Positive Thinking Benefits: How to Think Positive Thoughts

Positive thinking is doing your best to think of the bright side in any situation. Learning to develop a positive outlook like this has been the subject of many bestsellers of the years because so many people feel the habit doesn’t come naturally to them. To think positive thoughts requires you to supplant negative thinking patterns with a more upbeat approach to life.

A positive mental attitude comes with a litany of benefits for anyone who adopts such a disposition. Here are three clear pros to making a habit of positive thinking:

1. 1. Better coping skills: When you make thinking positive thoughts habitual, you can take bad things in stride. Positive thinking helps soften the blow of negative situations, as you’re better able to see the silver linings. This makes it easier to cope with the fact life is a long series of ups and downs.
2. 2. Greater contentment: Positive people feel a greater sense of contentment and well-being overall than people who engage in primarily negative thinking. When you think positive thoughts, you start to gain the self-confidence necessary to handle all the good and the bad life will throw at you. A positive state of mind helps you build a firm foundation capable of weathering storms and celebrating successes with equanimity.
3. 3. Less stress: The more you engage in positive thinking, the greater of a handle you’ll have on stress management. Stress affects both your mental and physical health, even leading to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. In other words, positive thinkers might even increase their potential life span by engaging in optimism as a form of proactive and holistic health care.

Cultivating a positive attitude might take work at first, but it will reward you plentifully throughout your life. Keep these tips in mind as you develop positive thinking habits:

• Acknowledge negative thoughts. It’s impossible to feel positive emotions all the time. Allow yourself to feel negative emotions as they come and refrain from judging yourself for feeling them. You can even see the incursion of occasional negative thoughts and feelings in a positive way. For example, difficult times often make us more resilient and better able to help others who go through similar situations in the future.
• Be compassionate toward yourself. As you start your journey to more positive thinking, remember the importance of being kind to yourself. Adopt a growth mindset rather than engaging in self-criticism. Speak positive words to yourself as you do your best to see everything—including your own flaws—in a positive light.
• Cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Ground your personal positive psychology in gratitude. Rather than beat yourself up for thinking negative thoughts, use each pessimistic idea that pops up in your daily life as a reminder to identify one thing you’re grateful for, too. To make it easier to develop this sort of mental attitude, consider sitting down at the beginning and end of every day to write about what you most look forward to and most appreciated about a given day in a gratitude journal.
• Participate in things you enjoy. It’s easier to think positive thoughts if you seek out positive experiences. Focus on cultivating areas of your life that bring you joy, and forgo negative situations if possible. Listen to podcasts about positive subjects. Make an upbeat playlist of all your favorite songs. Take a walk outside. Go to events you know you’ll enjoy. This way, you’ll have plenty of positive memories to think about when things take a turn toward the negative.
• Practice mindfulness. Make a new habit of mindfulness and meditation to help you get through difficult situations. Meditation helps you realize the transitoriness of each thought and circumstance, unlocking the possibility to establish a more positive mindset. If you know all things must pass, you also know sadness will give way to happiness and vice versa. This allows you to think in a more equanimous and content manner.
• Surround yourself with positive people. Social psychology indicates we pick up characteristics from the people we spend the most time around. It will be far easier to start thinking positively more routinely if you surround yourself with upbeat and optimistic people—as opposed to people prone to constant pessimism.
• Utilize positive self-talk. Reframe your reality by replacing negative self-talk with positive affirmations. When you notice yourself constantly thinking in a negative pattern, short-circuit these thoughts by restating them in a positive light. For example, suppose you think, “I looked like a fool in front of everyone because I didn’t know what everyone was talking about at work today and just stayed silent.” You could reframe this by thinking, “I looked like a good listener today and gleaned a lot of valuable information from my coworkers. Now, it’ll be easier to talk with them about this topic in the future.”

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