How To Develop A Positive Mindset

Developing a positive mindset means Thinking positively, changing your mental, emotional, psychological and therefore also your physical state, towards yourself, others and situations.

Most people say “think positive” when their friend, family member, spouse or acquaintance is feeling a bit down or has to deal with a certain problem. But hardly anybody takes these powerful words truly serious or actually implements the suggestion. but how you can change your mind to a more positive and optimistic map of the world.

what are the keywords for success? What affirmations help in getting your mind to be into a more positive focus?

Most people would agree, that words, such as ‘positive’, ‘optimistic’, ‘success’, ‘rich’, luck’ and ‘happy’ would sound stronger and more positive than words such as ‘okay’, ‘reasonable’, ‘guess’, ‘negative’ or even ‘depressed’. And this is so silly because it’s absolutely true! Giving your mind more positive words will help you to get faster and more easily into a positive mindset.

How To Start Thinking Positive

Top Twenty Top Words

Here’s a list of twenty top words you can use in phrases to empower yourself or others towards positive thinking and a more positive attitude. Try them out for 21 days and see what kind of incredible results they bring you. At first, it may seem silly or even ridiculous to say these words out loud to yourself, and probably even more to others when you’re having a conversation.

So, here’s the list. Try it out and see for yourself how much these simple words can have a huge impact on your life.

1. Absolutely - It is “absolutely” the greatest word - signifies a can-do attitude.
2. Best - It truly can’t get any better.
3. Amazing - An awe-inspiring word.
4. Exceptional - Signifies something of the highest quality.
5. Glorious - This word beams with excitement.
6. Deluxe – This means, it’s better than best
7. Dynamic – There’s energy flowing
8. Abundance – which means there’s more than enough for you and me.
9. Dependable – Who’s the first and best person you can trust? YOU!
10. Appealing – sounds even great, doesn’t it?
11. Distinctive – There are all the other things, and there’s this!
12. Immaculate – things are going as smooth as a baby’s behind.
13. Incredible – Huge, big, strong, like never seen before! (even green?)
14. Finest – distinctive, smooth, yet top-notch; crème de la crème.
15. Exciting – Whoo-hoo! This gives me energy! Let’s do this now!
16. Wonderful – Use this word with a true connection from the heart.
17. Divine – OMG: this is not from this planet, is it?
18. Fantastic – Fan-tas-tic! I thought this could only happen in my imagination.
19. Adore – I love it, which means it makes me feel better than great.
20. Excellent – this is better than best, greater than great and has less stress attached to it than perfect!

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Written Words Of Success

Master-Practitioner in NLP, sales-expert Tom Hoobyar wrote about certain words that resonate success in the important areas of your life.

Here’s the list:

1. ME – the most important person in the world
2. MINE – the most important possessor in the world
3. HOW – monkey curiosity bump, scratched here
4. NEW – Oh? Really? Am I one of the first to know?
5. WHO – This one frequently begins with: ‘Who else wants to…’ and continues with ‘become rich without working?’ or ‘have a million-dollar smile for the fraction of the cost?’
6. MONEY – no one ever has enough, even millionaires.
7. NOW – Time is related to money and people’s minds.
Better pay attention to whatever is being announced. “Now”
8. PEOPLE – That’s me! I’m people; maybe this is addressed to me
9. WANT – We all want more. And different. And new.
10. WHY – Monkey curiosity again. The answer to this question is always “because”.

So, first of all, let me point out that you have an extra golden nugget here when it comes to marketing and sales. And when it comes to sales, everybody is in it. Whenever you open your mouth, you influence either yourself, somebody else or both.

You might try to take a stand in some specific opinion or issue and want to persuade someone or convince both of you to dot your way. Of course, you can use these words to your advantage whenever you start marketing your audience in whatever you’re offering.

The other purpose for these powerful words is, that you can use them to state your goals more specific and more powerful. Like I said, goals are absolutely necessary to become more successful, more positivity oriented, more focused, and create more self-esteem and self-confidence.

Always use positive words while thinking and talking. Use words such as, ‘it is possible’, ‘I am able’, ‘I can’, ‘it can be done’, etc.

Questions

Questions are one of the most powerful tools to enhance your positive thinking. Whenever you encounter a problem, even after pumping yourself up with positive ideas and affirmations, you still need to come up with a solution.

Instead of concluding that ‘it’s not possible’ or that you ‘just can’t do it’, rephrase your statement to a question, such as ‘How can I …?’
or ‘What do I need to do in order to…?’.

When you ask your mind a question, it automatically will start searching for an answer. Your mind can’t think; it’s built and solely designed for that. Here’s an example:

• What color is the sky?
• How does your front door look like?
• When is your birthday?

Even if you don’t verbally respond to the question, your mind will still answer it, or at least starts in trying to find an answer. Now there’s one thing you need to keep in mind when you ask yourself questions, and that is that the type of question determines the way you feel.

For instance, if you ask yourself ‘Why can’t I get a girlfriend?!’ – your mind will answer it with something ‘Because you’re stupid!’. And of course, this isn’t the kind of answer you want from your mind, now do you?

Instead, see if you can change the kind of questions you ask yourself into something more positive, like this:

• How can I find the love of my life?
• What do I need to do to accomplish my dream?
• How can I tackle this challenge best?
• What can I do to improve myself in this area?

As you see, these questions are aiming for a solution. They’re formulated in a way that your mind will go look for an answer that helps you, instead of providing you with an answer that lowers your self-image, your self-esteem, your confidence, and your positive attitude.

Heart

If you wish to change your thinking patterns from negative or mediocre to positive, then a great way to do so is to change the way you feel.

By changing the way you either act or react to situations in your life, you change your reality as you perceive it. And since there is no ‘true’ or ‘false’ in how you perceive things, you might as well focus on the best results possible.

By feeling good about yourself, feeling optimistic, challenged, enthusiastic, motivated, encouraged, passionate and compelled, you generate a motion
of positive vibes throughout your body, that creates a neurochemical reaction, called endorphins.

Endorphins are the body’s own produced chemicals that you feel when you’re feeling fantastic. Whether you are in a rollercoaster-ride, making love or standing in front of a huge audience, it’s the feeling that you have at that particular moment that ensures your positive thinking.

It’s almost impossible to feel bad or to have negative thoughts when having these great feelings of ecstasy. Now, of course, the question is: HOW DO I FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF? – Well, that’s easier than you think – DECIDE YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF! It’s mostly a matter of choice to feel either good or bad about yourself.

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EXERCISE

One way to feel good about yourself is to think back of a moment or situation in your life, in which you felt really good about yourself. Maybe you accomplished something great, maybe you got a compliment that made you feel good, or maybe it was your birthday, and you felt fantastic!

Whatever the moment in your life was, think back of that moment, and visualize it as detailed as possible. Do you have that picture? Yeah? Okay!

Now connect to the feeling you had at that time. And make sure it was a POSITIVE feeling. When you feel it, try to locate where the feeling is in your body. Wherever you find it – for example, in your stomach – connect to the feeling, by putting your hands on it.

What you can do now, is make it bigger, stronger, more intense. As if it was a piece of Play-dough, stretch it out and enlarge the feeling. If it’s from your stomach, make it do down and up, all the way to your legs and toes, and all
the way up to your chest, face and the top of your head!

Do you feel that? Great! Now make this feeling twice as intense and twice as powerful! And if you’re not already IN this feeling, step into it right now, and make sure you are bathing in this feeling of positivity!

Triggers And Anchors

The way you feel is based on how you think of yourself and your feelings are programmed from the moment you were born. Whenever you associate yourself with a certain event, you connect a certain feeling with that event. For example, when you were young, and you needed to go to the doctor for the first time, you probably didn’t have any clue what was going to happen.

You trusted him and when he said that ‘this isn’t going to hurt’ when he would give you your anti-flu shot, you believed him. If, in fact, it probably did hurt, you connected the feeling of pain with that event.

The second time you’d go see the doctor; you would a bit more careful. If the doctor would say ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t going to hurt’ again, an automatic trigger would arise and make you suspicious if he was telling the truth.

If this time it would hurt again, the event of going to the doctor would leave a significant impact on your conscious and subconscious mind that doctors equal pain. The more often you connect emotion to an event, consciously or subconsciously, the stronger the trigger becomes and the longer it takes to change that trigger.

However, the positive side of this story is that it’s not impossible to change your triggers or anchors. Whatever your experiences were in the past, they don’t have to be in front of you every time a similar event takes place in the present.

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For that, the past doesn’t equal the present or the future. Connecting a new feeling to an event, and repeatedly practicing and strengthening that emotion or feeling, manifests in a new neurological network in your brain.

You literally would change your thinking patterns. Think and feel happy, comforting, optimistic, encouraging, motivating, loving thoughts and connect with the feelings that come along.

If you have any difficulties with feeling good feelings, you can imagine yourself in a situation in which you were feeling fantastic. As if you were on top of the world. This is called visualizing. Visualizing works for everyone. You can connect to a feeling by thinking of something, be seeing a picture or pictures, be hearing nice sounds or even smelling or tasting something positive.

Your senses are directly linked to your neurological network and they store memories you collected throughout your life.

Remember, humans, are feeling beings, which think. Not thinking being, which has feelings. Allow into your awareness only feelings of happiness, strength, and success.

Voice

But if you think the thoughts you would like to think, feel the feelings you would like to feel, and use your voice in an active way, so that your words actually start to resonate with yourself, your body and your subconscious, then the impact will be much greater.

Remember, it’s all in how you say it that makes the difference. Try it out for a couple of times, and you’ll experience the difference for yourself.

Change the pitch of your voice, from a low one to a higher one, even a really high-pitched tone of voice, like Mickey Mouse.

You’ll see that low tonalities in your voice resonate easier with mediocre and negativity. On the other side, a higher, firmer tone of voice, establishes a more self-confident, positive and optimistic reflection of your thoughts.

Visual

There are two things the mind understands when spoken to. The first one is emotions or feelings. The other one is images or pictures.

The mind is a very visually oriented part of the human body and it doesn’t really understand the words that are spoken, rather than the mental pictures that are connected to them. So if you want something to change within yourself or the way you perceive something (or yourself), change the picture you want to see.

Some people say that they can’t visualize, but here’s the key that you really can do it, and I’ll tell you how you do it.

For example, read this paragraph and then do the exercise.

Take a couple of seconds to relax. Breathe in slowly and exhale at a calm pace. Do this a couple of times.

This ensures you to open up your mind and step out of the hectics of daily life.
Now, take a couple more breaths. Imagine or think back or your house you live in right now. Maybe you see it as a general picture, maybe in specifics. Now, zoom in a little on your front door.

What color does is has? What’s is made of? Where is the handle? Are there any specific markings on the door, such as a nameplate, a sticker or even a mailbox slit? Try to make it as detailed as possible by focusing on your front door.

What you just did, is called visualization.

It’s a mental picture you made in your mind about something. Now visualization works not only for your eyes. You can use visualization also with your touch, your hearing, even your smell, and your taste.

Before starting with any plan or action, visualize clearly in your mind its successful outcome. If you visualize with concentration and faith, you will be amazed at the results.

Formula

There’s a simple formula that you can remember to help you think more positively on a conscious level. It’s the event plus your response that causes the outcome of a situation.

E + R = O --> Event + Response = Outcome

Since the event itself doesn’t change, it’s the way you perceive information about the event, or, the way you respond to it that results in how you act upon it. If you want to change the outcome, change your response.

An example: someone comes to you yelling and shouting (Event).

You can decide either to start yelling back (Response) or to stay calm and see what in the other is causing him to yell and shout (Response) that will give you a certain result with this person (Outcome) In the first option of yelling and shouting back, the chances are that you end up in a verbal fight and the situation is all but hospitable.

In the second example, you might end up with an understanding of why the other one was shouting, start a dialogue and end up being friends again.
Now, this may seem like a corny example, but imagine this person is a best friend, or a family member, or your partner.

Perception

It’s the way you guide your mind’s thoughts that influence your perception of the situation. What are you focusing on? What kind of result do you want? Is it some other result you have right now, change your perception.

Changing your perception doesn’t always work, especially when you are not alone. For example, you are working with a colleague from work or you come home from a long day's work to your loved one, and you notice that all you need is some attention.

The colleague might help you out in a difficult task you need to accomplish or you just want from your partner to tell you what he or she loves you.
If the colleague or your partner, however, is very busy and responds with a short, brief statement and a clear ‘no’, you might find yourself in losing your good feelings of optimism and either feel rejected or left out.

This is the result of the event, based on your response, or in this case your action. It’s the way you perceived the situation and responded to it, that resulted in the firm ‘no’ from the other person.

Tony Robbins (in Awaken the Giant Within) says that you can change two things, to ensure your result will be more to your likings. Those two things are, either change your perception or your procedure.

What he means by this, is that you can change the way you perceive the event: the other person is not turning you down or it’s not he or she doesn’t love you, but it might well be, that he or she is busy with other things and they need to have their fullest attention for it.

Taking a different point of view usually clarifies a lot. By stepping out of your own point of view and into the other persons’ viewing point, you’ll see that you’ll understand much more why the other person is reacting the way he or she does.

Procedure

The other way to change your outcome is to change your procedure. With this, I mean that you can change your way of interacting with the other person. If you see that the other person’s busy, maybe it’s not a good time to ask for something.

Just wait for a short while, and when you see that things and situations have become more relaxed, go for what you wanted to ask or say.

By changing your procedure, you create a different outcome or result, because it’s your action that is re-acted upon. You just changed your action (by smiling, waiting, saying something nice or maybe just a pat on the back) that the other person will react on.

If the situation is like a ‘code red’, meaning that everyone is on sharp, stress levels are rising (e.g. due to a deadline), then asking for something might not be the wisest thing to maintain a good relationship for that moment.

Taking a different approach – thus meaning you change your procedure – most likely results in you having a bigger influence on the outcome. The end result is, that both you and the other person will be happier, more optimistic, and keep a clear and workable relationship.

Self-Talk

Most people won’t admit it, but almost everybody talks to themselves. Most of the time we don’t even notice it because it’s happening so unconsciously that we hardly pay attention to it.

But how many times have you looked at your watch and folded yourself you had ten or so minutes before you had to get going? Or those times that you were standing in front of the mirror, and you were boosting your self-esteem, by telling yourself that you were looking absolutely fabulous.

It’s the self-talk that reflects how we feel and ensures us if we have either a great day or a horrible day.

But rather than letting circumstances or coincidence or time tell you how you should feel, you can also decide for yourself what to say to yourself and have a positive impact on how you perceive yourself, the situations and your day as you want. If you want to have a better self-image, create more self-talk.

Talk about and to yourself as if you were proud of who you are and what you do. Even when you might not feel it at first, it’s the repetition that ensures your subconscious starts believing that you truly like yourself.

You could start off by saying simple words or phrases as “I’m willing to see the opportunities of today” or “Today something wonderful is going to happen to me” or I like myself more every day”. Be certain to use your voice combined with your feelings.

It’s not the words itself that will make the difference for your subconscious. Because if you would say a phrase like “I like myself more every day” in a flattened, low energy kind of tone, your mind, as well as your subconscious will tell you “Yeah, right! Who’re you trying to fool?” We’ve talked already about terminology.

The way you can use your words to influence the way you feel, the way you see yourself and thus, your results. We’ve also talked about how you can use visualization to feel the feelings you want to feel to change your map of the world.

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Positive thinking relates to many more things than just to thinking happy thoughts at certain times of the day.

How you can use positive thinking in your daily life all the time, and strategically increase your positive thinking every day?

The first step you need to take in order to get into a positive mindset is to start creating a positive self-image or, in other words: start believing in yourself. Now, this is usually not something you change overnight, but it’s essential in changing your mindset and strengthening it towards the positive ones.

Often, we’re challenged in focusing on the negative, and with that, a non-supportive or negative self-image comes along. Whether it’s in our culture, the way we were raised by our parents (according to their best standards and values they had at the time they were raised) or the economic times, it’s been proven over and over that negativity stains more than positivity.

What I mean with this is that it takes longer to ‘overwrite’ a negative thought for a positive one than vice versa. Research has proven that on average, it takes three to five times more positivity to ‘overwrite’ one negativity.

And with all the stimuli like television, newspapers, Internet, social media, and so on, it’s not easy to keep a focus on the positive and to maintain a positive self-image.

One way by upgrading your self-image is to change three things in your behavior. As Tony Robins stated, there is a triad that ensures you how you feel, act and think.

The first thing in order to change your self-image and your mindset is to focus on your physiology. The way your body tells you and others how you feel isn’t something that you consciously control, but it’s something that is connected with the state of mind you focus on. I’ll give an example:

When you experience something unhappy or unpleasant, like fear or anxiety for something, your body immediately changes the posture to match that mind-state. You might have the tendency to lean more backward, lower your shoulders, drop your head a little or cross your arms or legs.

However, the same physiology works for you when you have a positive mindset, like feeling love, happiness, excitement, courage or bravery.
Your body starts to stretch itself, you stand tall, your head is upward and you probably smile or have a determined look on your face. The way your physiology is visible is a mirror of what is happening in your head.

If you consciously change your physiology from a head down, shoulders down, low energy posture to a face forward, head straight, shoulders back, smiling or focused posture, your self-image and the thoughts connected to that image will change for the positive.

Second, on how to upgrade your self-image is your focus.

In addition to your physiology, the events, situations, feelings or thoughts you’re focusing on will determine how you perceive yourself.

If you focus on happy things or happy thoughts, as a logical consequence your behavior, your attention, and your self-image will change towards the positive.

Now it may sound a bit superficial that just by changing your focus, your self-image will change as well. But Abraham Lincoln, someone who was considered all but superficial said ‘people were just about as happy, as they made up their minds to be’.

With this, he meant, that what you focus on most – happy things or unhappy things – it will result in how you see yourself and how you feel at that specific time.

Simply said, it comes down to this: You have the choice to be happy or unhappy; to be negative or positive oriented. And if you have only these two choices for every day, the only question is: What do I want to focus on today?

Language is the final part that completes the triad of your behavior and your self-image. Words are so powerful, that they can literally make you ill or strong in your body. Depending on the kind of words you say to yourself, your self-image is built from that.

If you’d say ‘I’m not good enough’ or I’m not worth it’ or ‘I can’t do this’, your mind, spirit, and body will automatically transfer this information into your subconscious. It’s as if your language is the input of your body, your own supercomputer.

On the bright side, realizing this also creates the opportunity to easily start changing your self-image, by talking in a positive and constructing way to yourself, and to others.

You see, the reason we use communication is basically set on two reasons: 1 to convince or to influence other people, and 2 to influence or convince ourselves. Of course, a combination of both is also possible (e.g. in a discussion or debate).

So, if you want to change your own perception (or the perception and/or energy of someone else), focus on the kind of language you use. Speak of positive and empowering words: ‘I can do this’, ‘I’m committed to feeling better every day’, ‘I’m valuable’, ‘I love myself more every time I look in the mirror’, ‘Smile, it’s going to be a great day for opportunities!’

Now, this may sound a bit corny in the beginning. But the more often you use this type of language, the easier it will become and the faster, stronger and better it will work for you and the way you see yourself.

Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world where there are no problems. So if a problem or challenge, like I like to call it, occurs, then instead of talking about ‘I can’t’ or ‘I shouldn’t do …’, try saying ‘How can I do …’ or ‘I don’t know how to do … yet, but I’m willing and committed to finding a solution or answer’. The power of language, and especially questions is gigantic.

Conclusion

It’s these three parts together –Physiology, Focus, and Language – that create the experience of your world; whether that’s negative or positive – and therefore the perception or image you hold of yourself. By changing your self-image, you change or strengthen your positive mindset.

Start right now by acting the way you want yourself and others to perceive you: as a positive, optimistic and fun person. Change your physiology by standing straight, holding your head up and start smiling more often.

Think a positive thought and speak positively about yourself and the situations you’re in. Seek opportunities in every situation, and you’ll find yourself changing to a more positive mindset.

Keep focused on that what is important to you. Don’t let yourself be overthrown by any obstacles, but keep your eye on your goal. Deal with a problem when it occurs and trust in yourself that you will find a solution for every challenge you encounter.

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Feed your mind with positive stuff and surround yourself with people that empower you. Use positive affirmations on a daily basis and start changing your vocabulary by using words that have a powerful and positive impact on your conscious and subconscious mind.

Tools To Make Positive Thinking More Powerful

You become what you think about Whatever you think most of the time will result in your life. Your streams of thoughts are as a result of your beliefs, one of the fundamentals that determine your personality, attitude, behavior and your results.

It’s what you tell yourself in words, pictures and thoughts that your mind will translate to your subconscious. Since your mind is built to serve you in the best way possible, it will conduct everything necessary to match the thoughts you have about yourself, your life and your results.

It’s therefore absolutely necessary to have a positive mindset and to tell yourself positively, empowering and supporting messages.

Success Is Not An Accident

To be successful, you absolutely firstly need to know that it’s not an accident, it’s a skill. And the sooner you learn this skill, the faster you will improve your life and design life according to your wishes.

This makes success not something as a rare occasion but as a guaranteed end result. There’s a system that will lead you to success, just as there is a system that will lead you to failure if you choose to follow it.

Mental Fitness

Next, you need to have a goods mental fitness in order to make the steps towards success, and this includes a feeling of self-confidence, happiness, enthusiasm and of course a positive mental attitude.

Because if you have feelings of unshakable self-confidence, happiness, enthusiasm and a positive mental attitude, nothing in the world can stop you from being successful.

I hope that this article has provided a couple of ideas and tips on how to empower your mental fitness.

Habits

Successful people have successes because of what they believe in themselves, what they think and of how they act. Their habits are congruent with their thoughts. To ensure your success you need to change your non-supporting habits into habits that empower you and get you closer to your success.

Goals

If you want to be successful, you need to know where you are standing now in your life. You also need to have a clear goal of where you want to go or what you want to have.

It’s the goal that ensures you that you will get motivation and have the perseverance to get what you really want.

Brian Tracy said that only losers don’t know what they want, and therefore don’t get what they want; it’s winners who have a clear idea of what they want and who are willing to go for it. Goal setting is an absolute must in order to be successful. If you don’t set goals, you’re bound to fail.

Self-Discipline

Napoleon Hill came to the conclusion that the ability to exert self-discipline on oneself was the master key to riches. You need to have the self-discipline to do what is necessary to get what you want, whether you feel like it or not.

Successful people are simply those who make a habit of doing what unsuccessful people don’t like to do.

Now the things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do are the same things successful people don’t like to do, but they do them anyway because they know it’s the price they need to pay for success.

If you practice self-discipline often enough, this ‘muscle’ will get stronger and your self-discipline will increase.

Hard work, persistence and focus on clear specific goals will bring you success and these are the outer expressions of self-discipline.

Your key to success in life is to resolve to do what you know you should do what other successful self-disciplined people do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

True self - esteem, the foundation of your success, comes from valuing yourself, resisting the temptations to take the quickest and easiest way and sticking to what you know to be right until you win through. This is the mindset of success. Self-esteem requires self-discipline. And self-discipline builds self-esteem.

We are built for failure. With this, I mean that by nature we have the tendency to seek the quickest and easiest way to get something.

This is something all human beings have and it’s also something the gross majority of the population live by. Consider the amount of time people watch television, play video games or seek leisure in anything possible.

However, success is not built on expediency. To have success means you need to be willing to overwrite your expediency and truly go for what you want. It’s only when you want something really bad, that you are willing to do whatever it takes. Even if that means going further than you presumably thought you would.

Start expanding your world today by using your positive and powerful mind.