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POSITIVE THINKING seems to work for some
people, but when you try it, you don’t feel any better and
you don’t DO any better. Why? Why doesn’t positive
thinking seem to work for you?
You must have had the thought, “Maybe
they’re faking it. Maybe it doesn’t work for anybody.”
But then you come across studies about positive thinking improving
health, and it makes you doubt your doubt, right? Then the question
is, “Why doesn’t positive thinking work for me?”
And you think, “Maybe if I thought positive about positive
thinking it would work better.”
But that’s not the problem. When positive
thinking works, it’s not because people believe in it —
it works when it does because people are doing it in a certain
way. When positive thinking doesn't work for you, it’s
for one of these three reasons:
1. Your willpower is in conflict with
your imagination. Whenever the
two conflict, imagination always wins. If you are forcing yourself
to “think positive” while imagining things turning
out badly, you will feel badly even though you are saying positive
things to yourself. Imagination is more powerful.
2. You’re thinking positively negatively. If you try to prevent yourself from thinking a
negative thought, experiments show you will think the thought
MORE than if you don’t try to avoid the thought. That’s
just how the brain works.
3. Your positive thinking is done shallowly
and without commitment. Platitudes
don’t work. You can’t just say positive things
and expect it to have an impact on your attitude or your mood.
Your feelings are affected by what you truly believe, not what
you merely say.
If you want to enjoy the health benefits,
the benefits to your relationships, and the improved effectiveness
at accomplishing your goals that positive thinking can give you
— you’ve got to apply these principles:
1. Don’t use force. You can’t
force yourself to be positive, and in fact, forcing yourself
is an unpleasant feeling. Use your imagination effectively instead.
Sit down, close your eyes, and relax first — before
you use your imagination. (Read why you must relax first). Once you’re
relaxed, imagine the outcome you want. If you’re in the
middle of a crisis you can’t do this, of course. So this
one won’t work on the spot. But it will work for a longer-term
situation. A few times a week, relax deeply and envision the outcome you want.
2. It doesn’t work to try not
to think of something negative. If you find yourself doing that,
what can you do? Direct your thoughts with a good question. Read more
about this technique here.
3. If platitudes don’t work, but you
want to think more positively, what can you do? The negative
thoughts are like a virus on your computer. You need a way to
isolate the virus and then remove it. Forcing yourself to think
something positive every time you think something negative doesn’t
work because you don’t believe the positive thought.
The solution is to find out what’s
wrong with the negative thought — and if there’s nothing
wrong with it, to accept the reality and stop concerning yourself
with trying to disbelieve it.
But probably there is something
genuinely wrong with your negative thoughts. You can find out
by using the Antivirus
for Your Mind. It is a process of calling up those negative
thoughts one at a time and really looking at each one carefully
to see if the thought contains any of the 22 “mind-viruses.”
These are 22
thought-mistakes. Everybody makes them at some time or another,
and (without knowing it) believes something that isn’t true
— something that impairs their ability to function or something
that brings them down unnecessarily. Root out those mistakes
in your own thoughts and free yourself of the tyranny of false
negative beliefs.
Positive thinking — done in a particular
way — can indeed work beautifully. Now you know how. Does
it seem too hard? Were you looking for a quick fix? If so, look
carefully at your belief. Would it really be so hard to relax
and imagine a good outcome? Would it really be so hard to spend
a half hour rooting out a false belief that consistently brings
you down?
The benefits of effective positive thinking
far outweigh the time and effort it takes to achieve it.
So start today. Choose one of the three
solutions and get to work on it. After you have that one pretty
well mastered, come back and choose another one and work on it.
If you have questions or want to share your experiences (or read
others’ experiences), check out the comments page for "Why Doesn't Positive
Thinking Work?"
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