From the Journal

The Power of Staying Positive

Positive thinking dramatically increases your chances of success in any endeavour.

The words and ideas that we think can shape our lives and drive us toward success and happiness or failure and distress. How you think and feel can have a profound effect on your ability to recognise opportunity, how well you perform, and the outcome of the goals that you’ve set for yourself. When you maintain an optimistic outlook and make an effort to harbour only positive thoughts, you begin to create the circumstances conducive to you achieving what you desire. You feel in control and few of life’s challenges seem truly overwhelming, mainly because it is in your nature to expect a positive conclusion. An optimistic mind is also a honest one. Staying positive does not mean that you ignore difficulties or disregard limitations. Instead, it means spending time focusing only on the thoughts that are conducive to your well being and progress.

Positive thinking dramatically increases your chances of success in any endeavour. When you are sure that you are worthy, and that achievement is within your grasp, you start to relax and look for solutions rather than dwelling on problems. You are more likely to imagine positive situations or outcomes and disregard the thoughts related to giving up, failure or roadblocks. What the mind expects, it finds. If you anticipate joy, good health, happiness and accomplishment, then you will experience each one. Thinking positively may sound like a simple shift in attention, and it is, busy is a mind-set that must be developed. Whenever a negative thought enters your mind, try immediately replacing it with a constructive or positive one. With persistence, you can condition your mind to judge fleeting, self-defeating thoughts as inconsequential and dismiss them.

It is within your power to become as happy, content and successful as you make your mind up to be. Staying positive may not have an immediate effect on your situation, but it will likely have a profound and instantaneous effect on your mood and the quality of your experiences. In order for positive thinking to change your life. It must become your predominant mind-set. Once you are committed to embracing positive thinking, you will start believing that everything that you want is within your grasp.