Generating Positive Thoughts – Creating a Positive Mindset!

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Winston Churchill

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours”

Swedish Proverb

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

Herm Albright

Thoughts flow in our mind all the time. There are thousands or lacks of thoughts generating in your mind everyday. Positive thoughts are the type of thoughts which give you happiness. Having positive thoughts enable you to overcome all the fears and take action to pursue your goals. Obviously, it creates an enriching life of fulfillment.

So how do we generate a positive mindset? that is we make sure positive thoughts flow in your mind. Seeking opportunities and achieve them with positivity.

There are two steps to be followed.

1. Resolving Negative thoughts:

Say a negative thought comes to your mind, probably a fear based thought. Fear is a wonderful marking scheme; it would show you exactly the parts of your life you need to grow. You probably made a goal and now don’t know whether it would be possible to achieve it. Try to be more aware, see where the fear takes you. Try to find the truth in those fears. Ask question like “Why I have this fear?” “Is it because there is a flaw in my plans?” “Is it because I think I don’t have the capabilities to follow my plans and achieve this goal?” Write them on a paper and answer them! Create solutions for it, like if my plans are flawed, how I can make them more perfect. If I don’t have the capabilities, then train myself with more knowledge or get a mentor to teach me. Should I make a smaller goal and try to achieve it first? Make your plan with all the details you need. You’ll see that most of your fear evaporates and generate a positive feeling within you.

But what about those imaginary fears which generate negative thoughts? That’s where the step 2 comes in.

2. Generating positive thoughts:

Most of us have imaginary fears which become an obstacle in achieving our goals. Say you’re planning to give a speech and you fear it soooo much, just because of those imaginary fears. Like What If I forgot my lines, what If I slipped on stage or probably what If there is a wardrobe malfunction?

These fears have no truth in them. But they exist only because of our social conditioning or past experiences or worse, analyzing the experience of others who failed.

This could be tackled by generating confidence and positivity from within.

Let me give you a personal example. There was a festival in my college. There were auditions for anchoring (Hosting) the show. I really wanted to get selected for hosting. I had no experience of anchoring a show, I did give speeches and presentation in schools, but they were highly formal and structured. The anchoring I was supposed to do for “War of Dj’s” Event was most of spontantaneous. My first struggle was to get selected for anchoring. There were around 35-40 participants and only 6 were going to be selected. To make things worse, they wanted to choose 3 guys and there were around 25 guys in participants. My success ratio was 3/25. Further, they brought around 100 seniors from our college as a demo audience and all instructed to create trouble for anchors during auditions. Myself and one of my friend went in for auditions. The audience were real trouble makers. After seeing them my friend decided to quit without even appearing for it. I was adamant about going for selections, no matter what. But I had my fears too. There were many participants who were very qualified then me with their past experiences in anchoring. I decided to go for it. They gave us a few quotes and told us to prepare an intro for the event based on the quotes. After receiving the quotes I went out of the audition hall, created my intro speech. It was not much difficult for me. The difficult part was to delivering it with gusto and confidence. I went to my group of friends and made them my small audience in the front lobby of my college. It’s a place where many students and professors come and go. I had around 30 minutes to train myself and I knew the place would be perfect too. I started my speech. The first time, I said it with lots of mistakes. I learned again perfectly and delivered again. It was good, but there was no passion. I tossed my speech and decide to Do it my way! This time I came in my natural state and delivered the speech, but not word to word. I simply started enjoying the flow. The constant feedback from my friends helped me. Many people in the lobby stopped to hear my intro speech and gave me some guidance. There was also one professor who gave me some guidelines like not to pull the letter ’s’ and make my speech more clear. It’s strange sometime how strangers come to help you, if you have the desire to learn. By the end of 30 minutes I had enough confidence to go for it. I was feeling very confident. I went to the audition hall, waiting for my turn. OOps! The crowd there was really troublesome for the participant anchors. During the audition they would sing so unrelated random songs to disturb the participants (For those who know, the song they sang was “chaddi pehen ke phul khila hai”) Duh! One of the girl actually cried and left the stage. That’s where my confidence stumbled. I started having those Imaginary fears. Can I do it? Would I make it? How should I tackle that audience? I had to tackle these feelings and thoughts anyhow. I started programming my mind. I remembered how many times as a child I had fear of ghosts and then my mom use to say those were imaginary, to trust the one above us all. He would protect us. To trust, that she would love me unconditionally, no matter what. I convinced myself that all these fears were just imaginary. I tackled it with imagination! I could actually see angels cheering me I saw all my friends cheering me by Imagination, as they were not allowed in audition hall. I saw my mom repeating words like “I know, you can do it”. I saw my school teachers saying me “Dhaval, with hard work and persistence, you can achieve anything you set your mind too”. I started feeling the energy of the audition hall; I started emitting the positivity (I’ll write a post later on how to get these feeling). My turn came and I went to the stage. I make my face amazingly, so people never know what’s going on my mind. Though my legs were shaking. The first thing I did after going to stage was to give a BIG smile to everyone. I actually felt like giving ‘love’ energy to all out there. Giving a long smile made me highly confident. It made me feel connected to them. I was enjoying the attention of hundred’s on me. It was awesome! The feeling of passion took over and I started the intro. I engaged the crowd during the speech in shouts of Hip! Hip! Said by me and Hurray! By the audience. This was not planned but I think I did it to make the crowd forget about singing songs and getting them engaged with me. It worked! I gave my speech with so much passion that when I finished I was surprised myself about how I pulled it off! The crowd cheering all the way. It was like someone just took over me while I was on the stage. The experience was amazing. I got selected. The next time I did during the event was easy as I already had the experience.

Listening inspiring songs and reading inspiring stuff always help during these situations. Before your big task, I would suggest to go for Neuro Linguistic Programming. I had this habit from childhood, but didn’t know what it was called. A part of it is where you listen to your favorite song, close your eyes and visualize yourself making that big speech successfully! See you smiling and enjoying the task. You could also do it for long term goals, by visualizing you achieved your goal.

Some Tips for making your day positive:

1. Eat healthy! Your Diet plays a large role in your energy levels.

2. Keep a gratitude diary where you daily express your gratitude for the wonderful things you have.

3. Neuro Linguistic programming

4. Keeping a gratitude stone also works for some. You keep a small roundish stone in your pocket. And rub it whenever you want to feel positive. It’s not logical, but you’ll be surprised by the amazing feeling you get everytime you rub that stone. Your secret source of inspiration

5. Read positive stuff and try to avoid the daily negativity of newspapers.

6. Smile at people! Even strangers sometime. I am not talking of smiling only at beautiful girls

7. Use your positive imagination!

You can use any method of above, see what works best for you and go for it!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

Share your Inspiring stories, you might make someone’s day!