Positive Thinking for the Struggling Optimists

INTRODUCTION

When you think about yourself, do you dislike yourself? Do you believe you are too far gone to amount to anything? Do you feel like you are a lost cause? Or do you see yourself with love and forgiveness? When you think about yourself, do you know that you are doing good in the world? When you think about the world, are you overwhelmed by negativity or by humanity’s way of finding happy endings? Now, imagine a spectrum. On the left, there is pessimism and on the right, there is optimism. In the center, there is realism. I personally think that our goal view of the world and of ourselves should be in between the realism and the optimism. Positive thinking, or a lack of, affects your actions and what you choose to do in your life.

We all have our bad sides and to an extent, we’re all a little terrible, being not perfect and all. This doesn’t mean we should let our imperfection or terrible pieces define our lives and sight. When I think about myself, I am generally closest to the negative side of the spectrum, but there are some things that have helped me change my thought process. But before I can explain how you can begin to change your perspective, it’s important to understand where you lie on this spectrum and why you should be in a certain area.

THE IMPACT OF POSITIVE THINKING

According to Mayo Clinic, positive thinking can lower rates of depression and stress, increase one’s life span, create a greater resistance to the common cold, help one develop better coping skills, and have healthier psychological health. Other than having health benefits, positive thinking can also allow you to change into a better person. Thinking with optimism won’t automatically change you but it opens pathways for you to be a better person.This next part is key, though. Positive thinking doesn’t mean buying a ticket to Disney World when you are broke. Then, believing you can afford it. It’s expensive to go to Disney World! Believing that you will attain over one hundred dollars to be able to afford one ticket doesn’t make that automatically happen.

This is why having optimism must be balanced with realism so you don’t go into tremendous debt or worse. When thinking about oneself, we can apply this same logic of positive thinking. This all seems so easy and makes perfect sense, right? Wrong. For me, at least, positive thinking and positive self-image don’t come from naturally. They take time and effort for me to have.

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ABOUT YOURSELF TODAY? AND SOME OTHER THOUGHTS.

No matter where you are on the spectrum in general, we all have our moments when we struggle to think kindly about ourselves. This advice is for your bad moments. Right now, your bad moments may outweigh your good ones, but it’s possible to change that. There is hope for you. This process takes time but I’d like to tell you one thing that has helped me to look for the best in myself and love myself regardless of my faults. If I don’t work to change how I see myself, how can I change my own actions or even, how other people see me? In order to be me, I must love myself. Keep in mind that it’s not selfish; self-love is necessary to our own well-being and others’. Self-love doesn’t mean never changing but thinking positively to lead to that change we want so badly.

Pay attention to this, positive thinking gives you the opportunity to not care what other people think about you. In turn, you are able to be yourself without wronging other people around you by positively thinking your way to an improved version of life. This doesn’t make you better than other people, either, because that is irrelevant. You’ve only got one chance for life, why waste time wallowing in self-pity when you could be working to follow your dreams and changing the world for better? Sitting in a negative mindset only allows negative things to happen to you and you to do negative things, in return. Loving yourself is a journey, becoming a better person is a journey, making the world a better place is a journey, but the only way to accomplish anything is to have the right kind of thoughts necessary to survive that journey.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY

Now that you understand the importance of changing your view of yourself and your life, let’s talk about how to do that. Some people practice this by treating their thoughts as a slideshow. Anytime they have a negative thought, they flip the slide to a different, optimistic thought. However, this doesn’t work for me, nor does it even make sense to me. If I am struggling to think positively, how should I be able to create a positive thought from nothing? Well, I’m not.This is why I have to use my brain. If I can’t do the one thing to think positively that everyone recommends to me, what else is there for me to try? That’s when I came up with an idea that is changing how I think and what I believe about myself.

THE FIRST STEP

1. To begin to change my mindset, all I am going to do is write down one thing I am thankful for everyday. This could be something as small as clean water or as big as passing your final exam with a 100%. This step isn’t very time-consuming or difficult. Even still, it took a lot of time to convince myself to start to do this. That’s because I never made the connection that I had to actively work at changing my mindset and view of myself until recently. If you’re struggling with negative thoughts, specifically about the way you look, then write down one thing you like about yourself every day. Get creative and have fun with it. You may only be pessimistic about a very small thing, but that doesn’t mean you should leave it alone and let that part of you stay how it is.

Think about it like this. When you are a kid, your body begins to grow. Imagine one of your fingers doesn’t grow with the rest of your body. All of a sudden, you have a toddler sized finger and an adult sized body. That’s what it’s like to have a positive mindset about some things but not all things about yourself and your world. Anyways, tangent aside, the point is that you can apply this concept to many other parts of your thought process. This doesn’t just have to be about things you are thankful for. You can expand on this to create a list of what you like about yourself or the world and more.

THE SECOND STEP

2. For me, saying things I was grateful for, alone, couldn’t change all of my thought process, though. This is when I decided to be more caring for the environment, animals, and other people in the little things I do. It’s not like I didn’t care already but I wanted to do as much as I could to make a difference. This meant I had to physically change how I lived my life. Some ideas I practice now are as follows. For animals, I’m avoiding straws and cutting the little plastic wrapping that holds drinks together. For the environment, I’m using less water and recycling more. I’ve even started to use reusable bags because I don’t want the world to disappear over my wastefulness. A lot of these little changes just come from being more mindful of the consequences of my choices.

This might seem unrelated but, now, whenever I think something negative about myself I have a legitimate action to fight the pessimism. If my brain tells me I am a terrible person, I can respond with, “Valid point, but I’m doing what I am able to do to take better care of the earth” or “Interesting thought, but in reality, I just listened to someone figure out their life for an hour and did everything I could to help them.” Your brain isn’t able to make any other valid points after that. Of course, it will take time and practice to do this without your brain arguing and fighting back every chance it gets, but it is doable for even the most pessimistic person. Being kind to the world will give you a factual argument to be kind to yourself.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

• Becoming optimistic doesn’t mean you won’t have bad days but it does mean you can improve your standard of living.
• Balancing your thoughts and ideas about yourself between realism and optimism is key to gaining benefits from positive thinking. Realism does not include intrusive thoughts, generalizations, or comparisons such as, “you will always be like this” or “you could never be as happy as she is.” We all have our own struggles.
• Changing how you see yourself and everything around you takes time.
• Your struggles and actions do not define the rest of your life. You must actively try to change regardless of the challenges along the way.
• It is not selfish to love yourself and have a positive mindset. It is the exact opposite because you do not deserve a pessimistic thought process nor can you help other people around you when you’re stuck in negativity.
• Most importantly, love yourself, change yourself, be yourself.

I hope this encourages you to improve your life and work towards happy and to start your journey of optimism and self-love, I just want to let you know that you will win this war and that your thoughts will not defeat you.