Sometimes, trying to practice positive thinking and stay happy, even when things don’t go our way can prove impossible.
We’ve been advised countless times to set goals, follow our dreams, and attain success. But no one told us how hard it was going to be. Funny thing is that we were told to expect failures on the way, but we didn’t know what it truly meant until we failed the first time and felt like giving up.
It’s at this point that we then try to look for faster roads to success that would be less challenging and that would make us happy. So, we look for secret nuggets that would propel us into that desired future we really crave.
Well here’s a secret…
There’s no secret! There are only principles and methods that you probably know already but have not followed. Well, I’ll tell you some of those methods. But first, here’s something you need to understand…
Positive Thinking Is Not Magic
It’s not a get rich quick scheme that would throw money into your hands every day. It’s not voodoo you can use to manipulate your destiny and it’s not something mystical that’s meant for only a “specific set of people”. It’s a method, like every other method, that you have to learn. It’s a tactic that can be used by everyone, no matter your background or how negative the situation might be.
The good thing is that you’ll have no problem with staying motivated once you learn how to use it. So, here are 3 simple ways to motivate yourself using positive thinking.
1. Make Less Errors by Assessing Your Mistakes
“Insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result.” – Albert Einstein
On the road to achieving your dreams, you’re definitely going to make mistakes, and you’ll probably make a lot. Some of them will be so silly; you’d beat yourself up for being so stupid. Others would be less obvious. But no matter how “simple” the mistake might have been, it’s very easy to get depressed by it.
I’ve had my fair share of mistakes, and there was a time I made lots. But the important thing is how do you approach mistakes in your life? Do you beat yourself up or do you ignore them only to repeat those mistakes again? To stay motivated, I needed to build the right attitude toward dealing with mistakes.
Simply ask yourself, “What went wrong and how can I make it right next time?” If you ignore the mistake, you’ll only commit the same error in future. But if you attack it head-on by assessing it, you’ll save yourself unnecessary errors.
2. Develop Yourself Personally By Learning from Disappointments
“Valuable lessons sometimes come as gifts in ugly wrappers called disappointments.”
Unlike mistakes, disappointments occur regardless of all the correct things you did or right decisions to took during a period. You can’t “guarantee” that a disappointment can’t occur in any situation. It’s like chance or luck- you don’t know when it comes- but it comes anyway. And this is why you need to be ready for it and develop a mindset that’ll turn it around in your favor.
Being that I often got easily depressed whenever things turned out bad, I used to get really beat up whenever a disappointment hit. And every disappointment brought its bulldoze of negative thoughts in my head. Things got worse when friends started to disappoint me in different things. But it took me some time to realize that the problem here was that I expected too much from people and I had a closed mind.
To make the most out of any disappointing situation, you need to develop an open mind. An open mind allows you to see situations from different perspectives, no matter how positive or negative it may be. And if a disappointment eventually hits you, having an open mind helps you effectively answer the question, “What is this situation trying to teach me?” Asking yourself that question helps you to see and learn from the positive side of that seemingly negative situation.
3. Improve Decision Making By Controlling Your Reactions
“Anxiety gets you nowhere. It only gives you something to think about.”
It’s very easy to get anxious when a situation doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to or get angry when a friend offends you. But here’s what anxiety and anger does to you: these emotions blind you so that you can’t see the positive lesson to be learned in that negative situation. They make you think irrationally so that you become confused and believe that getting angry or being anxious is the only way out.
Anger is never a solution to any problem, and neither is anxiety. But every day, I found myself falling prey to these emotions which smuggled negative thoughts into my head. The only reason why this was so was because I didn’t know I had the power to control my reaction to negative situations. You can choose to remain positive and motivated, no matter how bad the situation proves to be.
Before you get anxious over any situation, find out if you can determine the outcome of that situation. If you can’t control the result, then why worry about it? Do what you have to do and learn to let nature take its course. Likewise, before you get angry at anyone who may have offended you, think about how valuable that person is to you and what might happen if you utter the wrong word. You’d realize that the more you do this, the more positive your words will get.
It’s possible to stay positive everyday of your life and use that positivity to motivate yourself towards achieving your goals. But you’ll have to deal with the foundations first. You’ll need to first make up your mind to stay positive before making the decision to use it as a tool for achieving purpose.
Mistakes and disappointments will always come, but it‘s how you deal with them that matters. By learning from them and controlling your reactions when things don’t go your way, experiencing positivity becomes a whole lot easier. There are lots of ways to make positive thinking a part of your life, but these three will definitely get you started. So, get started already!
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Lanre Solarin was once extremely negative about life until he encountered life changing positive experiences.