Thinking positively can help you handle stress better and may even make you healthier.
Do you see the glass as being half empty or half full?
How you respond to this long-standing question about positive thinking may reveal your overall perspective on life, how you feel about yourself, and whether you tend to be hopeful or negative – and it might even impact your well-being.
Understanding positive thinking and self-talk
Positive thinking doesn’t mean you pretend the negative parts of life don’t exist.
Positive thinking means that you deal with unhappy situations in a happy and helpful way.
You believe good things will happen, not bad things.
Positive thinking generally begins with the way we talk to ourselves.
Self-talk is the continuous flow of thoughts that you have in your mind but do not say out loud.
These are thoughts that can happen without us making an effort, and they can be good or bad.
Sometimes, the things you say to yourself make sense and are logical.
Sometimes, you talk to yourself because you don’t have enough information, or you have certain ideas about what might happen that aren’t true.
If you tend to have mostly negative thoughts, it’s likely that you have a pessimistic view of life.
If you have mostly positive thoughts, then you are probably an optimist.
Being an optimist means you believe in positive thinking.
The health benefits of positive thinking
Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:
- Increased life span
- Lower rates of depression
- Greater resistance to illnesses
- Better psychological and physical well-being
- Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
- Reduced risk of death from cancer
- Reduced risk of death from respiratory conditions
We are not sure why people who think positively see these health advantages.
One idea is that being optimistic helps you handle stress better, which reduces the negative impact of stress on your body.
Identifying negative thinking
Some common forms of negative self-talk include:
- Filtering. You only see the bad and ignore the good parts of a situation. For instance, you had a good day at your job. You finished your work early and got praised for doing it quickly and well. That night, you only think about your plan to do more tasks and you forget about the nice things people said to you.
- Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.
- Catastrophizing. You always expect the worst to happen without any proof that it will actually happen. The coffee shop where you order from makes a mistake with your order, and now you think that the rest of your day will be terrible.
Focusing on positive thinking
Here are a few ways to have a positive mindset:
- Identify areas to change. If you want to be more positive and think happier thoughts, start by thinking about the areas of your life where you usually have negative thoughts. This could be your job, your daily travel, changes in your life, or your relationships. You can start by focusing on one thing and trying to be more positive about it.
- Be open to humor. Be ready to laugh and find things funny. Allow yourself to smile or laugh, especially when things are tough. Find funny things in everyday events. When you find humor in life, you feel less anxious.
- Surround yourself with positive people. Make sure those in your life are positive, supportive people you can depend on to give helpful advice and feedback.
- Practice positive self-talk. Start by following one simple rule: Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to anyone else. Be gentle and encouraging with yourself.
If you usually see things in a bad way, don’t expect to suddenly start seeing everything good.
However, if you keep practicing, over time the way you talk to yourself will involve fewer negative thoughts about yourself and more positive thoughts of accepting who you are.
You might start being less negative about the things happening in the world.