Positivity.org


If you're successful half the time, try doubling your efforts.

Build on the Good that you have now --- family, happy clients, whatever it is you have you love - make it better, build on your strength!

On a positive note I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. · ·

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. · ·

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. · · I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life." · ·

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. · ·

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that if you pursue happiness, it will elude you. But if you focus on your family, your friends, the needs of others, your work and doing the very best you can,happiness will find you. · ·

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. · ·

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. · ·

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love that human touch - holding hands, a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. · · I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. · ·

I've learned that you should pass this on to someone you care about. · ·

I just did. Sometimes they just need a little something to make them smile. Note: People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, but People will never forget how you made them feel... "

Positivity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Positivity is a term popularized by journalist Albert Nerenberg to mean an emphasis on the positive in the face of the gloominess of the 21st Century. Nerenberg was surprised that officially, Positivity is not truly recognized as a word. The term was featured in a series published by the Montreal Gazette^[1], which featured new trends in culture and science which emphasized hope, intelligence, and human progress in face of war, fear and climate change. Also the term might simply be a calque or loan translation from the French positivité, something possible in a city like Montreal where language interference (English-French and French English) is a common occurrence.

PositivityBlog.Org

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
- Anais Nin

I think that one of the most effective ways to improve your life is simply to think in a more positive way.

This is of course nothing new and not that simple. If it was, well, then at least most of us would already be doing it.

So, why aren’t we more positive? I can think of a few reasonable reasons.

We think it is like it is - It´s easy to confuse what has happened to you, the story of your life, with now and the future. The past does not necessarily equal the future. If you believe it does then it does. But if you don´t if you believe it does then it doesn´t. If you change your way of thinking you can change your behaviour, habits and your life.

Social programming – A big reason many think that things are like they are and will always be that way is because no one ever told them that there was an alternative. The school, newspapers and other influential forces tells us we have a life and an identity that is us throughout our lives. And at least in much of the media, negativity is the normal filter to view the world through. We hear this every day when we are young and very impressionable. Then we continue believing it and it becomes a part of our sense of self. And we continue our lives on that path.

Lack of energy – Changing the many negative and neutral thoughts in our day to day life to positive ones can take quite a bit of energy. If you are stressed out by work and your personal life, if you aren´t eating and sleeping well and don´t take time to exercise there will be a lack of energy. And with that lack it´s easy to just feel too damn tired to change your thoughts, to just give up and revert to the familiar way of thinking.

Too reactive and mindful of what others may think – You may think, if I change and become more positive, what will other people say? That I´m weird, hyper, over-compensating or unhappy on the inside? Will they laugh, mock me and question this change in outlook on life? Or perhaps, they will actually like it and it will give me new opportunities down the line. Maybe it will bring success and my relatively comfortable life will be shaken up and change. Yeah, such thoughts can be some scary thoughts.

Lack of motivation –Not knowing exactly what´s in it for me on a personal and beneficial level.

Wanting to be right – Most of us have an ingrained sense that what we believe is right. Even though a belief we have might not be that useful. Or makes our lives out right miserable. It can be hard to give up a belief because then we have to give up being right.

We tried but failed (once or twice) – Throughout our lives, in school and society we are taught that we should not fail, that it is bad. This can make us very reluctant to take chances and keep trying beyond the initial attempt.

A lack of knowledge/too much disempowering information – You will most likely fail several times at first. You will make mistakes. You may be met with negativity or disinterest. It may take more than a weekend to get the success you envision. It may take longer than you think, perhaps months. And that is ok, that is normal.

Not knowing how the world (most of the time) works can discourage you. And the information about how the world works that you get from media, the people around you and society may not always be that accurate and effective. Instead, seek out relevant information for yourself to set your expectations to a reasonable level. Get information from a variety of different sources. And get it from people that have experience and knowledge about what you are interested in. A good starting point can be your local library, bookstore or amazon.com.

10 reasons why you should become more positive

1. You will create a better world around you as your surroundings will become affected and change due to your positive thoughts and actions.

2. You will make better first impressions. Everyone stereotypes, whether they want or not. A positive first impression can mean a lot in many situations and have a lasting effect throughout your relationship with that person.

3. You will focus on the good things in people. Not their faults. This will make things much better overall and improve all kinds of relationships.

4. It´s easier to become more productive when you stop laying obstacles in the middle of the road in the form of negative thoughts.

5. Work becomes more fun. Everything becomes more fun.

6. You become more attractive. People like positive people. Positive people make other people feel good about themselves and they don´t drag the mood down. Also, a positive attitude is an indicator – and source - of high self-confidence, a quality that just about everyone is attracted to.

7. Being negative has very little concrete advantages and is not a very empowering way to look at life.

8. It opens up your mind to focus on other ways of looking at things. Sometimes wonderful new ways you might not ever have thought about or experienced before.

9. It puts the Law of Attraction to better use. The Law of Attraction basically says: whatever you think about you attract into your life. As you replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts you will start to attract more positive opportunities and people into your life.

10. You´ll waste less time. Negativity can be like a self-feeding loop. First you think one negative thought. It leads you to three more. And then you start examining your life in deeper detail through a depressing lens. When you get into a vicious cycles like this it can eat up hours, weeks and years of your life. It can drain a lot of your energy whilst trapping you in paralysis by analysis. And you probably won´t become that much wiser in the process. As mentioned in the Where is you time really going?, we live for about 24-28 000 days. Don´t waste them.

The how to do it

“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”
- Viktor Frankl

The Positivity Challenge is this: For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.

What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is ok whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way.

It´s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you. Or even better, what could be a win-win situation if the situation involves other people (which many important situations in our lives do). A win-win solution is more often an even more satisfying and beneficial solution than the one where only you win.

Now, how to go about it? Here are three tips for the first week.

Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don´t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.

Realise that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.

Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.

Accept your feelings, don´t deny or refuse them – Although it´s often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.

Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.

Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.

In addition, here´s a bunch of other suggestions – some of them you might not be able to use fully within a week but instead over a longer time-span - to make this challenge easier and improve your life.

Get the physical fundamentals down. If you don´t have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to reprioritize. If you don´t do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do reprioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy. Use Where is your really time going? and Prioritize with the Pareto Principle to make better use of your time. Decrease stress using those two articles and the rest in the series How to double your productivity. Also, check out this simple way to feel really relaxed.

Act as if. Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.

Start your day in a better way. Check out these five tips for a better beginning to your day.

Limit your time with really negative people – Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.

Model positive people. Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.

Focus on the now and future, not the past. A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.

Redefine “failure” and “proof”. You don´t have to learn much about successful people to realize that one of their key-strengths is that their way of looking at failure is widely different from more common one in society. As Michael Jordan said:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Also, in a similar vain, thinking one example represents the whole world might not be the most helpful belief to hold. Yes, someone may have cheated on you, treated you badly at work before you were fired and your first business venture may have gone down in flames. But applying one or two bad examples to the whole world and the rest of your life will cause suffering for you long after those hurtful events happened. And could set you up for even more pain and disappointment through self-fulfilling prophecies and the Law of Attraction.

I don´t think these all these words are the truth about how the world around you and me works. Just as a pessimistic (or realistic) view of the world is not the truth either. I don´t believe there is one truth, but rather that the world changes due to the beliefs you have about it and the actions you take based on your beliefs. I do believe that this is a more useful model of how to view and interact with the world than a pessimistic one and that it´s a more enjoyable way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that increases happiness and joy in life. Something I think just about everyone wants.

“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me,
for every man is a mirror.
We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counterparts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
- Kirsten Zambucka

Be your best

This poem helped me stop worrying and get to work in Argentina:

Be the Best of Whatever You Are

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley, but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill,
Be a bush if you can't be a tree,
If you can't be a bush be a bit of grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can't be a muskiek, then just be a bass,
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew,
There's something for all of us here,
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do,
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can't be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun, be a star;
It isn't by the size that you win or fail,
Be the best of whatever you are!

-Douglas Mallech

Elder Ballard: Learning the Lessons of the Past

Learning the Lessons of the Past

Elder M. Russell Ballard
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit.

We live in a fascinating and sometimes bewildering time. The other day I mentioned to one of my grandsons that I was going over the text of my conference talk. His face reflected his confusion. “You’re going to text your conference talk?” he asked. “I thought you had to give it in the Conference Center.”

While for some, texting would be easier, I’m grateful for this opportunity today to speak because I have a message I feel is important for that grandson and for my other grandchildren as well as for all of the youth of the Church.

Years ago when I was in business, I learned a very expensive lesson because I did not listen carefully to the counsel of my father, nor did I heed the promptings of the Spirit giving me guidance from my Heavenly Father. My father and I were in the automobile business, and the Ford Motor Company was looking for dealers to sell their new line of cars. Ford executives invited my father and me to a preview showing of what they thought would be a spectacularly successful product. When we saw the cars, my father, who had over 35 years experience in the business, cautioned me about becoming a dealer. However, the Ford sales personnel were very persuasive, and I chose to become Salt Lake City’s first—and actually last—Edsel dealer. And if you don’t know what an Edsel is, ask your grandpa. He will tell you that the Edsel was a spectacular failure.

Now, there’s a powerful lesson for all of you in this experience. When you are willing to listen and learn, some of life’s most meaningful teachings come from those who have gone before you. They have walked where you are walking and have experienced many of the things you are experiencing. If you listen and respond to their counsel, they can help guide you toward choices that will be for your benefit and blessing and steer you away from decisions that can destroy you. As you look to your parents and others who have gone before you, you will find examples of faith, commitment, hard work, dedication, and sacrifice that you should strive to duplicate.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which it would not be worthwhile to consider and learn from the experience of others. Many professions require internships, during which aspiring professionals shadow seasoned veterans to learn from their years of experience and accumulated wisdom. Rookies in professional sports are often expected to sit on the bench and learn by watching experienced players. New missionaries are assigned to work with a senior companion whose experience helps the new missionary learn the right way to effectively serve the Lord.

Of course, there are times when we have no choice but to venture out on our own and do the best we can at figuring things out as we go along. For example, there are not a lot of people in my generation whose experience can help when it comes to the most modern of technologies. When we have problems with modern technology, we must look for someone who knows more about it than we do—which usually means turning to one of you young people.

It is my message and testimony to you today, my young friends, that for the most important questions of your eternal lives, there are answers in the scriptures and in the words and testimonies of apostles and prophets. The fact that these words come largely from older men, past and present, doesn’t make them any less relevant. In fact, it makes their words even more valuable to you because they come from those who have learned much through years of devout living.

There is a famous saying attributed to George Santayana. You’ve probably heard it: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (in John Bartlett, comp., Familiar Quotations, 15th ed. [1980], 703). There are, in fact, several different variations of this quote, including “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Regardless of the exact language, the sentiment is profound. There are great lessons to be learned from the past, and you ought to learn them so that you don’t exhaust your spiritual strength repeating past mistakes and bad choices.

You don’t have to be a Latter-day Saint—you don’t even have to be religious—to see the repeating pattern of history in the lives of God’s children as recorded in the Old Testament. Time and again we see the cycle of righteousness followed by wickedness. Similarly, the Book of Mormon records that ancient civilizations of this continent followed exactly the same pattern: righteousness followed by prosperity, followed by material comforts, followed by greed, followed by pride, followed by wickedness and a collapse of morality until the people brought calamities upon themselves sufficient to stir them up to humility, repentance, and change.

In the relatively short span of years covered by the New Testament, the historic pattern repeats itself again. This time the people turned against Christ and His Apostles. The collapse was so great we have come to know it as the Great Apostasy, which led to the centuries of spiritual stagnation and ignorance called the Dark Ages.

Now, I need to be very clear about these historically reoccurring periods of apostasy and spiritual darkness. Our Heavenly Father loves all of His children, and He wants them all to have the blessings of the gospel in their lives. Spiritual light is not lost because God turns His back on His children. Rather, spiritual darkness results when His children turn their collective backs on Him. It is a natural consequence of bad choices made by individuals, communities, countries, and entire civilizations. This has been proven again and again throughout the course of time. One of the great lessons of this historical pattern is that our choices, both individually and collectively, do result in spiritual consequences for ourselves and for our posterity.

In every dispensation, God’s loving desire to bless His children is manifest in the miraculous restoration of the gospel truth to the earth through living prophets. The Restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith in the early 1800s is only the most recent example. Similar restorations were accomplished in earlier times through such prophets as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

The 179 years that have passed since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was officially organized have been extraordinary by any measure. Never in recorded history has there been a period of such remarkable progress in terms of science and technology. These advances have helped to facilitate gospel growth and expansion throughout the world. But they have also contributed to the rise of materialism and self-indulgence and to the decline of morality.

We live in an era when the boundaries of good taste and public decency are being pushed to the point where there are no boundaries at all. The commandments of God have taken a beating in the vacillating marketplace of ideas that absolutely rejects the notion of right and wrong. Certain factions of society seem generally mistrustful of anyone who chooses to live according to religious belief. And when people of faith attempt to warn others of the possible consequences of their sinful choices, they are scoffed at and ridiculed, and their most sacred rites and cherished values are publicly mocked.

Does any of this sound familiar, my young brothers and sisters? Do you see the historical pattern emerging again—the pattern of righteousness followed by prosperity, followed by material comforts, followed by greed, followed by pride, followed by wickedness and a collapse of morality—the same pattern we’ve seen again and again within the pages of the Old and New Testaments and the Book of Mormon? More importantly, what impact will the lessons of the past have on the personal choices you make right now and for the rest of your lives?

The voice of the Lord is clear and unmistakable. He knows you. He loves you. He wants you to be eternally happy. But according to your God-given agency, the choice is yours. Each one of you has to decide for yourself if you are going to ignore the past and suffer the painful mistakes and tragic pitfalls that have befallen previous generations, experiencing for yourself the devastating consequences of bad choices. How much better your life will be if you will follow the noble example of the faithful followers of Christ such as the sons of Helaman, Moroni, Joseph Smith, and the stalwart pioneers—and choose, as they did, to remain faithful to your Heavenly Father’s commandments.

With all my heart I hope and pray that you will be wise enough to learn the lessons of the past. You don’t have to spend time as a Laman or a Lemuel in order to know that it’s much better to be a Nephi or a Jacob. You don’t have to follow the path of Cain or Gadianton in order to realize that “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). And you don’t have to allow your community to become like Sodom or Gomorrah in order to understand that it isn’t a good place to raise a family.

Learning the lessons of the past allows you to walk boldly in the light without running the risk of stumbling in the darkness. This is the way it’s supposed to work. This is God’s plan: father and mother, grandfather and grandmother teaching their children; children learning from them and then becoming a more righteous generation through their own personal experiences and opportunities. Learning the lessons of the past allows you to build personal testimony on a solid bedrock of obedience, faith, and the witness of the Spirit.

Of course, it’s not enough to learn these lessons as a matter of history and culture. Learning the names and dates and sequence of events from the printed page won’t help you very much unless the meaning and the message are written in your hearts. Nourished by testimony and watered with faith, the lessons of the past can take root in your hearts and become a vibrant part of who you are.

And so it returns, as it always does, to your own personal faith and testimony. That is the difference-maker, my young brothers and sisters. That is how you know. That is how you avoid the mistakes of the past and take your spirituality to the next level. If you are open and receptive to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit in your lives, you will understand the lessons of the past, and they will be burned into your souls by the power of your testimonies.

And how do you get such a testimony? Well, there’s no new technology for that, nor will there ever be. You cannot do a Google search to gain a testimony. You can’t text message faith. You gain a vibrant, life-changing testimony today the same way it has always been done. The process hasn’t been changed. It comes through desire, study, prayer, obedience, and service. That is why the teachings of prophets and apostles, past and present, are as relevant to your life today as they ever have been.

That you may find joy and happiness and peace in the future by learning the great and eternal lessons of the past is my prayer for each of you—for my grandchildren and all of the youth of the Church, wherever you may be—which I offer in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Positivity.org

If you're successful half the time, try doubling your efforts.

Build on the Good that you have now --- family, happy clients, whatever it is you have you love - make it better, build on your strength!

On a positive note I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. · ·

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. · ·

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. · · I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life." · ·

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. · ·

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that if you pursue happiness, it will elude you. But if you focus on your family, your friends, the needs of others, your work and doing the very best you can,happiness will find you. · ·

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. · ·

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. · ·

I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love that human touch - holding hands, a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. · · I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. · ·

I've learned that you should pass this on to someone you care about. · ·

I just did. Sometimes they just need a little something to make them smile. Note: People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, but People will never forget how you made them feel... "

Positivity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Positivity is a term popularized by journalist Albert Nerenberg to mean an emphasis on the positive in the face of the gloominess of the 21st Century. Nerenberg was surprised that officially, Positivity is not truly recognized as a word. The term was featured in a series published by the Montreal Gazette^[1], which featured new trends in culture and science which emphasized hope, intelligence, and human progress in face of war, fear and climate change. Also the term might simply be a calque or loan translation from the French positivité, something possible in a city like Montreal where language interference (English-French and French English) is a common occurrence.

PositivityBlog.Org

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
- Anais Nin

I think that one of the most effective ways to improve your life is simply to think in a more positive way.

This is of course nothing new and not that simple. If it was, well, then at least most of us would already be doing it.

So, why aren’t we more positive? I can think of a few reasonable reasons.

We think it is like it is - It´s easy to confuse what has happened to you, the story of your life, with now and the future. The past does not necessarily equal the future. If you believe it does then it does. But if you don´t if you believe it does then it doesn´t. If you change your way of thinking you can change your behaviour, habits and your life.

Social programming – A big reason many think that things are like they are and will always be that way is because no one ever told them that there was an alternative. The school, newspapers and other influential forces tells us we have a life and an identity that is us throughout our lives. And at least in much of the media, negativity is the normal filter to view the world through. We hear this every day when we are young and very impressionable. Then we continue believing it and it becomes a part of our sense of self. And we continue our lives on that path.

Lack of energy – Changing the many negative and neutral thoughts in our day to day life to positive ones can take quite a bit of energy. If you are stressed out by work and your personal life, if you aren´t eating and sleeping well and don´t take time to exercise there will be a lack of energy. And with that lack it´s easy to just feel too damn tired to change your thoughts, to just give up and revert to the familiar way of thinking.

Too reactive and mindful of what others may think – You may think, if I change and become more positive, what will other people say? That I´m weird, hyper, over-compensating or unhappy on the inside? Will they laugh, mock me and question this change in outlook on life? Or perhaps, they will actually like it and it will give me new opportunities down the line. Maybe it will bring success and my relatively comfortable life will be shaken up and change. Yeah, such thoughts can be some scary thoughts.

Lack of motivation –Not knowing exactly what´s in it for me on a personal and beneficial level.

Wanting to be right – Most of us have an ingrained sense that what we believe is right. Even though a belief we have might not be that useful. Or makes our lives out right miserable. It can be hard to give up a belief because then we have to give up being right.

We tried but failed (once or twice) – Throughout our lives, in school and society we are taught that we should not fail, that it is bad. This can make us very reluctant to take chances and keep trying beyond the initial attempt.

A lack of knowledge/too much disempowering information – You will most likely fail several times at first. You will make mistakes. You may be met with negativity or disinterest. It may take more than a weekend to get the success you envision. It may take longer than you think, perhaps months. And that is ok, that is normal.

Not knowing how the world (most of the time) works can discourage you. And the information about how the world works that you get from media, the people around you and society may not always be that accurate and effective. Instead, seek out relevant information for yourself to set your expectations to a reasonable level. Get information from a variety of different sources. And get it from people that have experience and knowledge about what you are interested in. A good starting point can be your local library, bookstore or amazon.com.

10 reasons why you should become more positive

1. You will create a better world around you as your surroundings will become affected and change due to your positive thoughts and actions.

2. You will make better first impressions. Everyone stereotypes, whether they want or not. A positive first impression can mean a lot in many situations and have a lasting effect throughout your relationship with that person.

3. You will focus on the good things in people. Not their faults. This will make things much better overall and improve all kinds of relationships.

4. It´s easier to become more productive when you stop laying obstacles in the middle of the road in the form of negative thoughts.

5. Work becomes more fun. Everything becomes more fun.

6. You become more attractive. People like positive people. Positive people make other people feel good about themselves and they don´t drag the mood down. Also, a positive attitude is an indicator – and source - of high self-confidence, a quality that just about everyone is attracted to.

7. Being negative has very little concrete advantages and is not a very empowering way to look at life.

8. It opens up your mind to focus on other ways of looking at things. Sometimes wonderful new ways you might not ever have thought about or experienced before.

9. It puts the Law of Attraction to better use. The Law of Attraction basically says: whatever you think about you attract into your life. As you replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts you will start to attract more positive opportunities and people into your life.

10. You´ll waste less time. Negativity can be like a self-feeding loop. First you think one negative thought. It leads you to three more. And then you start examining your life in deeper detail through a depressing lens. When you get into a vicious cycles like this it can eat up hours, weeks and years of your life. It can drain a lot of your energy whilst trapping you in paralysis by analysis. And you probably won´t become that much wiser in the process. As mentioned in the Where is you time really going?, we live for about 24-28 000 days. Don´t waste them.

The how to do it

“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”
- Viktor Frankl

The Positivity Challenge is this: For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.

What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is ok whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way.

It´s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you. Or even better, what could be a win-win situation if the situation involves other people (which many important situations in our lives do). A win-win solution is more often an even more satisfying and beneficial solution than the one where only you win.

Now, how to go about it? Here are three tips for the first week.

Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don´t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.

Realise that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.

Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.

Accept your feelings, don´t deny or refuse them – Although it´s often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.

Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.

Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.

In addition, here´s a bunch of other suggestions – some of them you might not be able to use fully within a week but instead over a longer time-span - to make this challenge easier and improve your life.

Get the physical fundamentals down. If you don´t have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to reprioritize. If you don´t do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do reprioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy. Use Where is your really time going? and Prioritize with the Pareto Principle to make better use of your time. Decrease stress using those two articles and the rest in the series How to double your productivity. Also, check out this simple way to feel really relaxed.

Act as if. Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.

Start your day in a better way. Check out these five tips for a better beginning to your day.

Limit your time with really negative people – Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.

Model positive people. Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.

Focus on the now and future, not the past. A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.

Redefine “failure” and “proof”. You don´t have to learn much about successful people to realize that one of their key-strengths is that their way of looking at failure is widely different from more common one in society. As Michael Jordan said:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Also, in a similar vain, thinking one example represents the whole world might not be the most helpful belief to hold. Yes, someone may have cheated on you, treated you badly at work before you were fired and your first business venture may have gone down in flames. But applying one or two bad examples to the whole world and the rest of your life will cause suffering for you long after those hurtful events happened. And could set you up for even more pain and disappointment through self-fulfilling prophecies and the Law of Attraction.

I don´t think these all these words are the truth about how the world around you and me works. Just as a pessimistic (or realistic) view of the world is not the truth either. I don´t believe there is one truth, but rather that the world changes due to the beliefs you have about it and the actions you take based on your beliefs. I do believe that this is a more useful model of how to view and interact with the world than a pessimistic one and that it´s a more enjoyable way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that increases happiness and joy in life. Something I think just about everyone wants.

“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me,
for every man is a mirror.
We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counterparts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
- Kirsten Zambucka