Most people have heard of Norman Vincent Peale's famous book "The Power of Positive Thinking." The influence of this book and others of a similar ilk has been significant and thousands of people have applied the principles of positive thinking to achieve personal success.
How important is positive thinking to the achievement of success? More than anything, it seems that our attitude to life has a greater influence on success than education, experience and other factors. So if you want your dreams to materialize, start by monitoring your attitude. You need to learn how to think positively despite the circumstances. If you can do this, you will have taken a significant step towards achieving your dreams.
Fortunately, it is not overly difficult to improve your thinking habits. You simply have to identify negative thoughts you need to change and replace them with positive thoughts. Positive thinking allows us to reinterpret our experiences and circumstances more optimistically than we might otherwise do. In turn, this gives us greater personal strength to weather the storms we face and turn difficult situations around. It also helps us to move from where we are to where we want to be. By simply paying attention to the stream of thoughts that run through our minds we can quickly identify those that are negative. It is therefore important to begin to pay attention to your thoughts. How often do you feel unhappy, negative, judgemental or discouraged? Before you can really achieve the success you want it is essential to begin to think more positively.
Positive thinkers do not allow a single negative event to affect their whole lives. They are able to put things in perspective and still maintain a healthy emotional balance. It is amazing how many people hold onto anger and regrets about relatively unimportant things. To truly take advantage of the power of positive thinking, you need to let go of resentments and unforgiveness. There is a time for these feelings. If you have been betrayed and bruised it is only human to experience emotional pain.
However, if you truly want a happy life you cannot hold onto these feelings for very long. You don't have to be unrealistic to be a positive thinker. It isn't about avoiding the truth or hiding from reality; it is simply taking charge of your life beginning with your thoughts. We create what we focus on in life. We may think we are focusing on good things but when we pay attention to our thoughts we can be shocked to discover how negative they are. If our thoughts are negative, we will attract negative things into our lives. It's that simple. By simply paying attention to the good things in your life and being grateful for them, you can become a positive thinker. When your thoughts are overwhelmingly positive you will begin to attract more positive experiences into your life. That is the simple yet amazing power of positive thinking.
