We depend on our happiness to fuel our daily routines, sense of drive and purpose, and core motivations, but did you know that happiness depends on us too? The power of positive thinking everyday is easily underestimated.
We often blame feeling unhappy on the obstacles around us — our job, our personal relationships, or even our missed opportunities. And while there’s some truth to the fact that not everything exists within our control, what is in our control is how we choose to respond to these events.
That’s where positive thinking can make its impact.
Here’s how positive thinking can make or break how you make your way in the world, and how you can effectively make it a part of your daily routine.
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
— Norman Vincent Peale
What are the Benefits of Cultivating Positive Thinking Everyday?
Positive thinking does more than induce happy feelings. When you make the shift from being a negative thinker to affirming peaceful thoughts and ideas, you deliberately cultivate genuine inner peace (and may find little miracles and incredible things crossing your path with more ease).
And it’s not just a coincidence.
The Universe responds to the energy we put forth into the world, whether it’s our stressful attitudes or a positive outlook. Have you ever heard the phrase, “What goes around comes around”? Or maybe you’ve come across a “self-fulfilling prophecy” kind of experience.
These are just practical, casual ways that we describe the more profound phenomenon of thinking positively. When we start believing that something is true or holds power, it can begin to hold power over us.
Positive thinkers aren’t just naive optimists. They recognize that positive thinking in itself is a massive creative force, capable of shaping which opportunities you do and don’t have the confidence to take, discerning which relationships are right or wrong, and matching you with the energy most aligned with your highest potential.
So, how do you begin your journey to unlocking the power of positive thinking?
1. Note the Negatives First
In order to call in positive thinking effectively, you may actually want to begin with your negative thought patterns. Your mind probably isn’t empty — it’s already full of ideas that are influencing your path to creating a satisfying life.
Rather than stuff your mind with inauthentic positive fluff right off the bat, you can start by identifying the negative ideas you repeat to yourself in your daily life.
Pay attention, and honestly ask yourself:
- What difficulties prompt negative thoughts the most for me?
- What negative ideas do I internalize from other people (or even from the media)?
- What negative thoughts do I repeat the most, even if they make absolutely no sense?
Now with an idea of what hinders you most in your road to embracing positive thinking everyday, you can make a game plan that makes sense for you.
2. Cultivate Realistic, Practical Habits
It’s not always reasonable for everyone to make a 180 shift into intensely detailed vision boards, wholeheartedly adopt new spiritual lifestyles, and repeat positive thoughts every ten minutes. Thankfully, you don’t have to in order to make positive thinking work for you.
Utilizing positive thinking everyday should feel natural in your lifestyle, especially in the beginning. Humans build up habits gradually over time, and not overnight. So, your goals should initially be on par with how you might usually set a practical goal or habit.
Try these simple but effective positive thinking strategies:
- Set an affirmation as a reminder on your phone
- Delete or block profiles, accounts, or posts that don’t align with your desired energy
- Set an important but easily achievable goal to accomplish for the week to validate your own ability to get things done
- Reward yourself for each positive thought you organically stumble into
“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”
– Winston Churchill
3. Embracing Uniqueness
If it’s not authentically you, it’s not authentically positive. It’s tempting to mimic what you think positive thinking “should” look and feel like based on what others say and share, but remember that the key is keeping things natural.
Operate honestly and don’t fall into the temptations of copying others. If you feel afraid of embracing your own unique ways of thinking, you’ll have a hard time discerning a helpful thought pattern from an unhelpful one, as everyone’s a little different in how they initiate genuine happy thinking.
4. Share the Love
Remember: what goes around comes around! When you share your positive ideas and happy attitudes with others, you’re pushing the energy of positivity out to more people.
And in turn, the Universe may respond by pushing out the positivity right back to you.
Either way, a positive environment nourishes a positive attitude. If you have a hard time identifying what positive opportunities and environments exist for you, it may be up to you to create one for yourself!
Here are some practical ways you can spread the joy of positivity everyday:
- Commit to one act of kindness for a stranger per week
- Send a loved one a random “thank you” note for their companionship
- Express compliments whenever they naturally come to your mind
5. Active Alignment
Simply acting enthusiastically without rhyme or reason isn’t going to add practical value to your day-to-day life. If you don’t act in alignment with the newfound positive thoughts you’ve added to your daily thought patterns, you won’t be fully aligning with the blessings you seek to introduce into your life.
For example, imagine that you verbally committed to keeping a secret for someone. The commitment being expressed verbally is around half of the picture. But if you immediately begin spreading this person’s secret, you have still forfeited the trust you built with them when you made the promise.
The power of positive thinking is diminished when you don’t follow up on your thoughts. Sometimes, calling in a bit of courage, too, is a part of the process.
If you found this article helpful. Please share it with a friend or your network.
