7 Days to Harness the Power of Positive Thinking: A Challenge

I was once a dreadful thinker. That’s to say, I lacked the kind of mindset that would serve me. I did a lot of overthinking, quite a bit of underthinking, and sometimes no thinking at all. I really sucked at positive thinking.

None of which was good for me because, more often than not, most of that thinking came from a place of fear and worry.

Realizing my attitude wasn’t getting me anywhere, I decided to unignore the idea of positive thinking. The concept I used to roll my eyes at as some New Age fancy.

And guess what? It did work!

It’s highly unlikely that you yourself have escaped the term ‘positive thinking’ in this day and age.

The problem with popular phrases like that is that they become so overused that we tend to dismiss them.

We know what they signify but because the term is thrown at us from every direction, we swat it away like an annoying insect.

And by dismissing it, we often lose out on the tangible benefits behind those abstract words.

And that’s what I realized once I started implementing the principle of positive thinking and adopted a less gloomy outlook on life. Seeing the glass half full if you will. I can say in all honesty that it truly changed me and changed my life.

Read on to discover how you can harness the power of the positive mindset too and thus enhance your life experiences.

But before we dive in, a clarification is in order – positive thinking is not the same as wishful thinking or persisting in unrealistic expectations. Let’s not be delusional.

I can’t stand it when someone claims that simply by wishing it, we can make the body fat disappear or manifest riches.

Positive thinking is only one part of a balanced critical assessment of reality. And that also includes acknowledgement of negatives.

Cultivating the positive attitude and reaping the benefits of it takes effort, not just wishing.

Day One: Internalize the Benefits of Positive Thinking

Welcome and thank you for taking up the Positive Thinking Challenge.

Today in the challenge, we are talking about making a list of reasons why you want to think more positively.

The problem with that is that you might not be aware of the many ways it can benefit you! So, here are some amazing reasons to be more positive every day.

Positive Thinking Can Reduce Your Anxiety and Depression

First of all, if you feel unhappy in general, or struggle with depression or anxiety, you definitely want to learn how to think more positively.

This is not going to cure any mental disorders or illnesses. But it can help reduce some of their side effects.

Is your anxiety disorder causing severe panic attacks any time you worry about a specific thing?

If you learn how to think more positively, you might just learn how to cope better and ease those panic attacks a little.

It’s also going to help you with general happiness each day, where you are not as affected by some of the negative things that might happen.

With Positive Thinking Stress Will Affect You Less

In addition to helping with anxiety and depression, thinking positively can also help tremendously with your stress levels.

Stress can affect just about every are of your life.

Including your physical and mental stress, home life, work and relationship with co-workers, personal relationships, and so much more.

To get a handle on your stress, start to learn how to think more positively.

You Develop Better Coping Skills

Another great benefit to keep in mind is that you learn how to cope better.

You can’t prevent anything negative from happening in your life, as that is what makes you human.

But you can definitely control how you react to unexpected situations and learn how to cope a little better.

When you are a more positive person, you take these little hiccups as learning experiences.

You can see the good and bad in any situation and find at least one positive thing to say about it.

This can really help you deal with anything from losing a job or ending a relationship, to a traumatic event.

You Surround Yourself with Positivity

Don’t forget that attitude and moods are contagious.

We will talk about this more later in the challenge. But for now, you should know that when you are more positive, others will be as well.

Good mood spreads rapidly throughout other people, so you are actually helping everyone in your life to be surrounded by more positivity.

Day Two: Ways to Use Daily Affirmations

If you have ever read about being more positive, changing your life, or any self-improvement topic, then you have probably come across the concept of affirmations.

The reason people talk about them and encourage them so much is because of how powerful they can be.

An affirmation is just a positive statement you repeat to yourself to get into a positive mindset.

It seems so simple, but it truly does make a major difference in how you think and act. Here are some different ways you can use your daily affirmations.

Write Them in Your Journal Each Day

When you write down affirmations, it’s good to have them in a permanent place to reference.

Have a page in your journal dedicated to all your favourite positive affirmations.

You can either read off this list every day or write new ones down each day.

Every morning when you write in your journal, write down at least one positive affirmation that pertains to something occurring that day.

Or write something that will help your mindset for what you have coming up.

Writing it down is going to help you use it efficiently, along with saying it out loud to yourself.

Keep Digital Copies of Your Affirmations

It’s also a good idea to have your favourite affirmations in other places, to be used any time you need them.

Maybe you keep your journal at home, but you need a quick positive affirmation while you are at work or running errands.

Try to keep a digital copy of them on your phone, so that you can reference them at any time.

This really helps in those unexpected situations.

Set a Timer for Using the Affirmations

Having a hard time remembering to use your affirmations each day?

Set a timer!

This can be a timer that goes off at the same time each day.

Like shortly before you typically get ready for work, or in the evenings around bedtime. You can also have different timers each day depending on what your schedule looks like.

Use Event-Specific Affirmations

There might also be times in your life when you need a positive attitude about a certain situation that is causing you stress or anxiety.

For example, if you have a big oral presentation coming up soon at work or school, you might be worried about all the things that could potentially go wrong.

Instead of focusing on those, focus on something positive.

Create affirmations that help you understand you are capable of doing this presentation well.

Then remind yourself that you are prepared, and that you are brave and strong.

Pro Tip – Make sure the affirmations you choose are only for yourself, and not others. These are all about you and your own mindset. They should not reflect any other person in your life. They are personal and private, and you don’t need to feel like you should share them with anyone.

Day Three: Why You Should Journal for Positive Thinking

As you will know if you are following along with our Positive Thinking Challenge, a journal is an amazing tool to use for thinking more positively.

It isn’t just great for gaining more clarity and venting your frustrations.

It’s also instrumental in your journey to being a more positive person as well.

Keep reading to learn about all the reasons why you should use a journal to increase your positive thinking.

You Can Reframe Your Negative Thoughts

First of all, you will use the journal to help reframe your thoughts into more positive ones.

This is one of the biggest hurdles of thinking more positively, since you can’t control negative things that happen in your life.

Almost every day, unexpected events will transpire that might put you in a funk, make you feel sad or frustrated, or just affect the day you had planned out for yourself.

While you can’t control these events, you can control how you deal with them.

You can use your journal to write down your negative thoughts, then look at ways to make them positive.

We will talk about this more in a later blog post as well, so you really understand how this works.

You Find Out Why You Have Negative Thoughts

As you begin journaling all your thoughts and feelings, you’ll also discover why it has been hard for you in the past to have more of a positive mindset.

There are often patterns in the more negative things you talk about. Whether they are all related to goals you haven’t achieved, your work or school life, or even specific people in your life.

It’s important to be open and honest in your journal. Because that is how you’ll understand more about yourself and where your frame of mind comes from.

By understanding WHY you have negative thoughts, you are able to make changes in your life to be a more positive person.

It Helps You Be More Grateful for the Good in Your Life

Lastly, we really like journaling for positivity because you can express gratitude.

Being more grateful is all about understanding the good things in your life.

Whether it is your health, people, or where you live and work, and appreciating it.

You can write down one thing to be grateful for each day in your journal, which immediately puts you in a better mood and helps you to think more positively.

Day Four: Turning Negative into Positive When You Have a Bad Day

We have been talking about how to turn negative thoughts into positive ones. But it isn’t always as easy as just putting a positive spin on it.

Sometimes, you are just having a terrible day and are completely consumed by one derailment after another.

These are the days when you need to think a little out of the box.

Despite the challenges, you still want to be a positive person who thinks optimistically about everything in life.

Not because you want to create an illusion of everything being all right. Burying your head in sand to avoid dealing with the problem is not what we’re doing here.

Being optimistic is more about having a faith in yourself that you can deal with those challenges and you can benefit from the lessons learned in the long run.

Here are some tips for reframing those negative thoughts into positive ones, even when it seems like everything is going wrong.

Why Bother?

First of all, why do you need to reframe your negative thoughts?

Technically, you don’t need to, but it can help to maintain a positive attitude as you go through life.

It is not what happens to you that defines you, but how you deal with it.

Everyone has things that go wrong or unexpected in their life, but not everyone has a negative attitude about it.

Why?

Because some people have learned how to cope with the bad things and somehow turn them into good things.

Even if they are just putting a positive spin on something that had really unfortunate timing.

Write Everything Down

If you’re a little overwhelmed by all the negative things happening on a particularly bad day, just take a step back, take a breath, and write it down.

Get out your journal and detail everything that has happened. Describe in detail why you are having a bad day, what has happened or gone wrong, and what you have done about it.

In some cases, you find positives just by writing it all down. In others, you just feel a little lighter having vented through journaling.

And in other situations, you might find that you didn’t have the best response to something, and you were actually the reason it went bad.

The intention is to appreciate your experience as a really important lesson to learn for moving forward.

There is (Almost) Always a Positive Spin

This might not be true for all bad things in your life, but there is usually a positive spin you can put on most situations.

It might be that you made a mistake, learned from it, and will try harder not to make it in the future.

Or the positive spin is just that the bad or embarrassing moment is over, and now you don’t have to relive it.

In other situations, maybe you had to go somewhere new because the place you usually visit was closed. While this put you in a sour mood, you met someone new at this new place. Perhaps your new best friend or even a partner. Trust me, it does happen!

Cherish and appreciate these unexpected moments because they really can bring about positive changes for you.

At the end of the day, when you are still struggling, just appreciate that the day is over and now you can move on from it.

Day Five: Tips for Thinking More Positively Every Day

As you have learned from my previous blog posts on the subject – and if you are following along with our Positive Thinking Challenge – thinking positively every day has many benefits.

It helps with your emotional and physical health.

From improving your daily life and relieving stress, to actually helping with your physical health and wellbeing.

If you want to learn how to think more positively every day, here are some tips to get started.

Have More Confidence in Your Own Abilities

More often than not, a lot of your negative thoughts are related to fears you have about your own abilities. Which are not at all rational.

Are a lot of your negative thoughts during the day related to how you think you are failing?

Are your negative thoughts telling you that you will never succeed?

These are the thoughts that are related to your own self-confidence.

Start acting with confidence, understanding your best skills, and really playing them up.

Focus on your best abilities and qualities, instead of becoming drowned in the skills you think you don’t have.

Act with Intention

It’s also important that you act with intention. Setting an intent will enable you to reframe your thoughts into more positive ones that will bring about the desired results.

Think about it as driving without a destination. If you just drive around without a particular place in mind, following the road wherever it takes you, that might be fun, but you don’t know where you’ll end up.

If you know where you want to get to, you’ll know what path to take, how long the journey will be and how you need to prepare to get where you want to be.

When you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it, it automatically gives you more confidence about what you can accomplish.

This is going to help you feel good about yourself and what you got done. Which alone helps a lot with your positive attitude throughout the day.

Find Your Triggers for Negative Thinking

When you have days where it is difficult to get past certain negative thoughts, try to find reasons for those thoughts.

Was it from an unexpected event? Do you have an anxiety disorder that leads to irrational fears? Is there someone in your life causing these negative thoughts? What influence does the news or social media have on your mindset?

These and many other things can be triggers for your negative thinking.

When you find triggers, you can better to handle those situations, or that you can avoid them.

The ability to recognize and handle the undesired situation will also help you develop a more positive mindset.

Look for the Humor

Sometimes, bad things happen in your life that create a negative narrative, and you just have to laugh it off.

When your car breaks down on the way to work, or you have an embarrassing moment you can’t stop thinking about, just move on.

Understand you can’t take it back, and laugh it out.

Day Six: 5 Simple Ways to Express Gratitude

If you want to be a more positive person, sometimes it just takes appreciating the good that is already in your life.

This can be done through expressing gratitude.

Here are some different ways you can express gratitude every day.

Become an Active Listener

If you want to be more grateful of others and show your gratitude, be an active listener.

This means not just hearing what someone says, but really absorbing what they are telling you.

Don’t use your phone when someone is talking to you. Look them in the eyes and take in what they are telling you.

This is active listening and shows the other person that you care about what they have to say.

Express Gratitude in Your Journal

One way many people like to show gratitude is by writing it down in their journal.

This is something you can do every day, by writing down at least one thing each day you are grateful for.

Some days will repeat, which is okay!

Other days, there will be a specific situation that you appreciate.

It is okay to just be grateful you woke up and have your health, that you have a job, or something as simple as eating one of your favorite things.

Always Thank People Who Have Helped You

Remember to tell people when you are grateful for them.

Whether they have done something to help you, gave you a compliment, or were just there for you, this is a good reason to show your appreciation.

A simple thank you is enough. But when someone goes above and beyond, really tell them how much you appreciate them and that you are very thankful to have them in your life.

This little gesture means so much to the person receiving the gratitude.

Create a Gratitude Jar

If you don’t want to write down all the reasons you are grateful in your journal, try creating a gratitude jar.

You can use small pieces of paper to write down one thing you are grateful for each day, fold it up, and put it in the jar.

This is a fun activity you can do with your family as well, helping everyone to be more grateful.

It is also a great gift for others, where you can personalize an empty jar for them and give them paper and pens to use for the gratitude jar.

Volunteer to Help Others

You can also express your gratitude through your actions.

You don’t always have to be vocal about how much you appreciate someone else and how they have improved your life.

Instead show them through helping them and being there for them.

Volunteer to help them with a big project, show up when they are going through a rough time, and invite them to spend time with you.

When you go out of your way to be there for other people, they can feel your gratitude.

Day Seven: How to Use Positive Thinking As a Force For Good

Once you get used to thinking more positively and living a positive and optimistic life, you can start sharing this with others.

Helping others to think more positively is a wonderful way to surround yourself with happy, content people who will lift you up just as much as you lift them up.

Here are some helpful tips for helping others with their own positive thinking.

Become a Beacon of Hope and Positivity

There is no better way than showing by example.

Without saying a thing, people will know when you have become a more positive person.

Suddenly, your Facebook posts are about optimism and light, instead of blue, sad, and depressing updates.

When they are around you, you always have a smile on your face.

And when something negative happens to you, you always have a way to be positive about it.

This is what others will see, and soon develop on their own.

Provide Encouragement to Others

Another amazing method for helping others to be more positive is giving them confidence.

Encourage your friends and loved ones when they are trying something new. Tell them when they do a great job, and show them that they can truly accomplish anything they put their mind to.

When you are confident and feel good about yourself, you think much more positively about different situations.

Express Your Gratitude for Other People

Expressing gratitude isn’t just beneficial for you, but to others in your life as well.

Every time you are grateful for someone, show them and tell them! Let them know you appreciate them and are grateful for them being in your life.

Tell them specifically what you appreciate and how it had a positive impact on your life.

Show through action by helping them and being there for them the same way they were there for you.

Recommend Ways to Be More Positive

If someone in your life seems down or overly negative, show them ways to be more positive.

Let them know how you personally shifted your mindset, find the bright side to any situation, let them know a way it can be looked at as a good thing.

In the worst situations, just being there for them and helping them move on from something is the best thing you can do to help them find the positive spin.

Keep showing others how to think and be more positive, and they can someday share this with others as well.

Disclaimer:

This article was written by Zuzana Halliwell. I am not a doctor or health professional and cannot be held liable for the information written here. This article is meant to provide information about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle and diet. The content is based on my own personal experience and on information provided by medical professionals that is available to the public. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Do not use it as an alternative to seeking help from a medical professional.