumatoid arthritis was to have the right attitude. As the anger at the veiled rebuke subsided, I couldn't help but imagine a caricature of what my optimistic visit to my doctor might have been like. Pulling up to the curb, I jump out of the car, greeting the kind doorman with a friendly clap, and fly up to the revolving doors of the university hospital. In the lobby, I greet everyone I meet with a smile, stop to listen to the piano with tears of joy in my eyes, and empty my wallet of money into the tip jar at the lunch counter. When the receptionist greets me at Clinic No. 2, Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, I, like Maria from The Sound of Music, begin to sing a song, dancing around the waiting room with my arms thrown wide to the sky and my head thrown back. in joyful ecstasy:
Instructions on syringes and biologics in the kitchen, Bright brass Humira and flexing a hot swollen knuckle, Brown bottles of prednisone with words of warning - These are some of my favorite things.
As soon as I finish the first verse, a woman in a wheelchair jumps up and, gracefully moving like a top, from one end of the room to the other, sings the next verse:
Cream tires and crunchy pain in the morning, Doorbells and injection delivery for this week, Wild brochures on the side effects of methotrexate - Here are some of my favorite things.
In the slightly open door of the doctor’s office, the head of my doctor appears, attracted by an unusual noise. Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but then she breaks into a dance, jumping on chairs to yell solo in her typical Polish accent:
Rheumatoid factor became less and disappeared, Clinical assessment: a positive attitude did it, The future is filled with remission of all diseases - Here are some of my favorite things.
Good news for grumblers
Aside from satire! In the July 2020 issue, the Skeptical Inquirer published an interesting article by psychologist Stuart Vyse entitled “Good News for Grumps: Happiness May Be Overrated.” The discussion centers on a similar, albeit slightly different topic: the relationship between happiness and longevity. Wise cites a recent analysis of the Million Women Study 01087-9/abstract, published by Bette Liu of the University of New South Wales and her colleagues at Oxford in December 2015 in The Lancet ( The Lancet). Of the 719,761 women who did not suffer from any life-threatening illness at the start of the study, 4% (31,531) died after ten years of follow-up. In exploring whether happiness itself was indeed associated with longevity, the researchers found that "women who reported being happy all or most of the time were more likely to be alive ten years later." However, and this is the key point, when the experimenters add another variable, namely women's assessment of their health, the effect of happiness on longevity disappears. The authors of the analysis conclude:
Middle-aged women may view poor health as unhappiness. After accounting for this association and adjusting for possible confounding, happiness and related measures of well-being did not appear to have a direct effect on mortality.
The claim that poor health makes you less happy and reduces life expectancy is much more logical than the converse claim that happiness improves health and increases life expectancy. Positive psychology is plagued by problems of incorrect determination of the direction of connections and a lack of rigorous scientific knowledge. Words such as “happiness,” “optimism,” and “well-being” are unreliable when expressed by those being studied, and furthermore, it is not easy to find a psychological measure for the corresponding concepts.
A countless number of factors instantly influence mood, and therefore there is no need to talk about the presence of stability or constancy here. Human emotions simply do not tolerate any kind of generalized and agreed upon objective quantitative assessment. Even if emotional states could be accurately measured, how could their impact on longevity or health be directly determined? It would be highly unethical, ridiculous, and impossible to conduct an experimental study in which subjects with a chronic illness were randomly divided into two groups, happy and unhappy, and then see who lived longer.
Conclusion: a positive attitude is good, but not for everyone
The fact that the relationship between mood and health is presented naively is striking. Unfortunately for us living with chronic illness, such hasty generalizations can create a culture of positivity that has a dark side. A culture of positivity implies that those of us in poor health could either improve the situation by changing our mood, or avoid it altogether if we were just happy.
One of my favorite science communicators, Stephen Jay Gould, was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma in 1982. This is a deadly cancer. A little later, Gould wrote an essay for Discovery Magazine about the statistics of disease prognosis, which later became part of his book Full House, The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Gould valued calmness of mind and perseverance in the fight against deadly diseases. Science, he hoped, would reveal the biochemical secrets of thinking, emotion and immunity. He also saw that the idea of positivity, beyond its inherent limits, had a dark underbelly: “... We must take a strong stand against the unintentional cruelty of the “positivity” movement, that is, against the insidious slide into prosecutorial rhetoric towards those who cannot overcome despair and evoke from the depths of the spirit a positive attitude towards life.”
Many people who fight hard and give their all suffer from diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease. Most die prematurely. To imply that a person can rid themselves of pain and the long-term effects of illness, or to convince themselves that there is no pain or illness, is a serious insult to many of us who struggle to cope with the ravages of illness. Doctors, medications and surgery saved my father's life many times and made mine more bearable. I do not deny the potential value of mental calm and persistence in dealing emotionally with illness. Being sick, I strive to develop more resilience. I have experienced how reducing stress can reduce the severity of some illness symptoms to a certain extent, and I believe in the importance of maintaining the will to live and hope despite all the difficulties. However, overestimating a positive attitude and mental capacity can lead to an “insidious slide into prosecutorial rhetoric,” which creates problems rather than useful solutions. In the words of philosopher David Hume, let us be wise and measure our beliefs against evidence.
Author: Michael Bud Translated by: Alexander Gorlov First published in Science-Based Medicine, 11/07/2016
Remotely: how not to degrade and remain positive
If you find yourself in a situation where your personal affairs related to professional responsibilities, education of you or your children have gone into remote working mode, I recommend treating this as a temporary phenomenon and taking advantage of it.
There is a category of people who are very reluctant to go to work every day. They would prefer to perform their duties at home, in a comfortable environment. For such people, remote work is an opportunity to remain in familiar conditions.
If you belong to the category that constantly strives to break out of the shackles of home, and now are forced to go remote, then I recommend treating this period as a test of strength, organizing your workspace as comfortably as possible.
In ancient times, in Ancient Greece, during the Hellenistic era, there was a doctrine called Stoicism. One of his principles: “There are no bad or good events. A person gives his own assessment of everything that happens in our life. The determining factor is not the event, but the person’s attitude towards it. By trying to change our attitude towards a situation, we change the situation itself.”
In the current situation, it is quite difficult to maintain a positive attitude, especially against the backdrop of economic and political events. However, if a person in a crisis situation fixes his thoughts exclusively on losses and losses, then they will multiply. If it’s difficult to find something positive, try thinking like this: what am I gaining in the current circumstances?
- Have you switched to remote work? “This is an opportunity to spend more time at home and devote it to arranging home comfort.
- Was your child sent to remote learning at the institute? —This is an opportunity to spend more time with him.
- Are you afraid that the disease will affect you and are worried about your health? “This is an opportunity to undergo an unscheduled medical examination and organize preventative measures for your body.
Don't focus on the bad, because the energy of negative thoughts will only increase troubles in your life.
Don't give in to general panic attacks. This is a chain reaction of social behavior that does not lead to anything good. Let me give you a simple example: when one dog starts barking on the street, a moment later other dogs join it, barking for company. Man is a social creature and unconsciously copies the strategies of behavior of other people in uncertain and alarming situations: “Everyone ran and I ran.” “Everyone buys buckwheat and I will buy it.” What for? Because everyone does it.
But man is also a rationally organized being, and he knows how to manage his instinctive behavior programs. I recommend acting solely based on personal goals.
What to do next?
In Russia we are used to thinking negatively: “It will only get worse.” If you think like that, the situation will actually get worse. You should discard all negative thoughts and act on the result. In a situation of uncertainty, it is better not to take any action at all. We need to act when we already know what awaits us. We don’t yet know how the situation will develop, whether a state of emergency will be introduced or not. For now, we should act as we did before, but taking into account compliance with the security conditions that are being discussed today.
In conclusion, let me remind you of the well-known parable about King Solomon. All his life he wore a talisman ring, on which on the outside was written: “This shall pass.” Solomon followed this rule, but one day, in a state of passion, he took off the ring and wanted to throw it away. But on the inside of the talisman there was another inscription: “This too shall pass.” Solomon calmed down and decided that there was no need to get excited, and calmly continued his business.
Any negative events will end, the main thing is to be patient and organize your lifestyle as comfortably as possible in the current situation.
Alexey Vasenkin, specially for IRK.ru
