Turn your face towards the sun and the shadows will fall behind you!!

Positive thinking, or an optimistic attitude, is the practice of focusing on the good in any given situation. It can have a real effect on your physical and mental health.

Of course, that does not mean ignoring reality. It simply means approaching the good and the bad with the expectation that things will work out.

Catch the thought first

Before you can put positive thinking into practice, you have to look for the negative thoughts already running through your mind.

When you notice one, try to stop it and shift your focus. Think rationally about the situation. Your negative thoughts will not disappear overnight, but with practice you can train yourself towards a more positive outlook.

Remember, you are not overlooking the facts. You are just including the ones that happen to be good.

That distinction is the whole thing, and it is the reason this is not self-deception. A pessimistic reading of a situation is not more accurate than an optimistic one - it is simply a different selection from the same set of facts, made without you noticing you were selecting. Both are edits. You may as well make the edit deliberately.

Turning them around

Life can seem unfair. But it gets so much easier, and happier, once you learn to get past negative thoughts.

Learn to acknowledge and explore feelings of negativity, but don’t live in them. Turn them around and set them free.

When you start to get stressed and low, stop and say thank you for something. Anything. Don’t give up on achieving more, but get into the habit of noticing life’s small achievements too.

We all experience negative thoughts and emotions when we are low - that is expected. You may feel like a bit of a fraud when you first try to think positively, but fake it until you make it, and it will start coming more naturally.

I am not going to tell you that doing x, y and z turns you into a positive thinker overnight. What I will tell you, and what I want you to hold on to in the bad times, is that it can get better. It has happened before and it will happen again.

You will not always feel this way. Better times are ahead. Hang in there and ride the wave - you will come out the other side stronger.

Who you stand near

Just as positive thinking breeds more of itself, negative breeds negative. If you surround yourself with negative, draining people, you will struggle enormously to build a positive mindset.

Cut them out where you can, and where you can’t, set firm boundaries to limit your exposure.

I want to add one honest caveat, because “cut negative people out” gets repeated far too casually. There is a real difference between a person who is genuinely corrosive - who belittles, competes, drains on purpose - and a person who is simply having the worst year of their life. The first one you should step away from. The second one needs you, and walking away from someone in that state, in the name of protecting your energy, is not growth. It is abandonment with good branding.

Know which one you are dealing with before you decide.

Make time for good. Find it in every person and every situation. You have to fight for the light at the end of the tunnel.

So when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: “If I weren’t a fighter, I wouldn’t be here today.” Trust the process and believe in yourself. You have come a long way already. Keep moving.

At the end of the day, it is about believing in the power of good over bad. It is about turning the negativity off.

-Kashish