Difference between positive and negative thinking

Do you see the glass half full or do you always think that it’s half empty? Most probably if you are a negative thinker then you will see the glass as half empty while if you were a positive thinker you will see it as half full. Positive thinking in general is the habit of seeing the positive side of things rather than the negative side. Positive thinkers see a chance in every challenge and negative thinkers see a challenge in every chance.

What can positive thinking do to your life?

Positive thinking can turn your life around because many of our pain and suffering that we experience in our lives results from expecting bad things to happen, excessive worrying and anxiety. Underlying many of the personal disorders people have is incorrect perception of reality or viewing reality from a much worse perspective than its really is. Thinking in a positive way will make your life much happier and healthier because you will be able to think realistically.

How to be a positive thinker?

But how to think positively while being surrounded by all of these uncertainties? The key for learning positive thinking is changing your "self talk" to a positive one instead of a negative one. Self talk are the phrases and words you use when you think or talk to yourself. For example a negative thinker could use phrases in his mind like "oh i will never make it in time" or maybe "i don't expect to do well today".

This negative self talk can easily be changed into positive self talk using training. Whenever you find yourself thinking negatively say to your self "i must be more rational, things may not be that negative", after some practice positive thinking will become a habit and you may not need to do it manually.

Another good thing you can do in order to become a positive thinker is to understand how thoughts flow inside your mind. By understanding what triggers certain thoughts you will be able to control your thoughts to a certain extent and so help yourself in becoming a positive thinker.

Religion and positive thinking

Another good way to change your way of thinking from a negative to a positive one is getting more involved into religion. All religions contain beliefs that encourage positive thinking and optimism.

Friends and negative thinking

Friends can be a source of either positive or negative beliefs. Make sure you pick friends who think positively and who are optimists. Stay longer with them and tell them more about your future plans. You can notice if someone is an optimist or pessimist by just taking a look at his face using face reading.

Over generalization & negative thinking

One very complicated form of negative thinking is over generalization, over generalization is the habit of thinking that everything is negative while expecting nothing to be positive at all. Over generalization may be your normal way of thinking that you have developed as a result of your past experiences or it may be a temporary mental state that you experience when you have a bad day. Usually when lots of bad things happen at the beginning of a day people expect the whole day to be bad, this is one form of over generalization.

But what if there was real negative things

its worth to mention that being a positive thinker does not mean ignoring all negative aspects of something but instead both negative and positive aspects are to be considered but the emphasis you put on the negative aspects should be much lower than those of the positive aspects.