Positive Thinking

During working with tough deadline or difficult work, an optimist focuses his energies on identifying a solution and planning out flow-charts. He focuses on his mental attitude that admits positive thoughts, words and images, leading to success and happiness.

Our attitudes are shaped through constant conditioning as a result of interactions with family, friends and environment. They are so rooted in us that it’s very difficult to change them. Positive attitude is a hallmark of an optimist professional, who expects to see brightness and sunshine everywhere. His common words are ”I Will”, “I Can”’ “ It’s Possible”. A pessimist would lose his precious time just by thinking about the problem. An optimist would introspect and figure out the difference between the performance and expectations and try and bridge the gap, never losing sight of the goals.

When caught in the soft soil of negativity, one’s misperceptions overcome one’s logical thinking. These irrational themes are manifested in many ways :

Unwanted Comparison:

We magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter the positive ones. For instance, the common one is, you have been promoted and you have got a good increment. However, the percentage of the increment is below your expectation. You focus on the latter instead of celebrating the former. ( Here you have to see that at least your performance has been noticed and is awarded, expectation is a relative term and differs from person to person.)

Personalizing :

You hold yourself responsible for anything that goes wrong. If the team overshoots the project deadline by a few days, you take complete responsibility and curse your self. ( Instead to analyzing, you prefer to take shortcut for the problem to end the matter.)

Negative Visualizing:

You live in the vicinity of Murphy’s law, expecting anything that could possibly go wrong , will go wrong ! e.g. if you are organizing an interview, you will anticipate that you will not get good office for the interview, panel members may not turn up and if everything goes right then interview candidate may not turn up.

Closed Mindset :

You look things only in Black and White, so the person with whom you are talking is either good or bad, he is either supportive or uncooperative. ( everybody has good and bad qualities, you have to look for only good qualities of him. Moreover analyze before jumping to your conclusion, why the person is bad or uncooperative with you.)


Evaluate your thinking :

Watch your thinking during the course of the day. Check yourself the moment you find yourself edging towards negative thoughts. E.g. Instead of cribbing over lack of resources, think of creative solutions. Similarly, don’t get overawed by the tasks that seems too complicated. They’ll seem less daunting if you break them into smaller units and then address them. If you think that you do not have the expertise in a particular area, look around for experts who can help you. Try and induce more of self acceptance and less of criticism. This will enable you to re-look at the “problem” at the work place as “learning opportunities” and handle stress in a realistic and constructive manner.


Exercise Positive Affirmations :

Susan Jeffers, noted self help author, strongly points that positive affirmation is a proven tool for steering clear of negativity and fear. She explains, “Positive affirmation is a strong positive statement telling us that all is well. Wth constant repetition of this uplifting and soothing statement, the voice of doom and gloom is replaced with thoughts of peace, power and love. “Pin up positive affirmations like “It is all happening perfectly” or “I am powerful and I can do it” at your office desk or in you car, and look at it on your way to work. It has been demonstrated that just repeating, writing or thinking positive statements lend us the strength, whether or not we believe them and if we say affirmations often enough, we ultimately start believing in them ! Positive affirmations can certainly arm us to get back from facing adversity.

Associate with positive people :

Both positive and negative thoughts are contagious. At the workplace one often encounters unhappy souls, who find something wrong with almost everything around them. They point fingers when things go wrong, they grumble, morn and find faults. It helps to steer clear of these people as they rub off their attitude and thoughts consciously or subconsciously. Therefore, it helps to be in the midst of people who are optimist, upbeat and happy.

Positive thinking can empower us in a way that would boost our self esteem, expand our comfort zone and envelope us with well being and health, thus making way for personal and professional growth. It has been rightly said that a positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible !!!.