Positive Thinking
Thinking, emotions, and behaviors intertwine very closely and each can change the others. In this mail, I focus on the importance of our thoughts, how they help or trouble us, and what to do about our counterproductive thought habits.
Faith cures at religious sites or by charismatic healers may come from a newly acquired serenity, acceptance, confidence, and vigor due to belief in the cure that reduces helplessness and allows one to notice small improvements and pay less attention to symptoms or problems. Faith in the cure may help some people to stop gaining sympathy and attention for the sick role. Perhaps believing in the cure reduces anxiety and the experience of pain. Such changes may alleviate an emotional problem or overcome a physical one. Perhaps these improved feelings and behaviors produce beneficial effects on the disease processes themselves.
Our thoughts are important to us in many ways. We emphasized certain patterns of thinking in our previous discussions of happiness: acceptance, a focus on good works and virtues, and humor. Our negative and positive thoughts can also cause our expectations to come true, a self-fulfilling prophecy, by affecting how we see things and act. If you attempt a task thinking, "I know I'll mess it up. I can't do anything right," you probably won't feel like trying very hard and you may interpret your progress as unimpressive. This pessimism may lead you to give up, perhaps blaming the poor outcome on your lack of ability or other circumstances. In contrast, if you have hope and optimistically think your efforts will make a difference, you will keep trying for much longer. Positive thoughts such as, "Maybe this will work," motivate you to spend more time thinking and trying various things. These behaviors increase your chances of success.
In many situations, success comes from repeatedly trying and from refusing to give up because of failure. Optimistic people tend to keep working and thinking success will eventually come, but pessimistic people often give up and make their poor expectations come true. One researcher studied 500 incoming freshmen at a university and found a test of optimism predicted their grades the first year better than did either their SAT scores or high-school grades. Perhaps this was because optimistic people tend to stay motivated despite frustrations and failures.
The self-fulfilling prophecy can also operate in your social life. Suppose you go to a social event thinking to yourself things like: "I'm such a bore," "Nobody will like me," "I never make a good impression," and "I'll never make any friends." Thinking pessimistically, feeling inadequate, and fearing inevitable rejection, you will probably talk and mingle very little and never offer invitations. You might even see events in a distorted manner, assuming people hadn't come over to talk to you or they eventually walked away because they didn't like you, or you might assume the man looking at you must think you are weird. Although withdrawn behavior rarely leads to friendships, you may decide making no friends there gives further proof of your dullness.
Alternatively, suppose you go to a social event feeling just as awkward, but telling yourself things like: "Lots of people are nervous at first. Concentrate on being friendly," "Everyone has to get used to rejection," "I don't need to be perfect. Quit worrying and go," and "The more I do it, the smoother I'll be." These thoughts help you mingle and practice your conversation skills. You may not make a friend there, but your thoughts and actions are more likely to lead to a friendship sometime, somewhere.
Our thoughts greatly influence our emotions and personal problems. Negative thoughts are common in bad moods and depression, and positive thoughts go with feeling good and happy. Experiments show spending time thinking about happy, sad, or angry situations often causes these feelings to arise. Consider how bad you would feel if you spent twenty minutes thinking about the worst things people ever said or did to you, the worst times of your life, and all your faults and mistakes. Habitually thinking about negative things tends to drag you down into depression. Angry thoughts make it more difficult to calm down, to see the other person's point of view, and to act in respectful ways. If no negotiation or solution occurs, angry thoughts simply keep us tense, our feelings inflamed, and our mood disturbed. Similarly, upsetting thoughts help cause anxiety, thoughts of needing addictive substances help cause addiction, dwelling on loss helps cause grief, etc.
Changing habits of negative thinking helps a great deal in changing emotions and improving personal problems. Negative thinking is counterproductive, self-defeating thinking that makes you feel worse, see things in a worse light, and act in ways that often interfere with goals. The more you think negatively, the worse you feel. Positive thoughts help you feel better, see things in a better light, and act more sensibly and effectively. Optimistic, hopeful thoughts improve your chances of success in work and social life. Much research suggests optimism in facing losses and failures promotes mental health, whereas pessimism does the opposite.
When a problem frustrates us, we should either do something constructive about it or learn to accept it. Negative thinking resigns you to problem emotions and keeps you from feeling calm and content and confronting problems in constructive ways. Instead of seeing problems as normal, tolerable, manageable, or challenges to overcome, people with habits of negative thinking often overreact and blow things out of proportion. Negative thoughts continually create bad feelings and cause misery or upset over life circumstances.
Sometimes firmly fixed negative beliefs color our worlds without our realizing it. We may never consciously think the negative thoughts. Rather, our feelings indicate we hold the negative beliefs or assumptions. For example: When you feel inadequate, some of the negative thoughts listed above concerning inferiority, lack of charm, or lack of ability may feel true to you, whether or not you ever actually think them. When you feel overwhelmed, some of the negative thoughts concerning pessimism or depression may describe your feelings well. If perceiving dislike, hostility, or rejection devastates you, you probably feel like endorsing some of the negative thoughts concerning social hostility or rejection. If you have a bad temper, you can probably easily relate to the angry thoughts listed above, whether or not you ever actually think them.
When grouped together in a list, negative thoughts are obviously negative. Detecting your own negative thoughts is much more difficult, but you can recognize many negative thoughts by their extreme nature. The following thoughts all paint things in extreme terms: "I am the worst conversationalist in the world," "I always mess things up," "I have no sense of humor," "Anything I try turns out terrible," "Nobody understands me," "I'll never be able to dance," and "I can't stand it!" Notice in these examples and in the above lists that many of the negative thoughts are overgeneralizations using the words always, no, anything, nobody, everyone, never, and can't.
Some negative thoughts involve the use of negative labels, such as complete failure, bore, born loser, rotten creep, lousy mother, etc. When you apply a negative label to another person in anger, you keep yourself angry or upset. When you habitually think of yourself in terms of a negative label, you define yourself in a way that reduces your hope for change. People who do this often resign themselves to the social role it implies. Children whose parents constantly scold and insult them often come to believe their parents' descriptions of them are true. With low self-esteem, these children have little hope of changing and put little effort into improving. This is another kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, when adults come to think of themselves as boring, bad tempered, alcoholic, addicted, sluttish, homosexual, neurotic, mentally ill, or criminal, they often resign themselves to the social roles these labels imply.
The best way to find your negative thought habits is to write down negative thoughts. Write down your thoughts anytime you notice one that might be negative or seems to contribute to your feeling bad. Then spend a minute or two every hour or so reviewing the time interval for possible negative thoughts to jot down. At the very least, review your thoughts four times a day. If you review them only once or twice a day, you will forget many because negative thoughts tend to be habitual and automatic. Pay particular attention to your thoughts when your mood changes for the worse. Your thoughts at these times are the most likely to be counterproductive. Write these thoughts down even if you don't think they contribute to the negative emotion. Never evaluate these thoughts when your mood changes for the worse; always evaluate them later, in a calm, content mood. Negative thoughts will be more obvious when you don't feel angry, depressed, or emotional. The following questions help in judging whether the thoughts you collected are negative. These questions also help you look at problem situations in more constructive ways.
After identifying your negative thoughts, write several positive statements for each negative one. Most of the questions in the above list aid in generating ideas for more helpful thought alternatives. First, focus on what you can do about the problem. Replace unfulfilled longing with realistic goals or plans for change. When you can't do anything to change a problem situation, work toward acceptance. Use thoughts like, "I don't really need it." You may need to change your priorities to fit the reality of the situation. Write optimistic, rather than pessimistic, views of it. Instead of dwelling on sorrows, practice thankfulness for your friends, pleasures, strengths, and other blessings. When you compare yourself to other people negatively, emphasize that no matter what trait you consider, you can always find people who are either more fortunate or less fortunate than you. Find the good part of your failures, problems, actions, experiences, or situations. You can find good in almost anything. View failure as a learning experience teaching you what doesn't work, so you can succeed in later attempts. If you have trouble with your child, take pride in setting limits to teach your child, in supporting, and in forgiving your child. Relabel crying, vulnerability, or anxious, upset feelings as sensitivity.
Don't use overly simplistic, general thought alternatives such as: "It's not so bad," "That's not true," or "Look at the bright side." Statements like these become trite when you use them in a variety of situations. An effective alternative focuses on helpful aspects or views of the particular situation. A positive thought alternative should also sound convincing and help you feel the way you want to feel, act in your own best interest, and avoid further problems.
Whenever you find yourself thinking one of your habitual negative thoughts, think "STOP!" This makes you more aware of negative thoughts and helps you reject them. Then practice substituting more helpful thought alternatives every time. Keep a list of your most common negative thought habits and positive alternatives for each. Refer to this list whenever negative thoughts arise, until you can substitute helpful alternatives from memory or immediately make up new thought alternatives to counter the negative thoughts. When a negative thought arises and circumstances make it impossible to read your list, read it at the next convenient moment.
In addition, read all of your positive thought alternatives several times each day. This helps you build new positive thinking habits. It also helps make up for the times negative thoughts arise and you forget to read your list or you can't stop and read it. Because of similarities between many habitual negative thoughts, you can often counter new negative thoughts with some of your planned alternatives. If none of your alternatives seem appropriate, write down the new negative thought and create some positive alternatives for it later.
Like other bad habits, negative thinking can be very difficult to change. You can only change it by practice, practice, and more practice. The more you flood your mind with positive thought alternatives by reading and practicing them, the more your thoughts and feelings will change for the better. Many people witness the power of positive thinking when they practice and repeat affirmations for spiritual growth such as, "I will face each new day with peace and love in my heart." It may take months of daily effort changing your habits of negative thinking before you notice much change in your feelings, however.
Faith cures at religious sites or by charismatic healers may come from a newly acquired serenity, acceptance, confidence, and vigor due to belief in the cure that reduces helplessness and allows one to notice small improvements and pay less attention to symptoms or problems. Faith in the cure may help some people to stop gaining sympathy and attention for the sick role. Perhaps believing in the cure reduces anxiety and the experience of pain. Such changes may alleviate an emotional problem or overcome a physical one. Perhaps these improved feelings and behaviors produce beneficial effects on the disease processes themselves.
Our thoughts are important to us in many ways. We emphasized certain patterns of thinking in our previous discussions of happiness: acceptance, a focus on good works and virtues, and humor. Our negative and positive thoughts can also cause our expectations to come true, a self-fulfilling prophecy, by affecting how we see things and act. If you attempt a task thinking, "I know I'll mess it up. I can't do anything right," you probably won't feel like trying very hard and you may interpret your progress as unimpressive. This pessimism may lead you to give up, perhaps blaming the poor outcome on your lack of ability or other circumstances. In contrast, if you have hope and optimistically think your efforts will make a difference, you will keep trying for much longer. Positive thoughts such as, "Maybe this will work," motivate you to spend more time thinking and trying various things. These behaviors increase your chances of success.
In many situations, success comes from repeatedly trying and from refusing to give up because of failure. Optimistic people tend to keep working and thinking success will eventually come, but pessimistic people often give up and make their poor expectations come true. One researcher studied 500 incoming freshmen at a university and found a test of optimism predicted their grades the first year better than did either their SAT scores or high-school grades. Perhaps this was because optimistic people tend to stay motivated despite frustrations and failures.
The self-fulfilling prophecy can also operate in your social life. Suppose you go to a social event thinking to yourself things like: "I'm such a bore," "Nobody will like me," "I never make a good impression," and "I'll never make any friends." Thinking pessimistically, feeling inadequate, and fearing inevitable rejection, you will probably talk and mingle very little and never offer invitations. You might even see events in a distorted manner, assuming people hadn't come over to talk to you or they eventually walked away because they didn't like you, or you might assume the man looking at you must think you are weird. Although withdrawn behavior rarely leads to friendships, you may decide making no friends there gives further proof of your dullness.
Alternatively, suppose you go to a social event feeling just as awkward, but telling yourself things like: "Lots of people are nervous at first. Concentrate on being friendly," "Everyone has to get used to rejection," "I don't need to be perfect. Quit worrying and go," and "The more I do it, the smoother I'll be." These thoughts help you mingle and practice your conversation skills. You may not make a friend there, but your thoughts and actions are more likely to lead to a friendship sometime, somewhere.
Our thoughts greatly influence our emotions and personal problems. Negative thoughts are common in bad moods and depression, and positive thoughts go with feeling good and happy. Experiments show spending time thinking about happy, sad, or angry situations often causes these feelings to arise. Consider how bad you would feel if you spent twenty minutes thinking about the worst things people ever said or did to you, the worst times of your life, and all your faults and mistakes. Habitually thinking about negative things tends to drag you down into depression. Angry thoughts make it more difficult to calm down, to see the other person's point of view, and to act in respectful ways. If no negotiation or solution occurs, angry thoughts simply keep us tense, our feelings inflamed, and our mood disturbed. Similarly, upsetting thoughts help cause anxiety, thoughts of needing addictive substances help cause addiction, dwelling on loss helps cause grief, etc.
Changing habits of negative thinking helps a great deal in changing emotions and improving personal problems. Negative thinking is counterproductive, self-defeating thinking that makes you feel worse, see things in a worse light, and act in ways that often interfere with goals. The more you think negatively, the worse you feel. Positive thoughts help you feel better, see things in a better light, and act more sensibly and effectively. Optimistic, hopeful thoughts improve your chances of success in work and social life. Much research suggests optimism in facing losses and failures promotes mental health, whereas pessimism does the opposite.
When a problem frustrates us, we should either do something constructive about it or learn to accept it. Negative thinking resigns you to problem emotions and keeps you from feeling calm and content and confronting problems in constructive ways. Instead of seeing problems as normal, tolerable, manageable, or challenges to overcome, people with habits of negative thinking often overreact and blow things out of proportion. Negative thoughts continually create bad feelings and cause misery or upset over life circumstances.
Sometimes firmly fixed negative beliefs color our worlds without our realizing it. We may never consciously think the negative thoughts. Rather, our feelings indicate we hold the negative beliefs or assumptions. For example: When you feel inadequate, some of the negative thoughts listed above concerning inferiority, lack of charm, or lack of ability may feel true to you, whether or not you ever actually think them. When you feel overwhelmed, some of the negative thoughts concerning pessimism or depression may describe your feelings well. If perceiving dislike, hostility, or rejection devastates you, you probably feel like endorsing some of the negative thoughts concerning social hostility or rejection. If you have a bad temper, you can probably easily relate to the angry thoughts listed above, whether or not you ever actually think them.
When grouped together in a list, negative thoughts are obviously negative. Detecting your own negative thoughts is much more difficult, but you can recognize many negative thoughts by their extreme nature. The following thoughts all paint things in extreme terms: "I am the worst conversationalist in the world," "I always mess things up," "I have no sense of humor," "Anything I try turns out terrible," "Nobody understands me," "I'll never be able to dance," and "I can't stand it!" Notice in these examples and in the above lists that many of the negative thoughts are overgeneralizations using the words always, no, anything, nobody, everyone, never, and can't.
Some negative thoughts involve the use of negative labels, such as complete failure, bore, born loser, rotten creep, lousy mother, etc. When you apply a negative label to another person in anger, you keep yourself angry or upset. When you habitually think of yourself in terms of a negative label, you define yourself in a way that reduces your hope for change. People who do this often resign themselves to the social role it implies. Children whose parents constantly scold and insult them often come to believe their parents' descriptions of them are true. With low self-esteem, these children have little hope of changing and put little effort into improving. This is another kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, when adults come to think of themselves as boring, bad tempered, alcoholic, addicted, sluttish, homosexual, neurotic, mentally ill, or criminal, they often resign themselves to the social roles these labels imply.
The best way to find your negative thought habits is to write down negative thoughts. Write down your thoughts anytime you notice one that might be negative or seems to contribute to your feeling bad. Then spend a minute or two every hour or so reviewing the time interval for possible negative thoughts to jot down. At the very least, review your thoughts four times a day. If you review them only once or twice a day, you will forget many because negative thoughts tend to be habitual and automatic. Pay particular attention to your thoughts when your mood changes for the worse. Your thoughts at these times are the most likely to be counterproductive. Write these thoughts down even if you don't think they contribute to the negative emotion. Never evaluate these thoughts when your mood changes for the worse; always evaluate them later, in a calm, content mood. Negative thoughts will be more obvious when you don't feel angry, depressed, or emotional. The following questions help in judging whether the thoughts you collected are negative. These questions also help you look at problem situations in more constructive ways.
- Questions for Evaluating and Fighting Negative Thoughts
- How does this thought make me feel? Does it help keep me depressed or angry? Nervous, anxious, or fearful? Frustrated or upset? Grieving? Guilty?
- Am I being negative?
- Am I dwelling on something negative? A flaw? A mistake?
- Something I want but don't have?
- Am I minimizing qualities in myself?
- Am I overlooking good in other people or the situation?
- Am I frustrating myself by wishing something I can't change wasn't true or by feeling something I can't change shouldn't be?
- Am I overreacting or blowing things out of proportion?
- Am I blowing one detail out of proportion?
- Am I overgeneralizing by using words like always, no, anything, nobody, everyone, never, and can't?
- Is it really true? Why? How do I know? What is the proof?
- Have I asked what they really said or thought or did?
- Could this situation have had nothing to do with me?
- Can I look at this another way? How else could I interpret it? And how else?
- What would I think if I felt better or wasn't so worried?
- What would I say to a friend in this situation if I was trying to help?
- What would a counselor, minister, or wise person trying to help say?
- How likely is my fear?
- Am I focusing on facts that are not relevant to this immediate situation?
- Is the event really less important than I first thought?
- Did a similar situation ever work out satisfactorily, better than I now feel this situation will?
- Haven't I experienced something similar before, survived, and gotten over it?
- Am I underestimating my ability to cope, to deal with it?
- Haven't I felt this way before? What did I do then? What could I do better now?
- Can I do something about this?
- Do I need to learn to accept this?
After identifying your negative thoughts, write several positive statements for each negative one. Most of the questions in the above list aid in generating ideas for more helpful thought alternatives. First, focus on what you can do about the problem. Replace unfulfilled longing with realistic goals or plans for change. When you can't do anything to change a problem situation, work toward acceptance. Use thoughts like, "I don't really need it." You may need to change your priorities to fit the reality of the situation. Write optimistic, rather than pessimistic, views of it. Instead of dwelling on sorrows, practice thankfulness for your friends, pleasures, strengths, and other blessings. When you compare yourself to other people negatively, emphasize that no matter what trait you consider, you can always find people who are either more fortunate or less fortunate than you. Find the good part of your failures, problems, actions, experiences, or situations. You can find good in almost anything. View failure as a learning experience teaching you what doesn't work, so you can succeed in later attempts. If you have trouble with your child, take pride in setting limits to teach your child, in supporting, and in forgiving your child. Relabel crying, vulnerability, or anxious, upset feelings as sensitivity.
Don't use overly simplistic, general thought alternatives such as: "It's not so bad," "That's not true," or "Look at the bright side." Statements like these become trite when you use them in a variety of situations. An effective alternative focuses on helpful aspects or views of the particular situation. A positive thought alternative should also sound convincing and help you feel the way you want to feel, act in your own best interest, and avoid further problems.
Whenever you find yourself thinking one of your habitual negative thoughts, think "STOP!" This makes you more aware of negative thoughts and helps you reject them. Then practice substituting more helpful thought alternatives every time. Keep a list of your most common negative thought habits and positive alternatives for each. Refer to this list whenever negative thoughts arise, until you can substitute helpful alternatives from memory or immediately make up new thought alternatives to counter the negative thoughts. When a negative thought arises and circumstances make it impossible to read your list, read it at the next convenient moment.
In addition, read all of your positive thought alternatives several times each day. This helps you build new positive thinking habits. It also helps make up for the times negative thoughts arise and you forget to read your list or you can't stop and read it. Because of similarities between many habitual negative thoughts, you can often counter new negative thoughts with some of your planned alternatives. If none of your alternatives seem appropriate, write down the new negative thought and create some positive alternatives for it later.
Like other bad habits, negative thinking can be very difficult to change. You can only change it by practice, practice, and more practice. The more you flood your mind with positive thought alternatives by reading and practicing them, the more your thoughts and feelings will change for the better. Many people witness the power of positive thinking when they practice and repeat affirmations for spiritual growth such as, "I will face each new day with peace and love in my heart." It may take months of daily effort changing your habits of negative thinking before you notice much change in your feelings, however.
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