Developing A Positive Attitude

The truth about life is that everything changes. Nothing remains the same, including our moods, and attitudes. Everyone at a point in their life’s journey can succumb to feelings of despair, loneliness, fear, anxiety, and guilt. As humans, we are subject to various kinds of vulnerabilities. However, developing a positive attitude can help us cope with whatever challenges.

The good news is that we can follow the road maps provided by the thousands, if not millions of people who by taking positive thought patterns were able to have positive results from negativities of life.

And one of them is developing a positive attitude through a positive mindset. So in this article, I want us to look into some of the ways that we feel, think, and interpret our circumstances that result in having a moody kind of outlook, instead of being positive. There are circumstances beyond our control, and there are those within our control. Having a positive attitude toward life is one of them.

We Can Chose A Positive Mindset

Somebody says that we can’t choose what happens to us in life, but that we can choose how to react. I think that’s true. Happiness is a choice, and I didn’t realize this early enough, because I was waiting for perfect weather, a perfect family, a successful life, where everything should work according to my design, as a result of such kind of negative thought, I denied myself a life of joy and peace of mind, for a long time. Thank God I changed the way I use to see things and interpret things before.  What I have learned is that there are many things that can steal our happiness, peace of mind and at the same time, there are many or even more things that can keep us as happy as we want to be. It all depends on which ones we are seeing and reaching out to. 

There is a connection between how we feel with how we think. You can call it the mind/body interaction. Our body communicates to our mind. Therefore, it is important that we pay attention to the kind of communication going on within our mind, as to know how it affects our feelings and our attitude. The good news is that we can always intercept any of the misinformation trying to enter into our mind, distortion, and lies that can lead to wrong reactions.

For instance, whenever we are anxious, worried, stressed, is either we are thinking about our past failures, mistakes, relationships, financial problems, and so forth. Once the thoughts are not pleasants and uplifting, if we dwell on them constantly, the negative emotions will build up and can increase one’s vulnerability to depression.  https://positivepsychology.com/negative-emotions/

Understanding Harmful Thought Patterns

To break out of some of the thought patterns that affect our moods, behaviors, and emotional health, we will need first of all to understand the negative feelings we experience and the cause. And tracing the cause will not be far from the specific kind of negative thought patterns we entertain daily. Again, there are some people who cannot handle failure, rejection, loss, or disappointment gracefully. And their inability to handle appropriately any of the events can be traced to the person’s thinking pattern. Does the person think that failing at something is abnormal, or that he or she cannot experience any negative circumstances?

Maybe because of the person’s background, and level of success in life, the person feels and believes that failure and rejection are for certain people. That is living in a false premise. Instead, a healthy and mature thought about life circumstances should be, I’m able and willing to handle every life situation through learning and trusting in God’s word. Believing in God gives us a sound mind and wisdom about how to react to situations.

Take, for instance, the issue of rejection, so many people get easily defeated and lose their self-confidence for being rejected, either in a relationship, job, position, or admission into higher institutions.

Rejection like any other disappointing experience can cause some people their night sleep, and appetite.

The right approach will be for the person to counter and rephrases, and relabel such experience. An example of wrong interpretation or over-interpretation can sound like this, using the example of rejection. The person dealing with negative interpretations can be, why should I be rejected, when I have what it takes to be accepted by everybody?  It means I’m not worth anything. I’m not liked. I don’t have what it takes to be loved in a relationship and to be accepted in a position of authority and honor. As you can see, nursing such kind of thought can be demoralizing and unhealthy.

As a person starts to get a grasp of his or her daily problems under control, that will lead to building self-confidence and emotional strength, and knowledge that can lead to future problem-solving skills.

One of the reasons why so many people get easily overwhelmed with their challenges is as a result of the perfectionist approach to life issues. The fact is that any person, mostly women who have perfectionistic traits will always be prone to guilt, negative thoughts, anxiety, and worries. I know this because I was once a candidate.. 

Attitudes That Leads to Anxiety and Depression

For anybody who struggles with perfectionism, there is no lack of stress, this is basically due to a person’s thought problems. The attitude of thinking about things from a pessimistic standpoint doesn’t always lead to a good mood, from the standpoint of negativity, implying the mindset of nothing is right or nothing is working fine for me. I will not hesitate to conclude that perfectionist personality disposition often leads to anxiety and depression. 

7 Common Fears and Self-Defeating Attitudes to Resist At Any Cost

1. “The thought or feeling that the world and its system should always be the way I want it to be”
2.  “I must always please people and live up to people’s expectations”.  That’s a good recipe for failure.
3. “Other people ought to meet my expectations.”
4. “If I worry about or feel bad about any situation, it will somehow make things better…”
5. “I’m hopeless or feeling hopeless and bound to be depressed because the problems I face seem impossible to solve.”
6. I hate criticism if anyone criticizes me, it makes me feel as if something is wrong with me.
7. I hate being rejected, if I get rejected, abandoned it will make me feel so lonely and unloved.

These and many more are some of the bondages so many people found themselves, due to their thinking in a certain way that is not quite healthy for their mind to experience happiness and freedom inside out. But I submit to you that making a conscious effort to developing a positive attitude towards life, can bring the freedom that your soul secretly yearns for.

Self- imposed Problems and Limitations Through Thoughts

I know that it is hard to control our feelings or to have uninterrupted happiness, it is not impossible either to develop a positive attitude and to live happily regardless of the circumstances and what is going on in the chaotic world of today.

I could remember how hard it was for me to learn how to replace my negative way of thinking with positive thoughts. Even at this point, I’m still a work in progress. I was always vulnerable to somatic symptoms, My clinic will run all kinds of tests on me, the results always come out negative of whatever it was meant to dictate. And yet I was having constant fatigue, headache, body aches, insomnia, and feeling of loneliness. It was just a miserable life because I did understand then the disruptive effect of my thoughts on my health.

There are so many ways we think ourselves into so many problems by some of the automatic thoughts we cherish. These erroneous thoughts serve as chains some of us tire our feet with. This is true or it happens to be the case because we don’t challenge or know how to challenge and classify our thoughts patterns. 

But from my personal experience, identifying my negative thoughts, challenging myself by learning new ways of interpreting things was the beginning of my freedom. It wasn’t an easy exercise, neither was it a one-time practice. It requires diligence for change, to reverse course.

Identifying Your Negative Thought Pattern

One of the effective ways to deal with the negative thought is to use a counter questioning method. By that I mean, cross-questioning your thoughts, and even challenging your feelings. David did it in Psalm 42:5 “He said why are thou cast down , oh my soul?…”, For instance, let’s take the thought of “other people must meet my expectation.” You can ask yourself is it to my advantage that I should have this kind of belief? Is this a realistic expectation? Then you get the idea.

Secondly, you can ask if this expectation realistic for me as a person to think in this way?  Or you can ask and say what will happen if I confront my worst fears, will it mean the end of the world? These are some psychological counter questions to challenge some erroneous thoughts and set your mind free from their effects. – mood swings, negative emotions.

There is no doubt, everyone wants to be happy, to be productive, and to succeed in whatever thing we do. But often time, we see the opposite as our experience. There are some hindering factors we need to find out. How to Have a Better Life

I believe that so many people who are suffering and struggling today to make sense of what’s going on with their lives can live a better, healthier, and happy life if they can learn how to deal with the problems of their thought pattern. This may sound simple, but it is really complicated mostly with a perfectionist personality.

In other to have a positive mindset, to have proper perspectives about life generally, we have to relearn some things, change by taking a daily steady approach to control the negative thoughts. This is the starting point for improved mood, improved feelings, relationships, and success.

You can learn to replace fear and anxiety with faith-driven thoughts. Life can be enjoyed at any stage regardless of one’s circumstances, once you learn how to control and filter the negative thoughts and beliefs by replacing them with a healthy and positive mindset you will be amazed at your new experience.