Positive Thinking Techniques - Affirmation Tips and Guides

Positive thinking is a fabulous way to avoid being bogged down by depression and negative thoughts that stop you achieving your goals. You CAN stop being the victim of circumstances. Positive thinking and affirmation are mental states that you can control. But you need good strategies, planning, tips and guides, and maintenance for your positive thoughts to be sustained and effective as circumstances change. Many of us do not have positive thoughts by nature and we let things bear down on us and eat away darkening our moods and feelings. For most of us positively thinking requires effort, time, application, engagement, determination, dedication and some good tips and guides. If you are severely depressed you should seek professional help. In this article I have reviewed what information is available on positive thinking and I provide a summary of tips and advice from this review and my own experience.

Learn all about Positive Thinking and Self Affirmation here in this article. Source: Public Domain

Recognise that Circumstances Change and that You Need to Learn to Adapt

Teenage years and middle age can be very difficult and times that really that test your resolve to stay positive. As you head into middle age you face a combination of growing responsibilities, changes in personal relationships, declining energy and fitness levels, concern about being overweight, dissatisfaction with your appearance all of which bear down on you. In a young-person world you are aware that you youth is waning and many people find it hard to adapt to growing old how.

Research has shown that levels of depression and anxiety tend to increase for people between 30 and 40 years of age and then decrease as the pressure of life and its stresses decline in the ages from 50 to 60. Happiness levels are commonly lowest for people about 40 years of age - which most people are under pressure to fulfill their lifetime's ambition, including the rearing of children. This can also be time of tumultuous relationships. By the time most people reach their 50 and 60 years of age, the stress people face declines and they accept where they have got to in life. However in middle-aged you are halfway through life and many people become aware of their mortality perhaps because of declining health.

A recent study of 89,000 people in 18 countries, based on interviews, showed that about one person in every six experience a major life crisis or event which triggers major depression. This is not feeling down for a couple of days. Major depression is defined as a continuous periods of depression symptoms every day, for at least two weeks. These symptoms include loss of appetite, trouble concentrating, and disturbed sleep patterns, and a number of more serious impacts including attempted suicide. If yo have prolonged bouts of major depression you should seek help.

People who were separated or divorced were much more likely to have depression. In the United States and western Europe, rates of depression are highest among younger people, but the opposite is also true with in many other counties such as the Ukraine showing the opposite pattern.

Older people, aged 45-55 years, had a gloomy outlook on life in Britain with 21% saying they feel negative about life in general, 45% about their finances and 30% about their career . The international average for those feeling negative about their financial situation is 28%, negative about their careers 18%, and negative about life in general is 13%. This study recommended that people in Britain should be more self-aware and face the reality of their poor health and their weight control problems and learn to cope by adopting positive thinking techniques. Britons also need to develop better work/life balance in their lives and to appreciate that emotional health is intrinsically linked to good health.

Major Guidelines for Positive Thinking

Awareness and taking control - You need to understand what negative thinking is and what is triggering it - harmful memories and misunderstanding of situations may hamper with your performance and ruin your self-confidence. You need to transform negative thought into positive ones by taking stock of the good things in your life.
Rational Thinking is required to help you to challenge negative thoughts and adapt to them or recognise them as incorrect. Often your negative thoughts will be irrational and based on wrong perceptions of what you think about yourself, your current situation and what others think about you. Or what you think they think about you.
Positive thinking is based on proactively building positive affirmations that you can use to counter negative thoughts. It requires effort and actions. In many ways positive thinking is a lifestyle change - you need to get hold of yourself and change things - even going for a walk of a swim can help a lot. These affirmations counteract negative thoughts and build up your self-confidence. Such thinking can often find opportunities and solutions you may not have been aware of. Positive thinking all about learning to adapt, cope and finding solutions to problems and negative parts of your life.
Believe that Positive Thinking Works - The key to getting good outcomes from positive thinking is believing that it works and experience helps! Positive thinking can and does eliminate stress, reduce the clutter and turmoil in your thinking making your focused, clear- headed, goal orientated and productive. Your thinking changes from obstacles and feelings of being victimised to looking for an recognising opportunities for change and improvement. A good point to consider is that you only see obstacles and let them interfere when you are distracted from your goal. Positive thinking re gigs your focus and even open doors that were closed before.
Work at Seeing The Positive and Surround yourself with positive people and information The make it world and learn how to do it immerse yourself in the world of positive thinking. Read about how positive thinking works, try to mix with people that have positive outlooks and even offer advice to other people who are down in the dumps. Learn about successful and positive people and understand their approach and how they think. Watch motivational videos and talk with positive people. Do whatever you have to do to build your faith in the power of positive thinking. The purpose of this technique is to shift your mindset from negative to positive by appreciating what you already have instead of complaining about what you lack.

Tips for Positive Thinking

Write It Down - Make a list of everything in your life that is positive now, and what could be positive with a few changes. The longer the list, the better it will be for setting the foundation for a change of attitude. List things such as your accomplishments, the fine people you have in your life, your home and the things you cherish in your life, whatever else you’re grateful for. You could include a wonderful family, a good job, your car, your home, your degree, your hobbies and skills, things you are good at. The reason for writing these things down is to compile a list and add to it as you go. You can refer to it later, an by writing it down it tends to jolt your memory and make you remember and review things which you may have not considered before.

Start a Stress Diary and Work at Switching the Negatives to Positives. The advantages of using a Stress Diary is that it showcases and identifies the things in your life that cause stress an negativity. You should include negative thoughts and anxieties, unpleasant memories and circumstances that you perceive causing negative thoughts. When you analyze your diary, you should be able to identify the source of your negativity. Writing them down is the first step to tackling them these as a priority.

Positive Replacements - Positive thinking will probably require, or lead to changes in your life. This includes changing bad habits and simply doing things differently. The best way of change a habit is to fill it with something else - go for a walk instead of overeating or having a drinks. Try to replace as many negative habits with a positive one. Every time a negative thought pops into your head try to think of a positive replacement, or a counter argument. Eliminate the negative by replacing it!

Positive Affirmations - Aim to live up to and fully realise the potential that you just know is lying dormant inside you! Positive self-affirmations you can boost your self-esteem and self-confidence. Affirmations are statements, mottos or positive thoughts about something you want to change or achieve. Theses statements should be written down and repeated at regular intervals. Make them a habit just like combing your hair or brushing your teeth. Their power increases if they are repeated silently or aloud to yourself. Always use the present tense as always looking to how things will change in the future is a negative thought process. Many people only life half lives as the postpone many things until a change has occurred. Being overweight destroys lives because many people say I will do this or do that when I have lost weight, but it never happens. Make the future happen - live a full life!

Visualization - Visualize what you want to achieve and where you want to be, and the changes in your life so that you know what you want. Don't just think about it; Visualize it to make it happen. Build an image in your mind of where you want to be, what you want to accomplish, or improvements that you want to achieve. See yourself having achieved these things, and don't see them as far off in the future. Having a series of steps helps with this process.

Build a Circle of Friends that Offer Encouragement and Positive Thinking - You probably have a some friends that you know you can trust with your dreams and goals. These friends can be very encouraging. Spend more time with positive and motivated people and work on building a positive environment that can surround and encourage you.

Celebrate your Achievements One Step at a Time - The biggest achievement come in small stages and plan your goals as a series of steps or stages. Celebrate every step accomplished as an achievement. These small celebrations can be very positive and encouraging and can maintain your motivational and resolve.

Filter your Thoughts - Block the negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. work on disregarding and ignoring negative thoughts by transforming them into positive ones

Develop a Regular Exercise Program - Walk, ride a bike, swim or become interested in some other regular physical activity. This helps to develop a more positive attitude and help you remove stress and feel better about yourself. It also helps you to sleep better.

Awareness and Taking Control of Your Thoughts - Negative thinking ruins confidence, throttles performance and confuses your thoughts. Become aware of these thoughts and change these thoughts to positive ones. Examples of negative thoughts are postponing achievements, putting yourself down, fearing the future, being over-critical of your errors (laugh about them), doubting your abilities, unreasonable comparison with others, predicting what other people are thinking about you (mostly wrong) or expecting failure. You need positive replacements for these. Many negative thoughts recur without being challenged and responded to - most of them are unreasonable and inappropriate. If you don't respond and change them will recur like a cracked record. Take control and change them. Apply rational thinking.

Focus on Solutions, Not Problems - A very important rule in your pathway to positive thinking is to recognise that nothing is permanent. Things change and you need to adapt to changes in a positive way by taking control and being aware of the need to change - change can it can be exciting and fulfilling. You are not permanent, your circumstances are not permanent -you can and need change yourself - move on!. Your job is not fixed, you can always change your job. Your problems are not fixed, you can cope, adapt and move beyond them by looking for solutions. Becoming a good and timely problem solver is required to be a master of positive thinking.

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