Positive thinking
Positive thinking
Positivity doesn’t always refer to simply smiling and looking cheerful, however—positivity is more about one’s overall perspective on life and their tendency to focus on all that is good in life.
In this piece, we’ll cover the basics of positivity within positive psychology, identify some of the many benefits of approaching life from a positive point of view, and explore some tips and techniques for cultivating a positive mindset.
This piece is a long one, so settle in and get comfortable. Let’s get started.
What is a Positive Mindset and Attitude? A Definition
You probably have an idea of what a positive mindset or positive attitude is already, but it’s always helpful to start with a definition.
This definition from Remez Sasson (n.d.) is a good general description:
Positive thinking actually means approaching life’s challenges with a positive outlook. It does not necessarily mean avoiding or ignoring the bad things; instead, it involves making the most of the potentially bad situations, trying to see the best in other people, and viewing yourself and your abilities in a positive light.”
We can extrapolate from these definitions and come up with a good description of a positive mindset as the tendency to focus on the bright side, expect positive results, and approach challenges with a positive outlook.
Having a positive mindset means making positive thinking a habit, continually searching for the silver lining and making the best out of any situation you find yourself in.
Characteristics and Traits of a Positive Mindset: 6 Examples
So, now we know what a positive mindset is, we can dive into the next important question: What does it look like?
There are many traits and characteristics associated with a positive mindset, including:
- Optimism: a willingness to make an effort and take a chance instead of assuming your efforts won’t pay off.
- Acceptance: acknowledging that things don’t always turn out how you want them to, but learning from your mistakes.
- Resilience: bouncing back from adversity, disappointment, and failure instead of giving up.
- Gratitude: actively, continuously appreciating the good things in your life (Blank, 2017).
- Consciousness/Mindfulness: dedicating the mind to conscious awareness and enhancing the ability to focus.
- Integrity: the trait of being honorable, righteous, and straightforward, instead of deceitful and self-serving (Power of Positivity, n.d.).
Not only are these characteristics of a positive mindset, but they may also work in the other direction—actively adopting optimism, acceptance, resilience, gratitude, mindfulness, and integrity in your life will help you develop and maintain a positive mindset.
A List of Positive Attitudes
If you found the list above still too vague, there are many more specific examples of a positive attitude in action.
For example, positive attitudes can include:
- It is looking adversity in the eye… and laughing.
- Getting what you get, and not pitching a fit.
- Enjoying the unexpected, even when it’s not what you wanted originally.
- Motivating those around you with a positive word.
- Using the power of a smile to reverse the tone of a situation.
- Being friendly to those you don’t know.
- It’s getting back up when you fall down. (No matter how many times you fall down.)
- Being a source of energy that lifts those around you.
- Understanding that relationships are more important than material things.
- Being happy even when you have little.
- Having a good time even when you are losing.
- Being happy for someone else’s success.
- Having a positive future vision, no matter how bad your current circumstances.
- Smiling.
- Paying a compliment, even to a total stranger.
- Tell someone you know that they did a great job. (And mean it.)
- Making someone’s day. (Not just a child’s… adult’s like to have their day be special, too!)
- It’s not complaining no matter how unfair things appear to be. (It is a waste of time… instead, do something!)
- Not letting other people’s negativity bring you down.
- Giving more than you expect to get in return.
- Being true to yourself… always (Jarrow, 2012).
Why is a Positive Attitude Considered the Key to Success?
Now we know a little bit more about what a positive mindset looks like, we can turn to one of the biggest questions of all: What’s the deal with having a positive attitude?
What is it about having a positive mindset that is so important, so impactful, so life-changing?
Well, the traits and characteristics listed above give us a hint; if you comb through the literature, you’ll see a plethora of benefits linked to optimism, resilience, and mindfulness.
You’ll see that awareness and integrity are linked to better quality of life, and acceptance and gratitude can take you from the “okay life” to the “good life.”
The Importance of Developing the Right Thoughts
Developing a truly positive mindset and gaining these benefits is a function of the thoughts you cultivate.
Don’t worry—this piece isn’t about the kind of positive thinking that is all positive, all the time. We don’t claim that just “thinking happy thoughts” will bring you all the success you desire in life, and we certainly don’t believe that optimism is warranted in every situation, every minute of the day.
Developing the right thoughts is not about being constantly happy or cheerful, and it’s not about ignoring anything negative or unpleasant in your life. It’s about incorporating both the positive and negativeinto your perspective and choosing to still be generally optimistic.
It’s about acknowledging that you will not always be happy and learning to accept bad moods and difficult emotions when they come.
Above all, it’s about increasing your control over your own attitude in the face of whatever comes your way. You cannot control your mood, and you cannot always control the thoughts that pop into your head, but you can choose how you handle them.
When you choose to give in to the negativity, pessimism, and doom-and-gloom view of the world, you are not only submitting to a loss of control and potentially wallowing in unhappiness—you are missing out on an important opportunity for growth and development.
According to positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, negative thinking, and negative emotions have their place: they allow you to sharpen your focus on dangers, threats, and vulnerabilities. This is vital for survival, although perhaps not as much as it was for our ancestors.
On the other hand, positive thinking and positive emotions “broaden and build” our resources and skills, and open us up to possibilities (Fredrickson, 2004).
Building a positive framework for your thoughts is not about being bubbly and annoyingly cheerful, but making an investment in yourself and your future. It’s okay to feel down or think pessimistically sometimes, but choosing to respond with optimism, resilience, and gratitude will benefit you far more in the long run.
A List of Positive Attitudes
If you found the list above still too vague, there are many more specific examples of a positive attitude in action.
For example, positive attitudes can include:
- It is looking adversity in the eye… and laughing.
- Getting what you get, and not pitching a fit.
- Enjoying the unexpected, even when it’s not what you wanted originally.
- Motivating those around you with a positive word.
- Using the power of a smile to reverse the tone of a situation.
- Being friendly to those you don’t know.
- It’s getting back up when you fall down. (No matter how many times you fall down.)
- Being a source of energy that lifts those around you.
- Understanding that relationships are more important than material things.
- Being happy even when you have little.
- Having a good time even when you are losing.
- Being happy for someone else’s success.
- Having a positive future vision, no matter how bad your current circumstances.
- Smiling.
- Paying a compliment, even to a total stranger.
- Tell someone you know that they did a great job. (And mean it.)
- Making someone’s day. (Not just a child’s… adult’s like to have their day be special, too!)
- It’s not complaining no matter how unfair things appear to be. (It is a waste of time… instead, do something!)
- Not letting other people’s negativity bring you down.
- Giving more than you expect to get in return.
- Being true to yourself… always.
The Importance of Developing the Right Thoughts
Developing a truly positive mindset and gaining these benefits is a function of the thoughts you cultivate.
Don’t worry—this piece isn’t about the kind of positive thinking that is all positive, all the time. We don’t claim that just “thinking happy thoughts” will bring you all the success you desire in life, and we certainly don’t believe that optimism is warranted in every situation, every minute of the day.
Developing the right thoughts is not about being constantly happy or cheerful, and it’s not about ignoring anything negative or unpleasant in your life. It’s about incorporating both the positive and negative into your perspective and choosing to still be generally optimistic.
It’s about acknowledging that you will not always be happy and learning to accept bad moods and difficult emotions when they come.
Above all, it’s about increasing your control over your own attitude in the face of whatever comes your way. You cannot control your mood, and you cannot always control the thoughts that pop into your head, but you can choose how you handle them.
When you choose to give in to the negativity, pessimism, and doom-and-gloom view of the world, you are not only submitting to a loss of control and potentially wallowing in unhappiness—you are missing out on an important opportunity for growth and development.
According to positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, negative thinking, and negative emotions have their place: they allow you to sharpen your focus on dangers, threats, and vulnerabilities. This is vital for survival, although perhaps not as much as it was for our ancestors.
On the other hand, positive thinking and positive emotions “broaden and build” our resources and skills, and open us up to possibilities (Fredrickson, 2004).
Building a positive framework for your thoughts is not about being bubbly and annoyingly cheerful, but making an investment in yourself and your future. It’s okay to feel down or think pessimistically sometimes, but choosing to respond with optimism, resilience, and gratitude will benefit you far more in the long run.
The Outcomes of a Positive Attitude
Aside from enhancing your skills and personal resources, there are many other benefits of cultivating a positive mindset, including better overall health, better ability to cope with stress, and greater well-being
According to the experts at the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking can increase your lifespan, reduce rates of depression and levels of distress, give you greater resistance to the common cold, improve your overall psychological and physical well-being, improve your cardiovascular health and protect you from cardiovascular disease, and help you build coping skills to keep you afloat during challenging times (2017).
According to the experts positive thinking can increase your lifespan, reduce rates of depression and levels of distress, give you greater resistance to the common cold, improve your overall psychological and physical well-being, improve your cardiovascular health and protect you from cardiovascular disease, and help you build coping skills to keep you afloat during challenging times.
You’ve probably heard of all these generic benefits before, so we’ll get more specific and explore the benefits of a positive mindset in several different contexts:
- The workplace
- Leadership
- Dealing with disability (for both those with a disability and those around them)
- Nursing and healthcare
- Recovery from cancer
10 Benefits of a Positive Mental Attitude in the Workplace
No construct better captures the essence of a positive attitude in the workplace quite like psychological capital (or PsyCap for short). This multicomponent construct is made up of four psychological resources:
- Hope
- Efficacy
- Resilience
- Optimism
33 Tips on How to Have & Keep a Positive Mindset in Life and at Work
Do a quick Google search on how to cultivate a more positive mindset, and you’ll see that there are tons of suggestions out there! We’ve gathered some of the most popular and most evidence-backed methods here, but don’t hesitate to search for more if you need them.
Larry Alton (2018) from Success.com lists 7 practical tips to help you get more positive:
- Start the day with positive affirmations (scroll down to see some example affirmations).
- Focus on the good things, however small they are.
- Find humor in bad situations.
- Turn failures into lessons—and learn from them!
- Transform negative self-talk into positive self-talk.
- Focus on the present instead of getting mired in the past or losing your way in the future.
- Find positive friends, mentors, and co-workers to support and encourage you.
A successful author, speaker, and coach Brian Tracy (n.d.) echoes some of these tips and adds a couple more:
- Remember that it’s your response that determines the outcome of a situation.
- Use positive affirmations or phrases to chase off negative thoughts.
- Find inspirational quotes and messages to bolster your positivity.
- Decide to be happy by being grateful and assuming the people around you have the best of intentions.
- Challenge yourself to maintain a positive attitude when something goes wrong—show the world how resilient and positive you are!
For a more specific list of habits and actions you can take to develop a more positive mindset, try these 10 suggestions from Megan Wycklendt (2014) of Fulfillment Daily:
- 1. Keep a gratitude journal.
- 2. Reframe your challenges as opportunities for growth.
- 3. Get good at being rejected—it happens to everyone!
- 4. Use positive words to describe your life.
- 5. Replace have with get (e.g., I have to go to work → I get to go to work).
- 6. Don’t let yourself get dragged down into other people’s complaints.
- 7. Breathe—consciously, purposefully, and mindfully.
- 8. Notice the righteous and good in times of tragedy and violence.
- 9. Have solutions ready when you point out problems.
- 10. Make someone else smile.
Finally, these 10 techniques can also help you adopt a more positive attitude:
- Ask yourself, “Do I think positively?” If you don’t then you need to work on your mindset.
- Strengthen your memory for positive information by using positive words more often.
- Strengthen your brain’s ability to work with positive information with exercises that involve positive words.
- Strengthen your brain’s ability to pay attention to the positive by routinely redirecting your focus away from the negative to the positive.
- Condition yourself to experience random moments of positivity (use classical conditioning on yourself to build positive associations).
- Think positive—but not too much—and think negative when you need to; sometimes we need to grieve, think about the negative consequences, and use negative emotions to motivate and engage us.
- Practice gratitude (perhaps with a gratitude journal).
- Savor the good moments (stop to “smell the roses” and celebrate the positive).
- Generate positive emotions by watching funny videos
- Stop minimizing your successes and acknowledge the efforts you put in.
- Stop all-or-nothing thinking; this cognitive distortion is not in line with reality since things are very rarely “all good” or “all bad.”
can implement in your own life or encourage your clients to try in order to think more positively:
- Listen to your favorite music—it’s that easy! Music has a fairly unique ability to put you in a positive state of mind, so take advantage of that fact.
- Express your thankfulness and gratitude for all the good things in your life. Appreciate them, and write them down to help you remember.
- Remember to breathe. Breathe deeply, slowly, and mindfully to transport your mind to a positive, calm place.
- Don’t live according to a label—labels come from others, not from yourself, and you are so much more than a simple label could ever represent. Be authentic, and it will be much easier to be positive.
- Check your internal dialogue, and challenge that critical inner voice to make room for happiness.
- Engage in positive activities like meditation, yoga, hiking, playing a sport, or whatever other activity you enjoy.
- Take back control of the things you can change—and put in the effort required to actually change—but learn to accept the things you cannot change.
- Go easy on yourself. Don’t kick yourself when you’re down; everyone fails, and it doesn’t mean you’re not good enough.
- Pay attention to your diet, and ensure that you eat healthy food that will contribute to a healthy and positive mind.
- Embrace change—it’s happening whether we want it to or not, so it’s best to embrace it. Make an effort to step outside of your comfort zone.
- Listen to upbeat music.
- Have sex (that can certainly be an engaging and life-affirming activity!).
- Travel, even if it’s not very far—the point is to interact with different people and get to know other cultures.
- Eat healthy foods.
- Be thankful and cultivate gratitude.
- Journal and/or use a notebook to write things down—especially positive things you are grateful for.
- Breathe mindfully and deeply.
- Use positive words and avoid phrases like “I can’t” and “I won’t.”
- Practice positive affirmations or mantras.
- Try the Best Possible Self exercise (imagine yourself in your best possible future, and write about it).
- Volunteer and commit your time and efforts to helping others.
- Take control of the things you can, and accept the things you can’t.
- Remind yourself “Never a failure, always a lesson;” make every failure a learning opportunity.
- Try the mirror technique—say something positive about yourself (and truly mean it) every time you see yourself in the mirror.
- Socialize and spend time with others, including family, friends, your spouse or significant other, and new friends or acquaintances.
- Creating art that helps them to manage their feelings and turn their mind towards the positive
- Keep “Quote Books,” or notebooks for your children to write in. Every week, choose a positive quote to share with your kids and encourage them to write it down along with their thoughts, drawings that correspond to the quote, or insights from a family discussion or activities based on the quote.
Affirmations
If you’re interested in affirmations, try the Mind Tools list of positive thinking affirmations:
- I have plenty of creativity for this project.
- My work will be recognized in a positive way by my boss and colleagues.
- I can do this!
- My team respects and values my opinion.
- I am successful.
- I am honest in my life, and my work.
- I like completing tasks and projects on time.
- I’m grateful for the job I have.
- I enjoy working with my team.
- I’m bringing a positive attitude to work every day.
- I am excellent at what I do.
- I am generous.
- I am happy.
- I will be a leader in my organization.
If none of these appeal to you on a deep level, refer to their tips on developing your own personal affirmations:
- Think about the areas of your life that you’d like to change.
- Write affirmations that are credible and achievable (based on reality).
- Use your affirmations to turn negative into positive (note a persistent negative thought and choose an affirmation that is the opposite).
- Write your affirmations in the present tense—affirm yourself in the here and now, not a vague future version of yourself.
- Say it with feeling! Your affirmations should be personally meaningful to you
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