Shakespeare taught us, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Positive thinking is a way of explaining and seeing events and people through a lens that makes the most of them, seeing the best in them and in yourself, and viewing negative events as temporary and rare.
How you explain life’s challenges has gained a great deal of attention in recent years, primarily because of the health benefits linked to positive thinking. Wait. Did Michael just say there are real health benefits to seeing and magnifying the positive and minimizing the negative in life? Did Michael just suggest that positive thinking can prevent illness? Yes, I did. Read on.
The Mayo Clinic, among other research and clinical treatment centers internationally, has found that positive thinking can benefit and restore your health:
- Increase life span and reduce frailty during older age
- Reduce stress and improve stress prevention and coping skills
- Decrease levels of depression, while increasing self-esteem
- Improve your immune system
- Increase resistance to the common cold
- Reduce risk from cardiovascular disease-related deaths
- Improve physical and psychological wellbeing
- Increases pain tolerance
- Improve your social life and interpersonal relationships
- Improve your cognitive brain functioning
Makes sense when you consider that positive thinkers don’t create stress in the first place, and tend to be healthier because they are more likely to exercise, eat well and follow a healthier lifestyle in general. Positive thoughts about life expand our perspective of the world and inspire us to be more creative and give us more options in daily life. And the more we think positively, the more we begin doing so almost automatically, creating lasting resilience and a flourishing, healthy lifestyle.
Keep in mind that the American Academy of Family Physicians tells us that two-thirds of all office visits to family physicians are due to stress-related symptoms. The Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study has found that men who are optimistic are less than half as likely to develop heart disease than are pessimistic, negative thinking men.
So if you want to prevent illness through positive thinking, and restore your health by taking advantage of the power of positive thinking, I suggest using the following curated, best-in-class tools for the next 60 days consistently:
- Earl Nightingale said, “You become what you think about all day long.” Step one is to hit the “delete” button on your own words, and the words of others like, “can’t,” “should/shouldn’t,” “will fail,” “self-blame,” “terrible,” “horrible,” and “awful.” Is it a horror or just a hassle?
- Replace your negative lens with words that promote and advance your strength and your forward movement, to free you of head winds that don’t really exist except in your own mind. Words that leave you seeing what can go right, instead of what can go wrong, will set you on the right track. Think words like, “No problem!” “I’m sure there’s a way,” “I think I can help.”
- Why meditate on the wrong things and thereby increase your stress and negativity? Look beyond your flaws with your condemning thoughts, and instead see your potential. That’s positive affirmation. Tell yourself it’s time to come out of your cocoon, and start answering to positive, not negative, labels. You deserve to be self-confident, happy, loved and successful.
- Begin your day with positive thoughts by thinking, reading, and saying positive things you will do during the day.
- Take the following actions throughout your day:
- Be nice by being kind and doing nice things to those you know and those you don’t know.
- Smile at people you know and those you don’t know.
- Praise others.
- Be proud of every little step you take towards your accomplishments no matter how small.
- Grow your self-compassion by recognizing that when you do something for another, you are doing it because it makes you feel good. Self-compassion is not selfish. It’s survival.
