So, here’s a question for you. Would you consider yourself to be an optimist, a pessimist, or maybe a realist? Well I’m sure which ever one you are you have a very strong case for why you are that way. There are many types of people in this world, but today, I want to speak to the optimist in you. We may have to dig deep to find it, but I know it’s in there somewhere. Optimism, and more specifically, positivity, is a life changing tool that can help you overcome negative thinking, trauma, anxiety, and the everyday stresses of life…but why is thinking positive so hard to do, especially during those difficult times? In this episode I’m going to discuss the importance of positive thinking and speaking, tell you how to implement this practice in your daily life, and inspire you to watch yo mouth!
Before we jump into this topic I want to make something very clear. We are discussing the importance of positive thinking and speaking positively, but I don’t want to lead anyone to think that having emotions such as sadness, grief, anger, frustration are wrong to have. We all will and must experience these emotions, and you should process them. If something negative happens and you have an emotion about it, feel it, process it. What this topic is addressing are those negative thoughts that swirl around your head causing you to be stuck, self-defeating, depressed, and to doubt yourself. So I don’t want anyone to hear this episode and feel that they should not feel negative emotions because that’s just not the case. But how you think about these emotions and situations are key and THAT is what we will be discussing today. Got it? Good!
So how many times have you been waiting on some important information: maybe the results of a test, or maybe feedback from our boss, or some life changing family news and while you wait your mind is full of roaming what ifs that are more than likely negative? This happens to all of us. We sit within ourselves and we develop a narrative that is full of words like not, won’t, can’t, impossible, unlikely, probably, no, and so on. Doing this may not sound like a big deal, but what you may not know is that your negative thoughts may be the key to why negative things continue to show up in your life. So I’m going to encourage you to try something new. And that something new is positive thinking. Sounds simple right…just think happy thoughts. Well, that’s not exactly what thinking positively means, so let’s dive into it.
The official definition of positivity is “The practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude.” The word I want you to focus on in that definition is “practice.” This definition is letting you know right from the jump that positive thinking and optimism are things that take work to accomplish. This is why doing so is so hard for many of us. We don’t realize that we must practice at this way of thinking daily in order for it to become natural to us.
So I’m sure you may be asking, why? Why do I need to be optimistic? Why do I need to think positive? Especially if you identify yourself as a pessimist or a realist, you probably are rolling your eyes at me right about now, lol. Well there are many benefits to thinking positively, both physical and mental. John Hopkins Medical University conducted a study on individuals with a family history of heart disease and found that those with a positive outlook were one-third less likely to have a heart attack than those with a more negative outlook. Research has found that people who are more positive may be better protected against the inflammatory damage of stress and that people who practice positivity may be more likely to make better health and life choices. Guys, it’s absolutely amazing to know that what you think in your mind can effect what goes on in your body and how you feel physically.
So let’s take a moment and do some mental inventory. So far today, what have your thoughts been like? Have they come from a place of negativity, pessimism, and cynicism or have they come from a place of positivity, gratitude, and optimism. When you woke up this morning and thought about your day what road did your thoughts lead you down? The road of today is gonna suck or today is gonna be great. See this matters because as a man thinkth, so is he…so if your mentality is today is gonna suck…get ready for it to suck and regardless of what happens you have to blame yourself. You thought and maybe even spoke it into existence. Guys this is bigger than just smiling all day and thinking about sunflowers and rainbows all day. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m asking you to evaluate your mind and see how what you are thinking is contributing to your reality. I’m asking you to have more thoughts of I can instead of I can’t and see how fear and anxiety decrease. Have more thoughts of it will instead of it won’t and see how positive opportunities begin to find their way to you. It’s about the law of attraction. What you think, is what you’ll speak, which is what you’ll put out into the world, which is what you’ll get back in return. I’m not sure if any of you have read or heard of the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne but the entire book discusses the secret to having a happy life, having the career you want, the house you want, the family you want…and the secret the book discusses is the law of attraction. It says “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking. Whatever is going on in your mid you are attracting to you.” Guys that is a powerful thing to believe and know…that the life want starts with your thoughts. Your good day starts with your thoughts. Your successful future beings with your thoughts. There are so many of us who don’t have what we want and we are mad at the world when we should really be looking in the mirror because your negative, pessimistic thoughts are what’s blocking you from getting to where you want to be. Now I know some of yall are sitting there like “girl please, my life is in shambles and you’re telling me that it’s because of my thoughts? Girl bye!” Lol. What I’m asking you to do is to evaluate how your thoughts are contributing to it. There are things in life that we can’t control, but there are many things we can and in your realm of control what are you saying to yourself? What are you speaking into your life and that of your family? The quickest way to upset me is to speak negatively toward my life or that of my family. That’ll get you rebuked real quick! Lol. I don’t accept people saying what is not possible for me and mine. I recently had a conversation with someone, who will remain nameless, and we were watching something on HGTV and they said something to the effect of “only doctors and lawyers have things like that” and I immediately what like “oh no!” I plan to have a pool like that in my back yard and I’m not a doctor or a lawyer. I won’t let other’s mental limitations or even pessimism or realism come and infect my mentality. You must protect it at all costs because what you think is a set up for your future.
So why is this so hard to do? Well because for most of us thinking positively requires us to go against what we see in reality. It’s hard to think about success and prosperity when in reality things are financially strained. It’s hard to think about being in good health and feeling good when in reality you’re sick. Thinking positively sometimes requires you to go against what is natural. For many thinking negatively comes natural, so thinking positively or being optimistic requires practice. Doing this will help you when negative experiences come. That way you won’t become stuck, afraid to move forward, depressed, and self defeating.
Let me give you an example. You wake up today with a headache and immediately you think “today is gonna be a horrible day.” You get up, traffic is horrible and your road rage is on 10, you’re not letting anybody over into your lane today! You get to work and you can’t find a park so you have to walk pretty far to get to your office and it’s hot outside! You get to your desk and all you can think about is how you don’t want to be there. Your day goes along rather smoothly until your boss says she wants to meet with you. Your mind immediately goes to all the reasons why you don’t want to talk to her, this meeting is gonna take all day…and so on. You get through the long meeting, finish your day, head back home in more traffic, and get home only to be annoyed when you think about the fact that you have to do this all over again tomorrow. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Lol
So before I tell you how positive thinking can totally shift the outcome of this day, I want to first discuss how to practice positive thinking and speaking in your daily life. The first thing that you need to do in order to employ positive thinking is to practice realization. In order to shift your thoughts you must first be aware of them. You can’t change what you don’t know. So realizing what you are thinking is the first step to thinking positively. Take notice of your automatic mental responses. Take note of what you constantly think to yourself in stressful situations. Realize what negative words you constantly use like “can’t and won’t.”
The next thing that you can do to practice positive thinking is to journal. Journaling or writing things down are an essential key to remembering what your thoughts are. In therapy I always ask my clients to journal between sessions as life gets very busy and hectic and you’ll likely to forget what you’re dealing with. So journaling is a great way to write down those negative thoughts and then write down the positive ones. Write down how your days go when you think negatively vs when you think positively. This will be your own personal receipt book. You can also write down your dreams, desires, goals, and hopes. I know for many people they think about things over and over again and if they’d just write them down the swirl of thoughts will decrease. So you need journaling because it goes hand in hand with realization. Once you realize your thoughts, next you want to write them down.
Another very important tool to help you with positive thinking is affirmations. I learned about the importance of affirmations from the book The Miracle Morning which I will link in the show notes. Affirmations allow you to go from thinking positively to speaking positively. This takes things to another level. The Bible says that life and death are in the power of the tongue so setting up affirmations is a great way to ensure that you are speaking life over yourself and your family. Write down a few positive affirmations that you will say and declare daily. These affirmations can be scriptures that confirm what God says about you. They can be reminders to yourself about how great you are. They can be declarations about how your future will be. The choice is yours, the most important thing to remember is that in that moment you are affirming goodness over your life. This is something that I do with my children every morning before school. I have them repeat after me affirming that their day will be great and other great things about them. This requires you to say “I am”, “I will”, “I can.” Replacing words of doubt like can’t and won’t. And lets pause here for a moment ant talk about children. To all my parents listening, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, principles, anyone who comes in contact with children on a regular basis…PLEASE be mindful of what you are affirming over these children. There is nothing more heartbreaking to me than to hear a child being cursed, or being affirmed that they are bad, or trouble makers, or no good. Often times parents and grandparents will spend an entire childhood calling a child bad and wonder why they make bad decisions when they grow up. You spoke it over their life! Be mindful with your words over your children. The world is already a hard place. Let your words to your children be a soft place for them to land. Even when my children make mistakes, they are corrected and taught…but it is still affirmed that they are great, intelligent, strong, brave, and everything else that is great. Affirm positivity over your life. Affirm positivity over your spouses life. I be saying all kinda great stuff about my husband out loud and he don’t even know it, lol. Affirm positivity over your children. Watch your mouth. Make sure that what you say matches with what you want. As soon as you say I can’t correct yourself and I say can and I will realizing that you are strong and intelligent enough to figure out how to do it. So try affirmations, daily. Try affirming and declaring the life you desire into existence. The more you speak it, the more you attract it, and the more you will be willing to do whatever it takes to make it come to past.
The last tip I have to help you transform your mind to being more optimistic is to employ gratitude. I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned gratitude on this podcast but it’s a lot. And with good reason. Now with this tool you can use journaling and write down what you are thankful for or you can do so with prayer and meditation. Just sitting in God’s presence and express your gratitude. What I do in the morning is I sit and face the window and I pray expressing all of my gratitude before I get the day started. Gratitude makes you think about positive things. Even when you have a day that doesn’t go as planned and you consider it to be a bad day, if you spend some time intentionally thinking about the positive things that happened that day it can totally shift your mentality. We easily remember negative things. They stick out to us, so we have to be intentional with the good stuff. You have to practice gratitude. You can even try sharing the positive parts of your day with others. I know it’s easy to be like guuurrrlll let me tell you what happened today and it’s normally some drama or negative stuff. But lets try doing that with positive things. Try sharing the positive and handling the truly negative things with your therapist. Because your friends and family and not your therapist. So get a gratitude journal, pray every morning and night. Spend time talking about things you are thankful for. And schedule with your therapist to handle the negative stuff (if you need one I’m sure I can think of someone you can see).
So now that we have the tools, lets go back to that horrible day we were having earlier and see how a few mindset shifts could have made this day go a little better. So, nobody likes waking up to a headache. But instead of deciding that this headache means that you’re going to have a horrible day, you can choose to take some meds and then sit in a state of gratitude for a new day. Even though you have a headache, there are many other things going right with your life such as being alive, lol. Employ that gratitude as soon as your begin to feel negative. Then you can affirm that regardless of how you are feeling today is going to be a good day. By making this choice you are attracting goodness to you, instead of saying things will be horrible. So you leave for work…and yes there is still traffic, but you aren’t as bothered by it. Let me give you a tip to handling traffic that has helped decrease my anger dealing with traffic and bad drivers and that’s music. Not just any music…good music. Music you can sing to. Music that makes you feel good. I conducted an experiment on myself and for a month I didn’t listen to the radio. I only listened to r&b and gospel music. Music I could sing to that made me feel good and when I tell you I was mostly unbothered by traffic because I was too busy jamming, it was amazing! So give that a try. Sometimes the music on the radio is so trash it makes me angry, lol. But anywho, now you’re at work, and you may not like your job, but again, employ gratitude and be thankful for it. Believe me, there are plenty of people wishing they had a job right about now. Try to be pleasant and affirm that things at work will go well. Now it’s time for that meeting with your boss and them. This is what I want you to know. You have more control than you know. You can sit in the meeting feeling negative and ret-to-go and be miserable, or you can try. You can talk, give input, help things move along, and watch how different things go for you. You finish your day and now you’re back at home. Today wasn’t perfect, but you are going to be sure that you journal about the things you struggled with for your therapy session and you are going to acknowledge the things that went well today. And that’s it. You went from a horrible day to a good day by thinking positive thoughts, speaking positive words, and making positive choices. No you didn’t go around smiling at everybody saying “Praise the Lord” every time you greeted someone. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. Being optimistic helps you to take even negative experiences and make sure that you see purpose and positivity in them so that you don’t become stuck in negative emotion, afraid to move forward, depressed, and frustrated with life, because you were not created to live that way.
