What Should I Do to Think Positive?

Positive thinking has a lot to do with your level of optimism.

I am not talking about an unrealistic optimism, which involves overestimating the likelihood of positive events and underestimating the likelihood of negative events. It is of course beneficial to be realisitc.

However, I am referring to learned optimism. This means you acknowledge difficulties, but explain them more productively compared to those who are pessimistic.

When things happen, whether good or bad, how do you explain them? How do you process, interpret and assign meaning to the things that happen to you? This is an important question. Our explantory style can minimize or exacerbate the negative effects of stress. How we explain things also determines to a great extent if we stay motivated or feel defeated and vulnerable in the midst of adversity.

According to Seligman in his book Learned optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life the three dimensions of one’s explanatory style are:

• permanence (perceived longevity of events or circumstances)
• pervasiveness (the extent that outcomes in one area affect your beliefs about outcomes in other areas)
• personalization (the extent to which a person sees themselves vs. external factors as the source of a positive or negative occurrence)

Optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles differ greatly along these dimensions.

How To Think Positive: Permanence

To think positive, replace limiting and fatalistic phrases such as:

Never

Always

All the time

With temporary and changeable phrases such as:

This time

Next time

You can also replace can’t with not yet.

With this adjustment, you no longer view difficult situations as unchangeable. Rather, you allow room for things to get better; you enable yourself to bring about positive change.

For example, instead of saying, “these meetings always go bad,” you can say, “this time the meeting did not go well”.

How to Think Positive: Pervasiveness

Ask yourself, “How contagious will I allow this bad event to be?” If you had a bad day at work, does it mean you will have a bad time with the family? Will you let it ruin your whole day?

To think positive, replace catastrophizing self-talk and thoughts that often use the words “everything” and “nothing” with language that focuses on “this thing” or “this matter”.

Let’s say you have an unsuccessful meeting with a client. In this scenario, a catastrophizing response would be:

I am not good at my job and don’t belong here.

Such a phrase, can be replaced with:

I need to improve how I communicate with clients. However, I am really good at doing market research.

How to Think Positive: Personalization

The key to enhancing optimism along this dimension is to separate performance from the performer.

Instead of criticizing yourself as a person, it is more beneficial to use skill or performance critical phrases.

Let’s say you gave a poor presentation. Instead of saying:

I am a terrible presenter.

say

My presentation was not so good.

Such a shift in mindset gives you room to improve. As a result, you will not fall into a mental trap that hinders your development.

Summary

To think positive, it is crucial to enhance your degree of optimism. That is to adjust your explanatory style. We covered three dimensions: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization – also know as the three Ps.

Those with a more pessimistic explanatory style:

• consider negative events as permanent
• allow problems in one domain to negatively impact their beliefs about outcomes in other unrelated domains
• tend to blame themselves for negative outcomes; even when beyond their control

On the contrary, those with a more optimistic explanatory style:

• are more likely to view negative events as temporary
• limit how negative events in one area effect their beliefs about outcomes in other areas
• tend to attribute failure to external circumstances or things that they can improve on in the future