Positive thinking: what is it in psychology, laws, test, how to develop

Tired of constantly thinking about the bad, stressing yourself out for no reason, suffering from negative thoughts every day? Each of us knows how difficult it is to manage our emotions and mind. As psychologists say, this requires mental discipline, which requires daily training and remarkable work on oneself. Those who are ready to overcome such difficulties, just to learn to see rainbows and flowers instead of clouds and snow, can always rely on positive thinking - a direction in psychology that teaches you to notice only the brightest, kindest and positive things in everything around you.

What it is

Positive thinking is a concept based on positive, inspiring images and thoughts that ultimately provide a person with an optimistic mood and increased satisfaction with their quality of life. She offers techniques and methods that teach you to see yourself as the source of happiness and not depend on others. Not everyone succeeds, and research experiments do not always end successfully. Therefore, this area of psychology has quite a lot of critics.

Other names: new, correct thinking of power, mental positivism.

From the history of development:

the initial impetus is the transcendental psychology of Emerson (19th century);
influence of Protestant ethics (Weber);
USA: Quimby, Train, Melford;
Europe: Que;
Germany: Schellbach (Institute for Mental Positivism), Schmidt;
Japan: Taniguchi;
modernity: Murphy, Freitag, Dale Carnegie, Norman Peale.

Where used:

seminars on motivational personality development;
business and educational literature (Kyosaki);
business coaching.

Despite the fact that not everyone is able to achieve results using the methods of mental positivism, neuroscience stands up for this concept. According to her, a positive attitude can change life for the better.

Atkinson "The Power of Thought"

Obsessive thoughts - what they are and how to get rid of them yourself

The original source of the famous Law of Attraction is the book “The Power of Thought” by William Atkinson (Yoga Ramacharaka). What a person fears or desires attracts to himself. The author proposes to master the power of gravity and make it serve for the benefit of every person. The source tells you how to achieve harmony with the world, attract happiness and success. Many writers also cite a source whose ideas are borrowed for new works. Psychologists recommend Atkinson's work to people who prefer to live an active life and not go with the flow.

Laws

In fact, the concept is not at all difficult to master. There are laws of positive thinking - there are only 4 of them. By adhering to them, you can radically change your life by 280°.

Law of Attraction

All things and living beings in this world attract similar things. Evil tends to evil, bad - to bad, good and good - respectively. The more negative the thoughts and the more disgusting the mood, the worse life becomes. If you think about the bright, believe in the positive, be an optimist, everything around will be the same: environment, circumstances, luck.

Law of Giving

Before you can receive something, you must first give. If you want to be loved, love yourself. If you need money, donate. If you feel lonely, show attention and tenderness to others yourself. Don't swear at home, but hug your loved ones. Don't intrigue at work, but help someone. Provide clients with only high-quality services. And then the Universe will return everything to you in full.

Retroactive law

When irritation rises in your soul and accusations and offensive words are ready to come out of your mouth, you need to do everything exactly the opposite. Smile and say something nice. If you want to cry, laugh. If you hate someone, sympathize with that person. This will allow you to create a positive world around you. If you train, negative emotions and thoughts will come less and less often.

Law of Positive Thoughts

You need to sit down and think about your life. But not in the same way as before: everything is bad, nothing works out, I don’t want anything. First, a positive, bright goal is set. Then the tasks that need to be solved to achieve it are written down. All these attitudes must be optimistic. No negativity or negative particles. If you reread (preferably out loud) your goals and objectives every day, soon the Universe itself will help you achieve what you want.

Making wishes come true with the power of thought

Positive thoughts

Desires are strong thoughts and aspirations generated by consciousness and revealing positive energy. Exercise, fresh air and reading useful literature develop the power of thoughts. People should be physically and spiritually prepared to fulfill their desires, because:

Successful people do not fall into a stupor, they open up to new knowledge, skills, and begin to act.
Don't panic if there are no resources. When faced with another challenge, they begin to work on a plan to obtain the required resources to achieve the goal.
They don't envy. Observing a person who has achieved more, properly minded individuals set out to find ways and means to obtain high results.

Important! On the way to the goal, you need to take your intentions seriously, eradicating negativity. Doubts, fears, and anxiety prevent you from thinking rationally and take away your strength and energy.

How the power of thought works

A thought is a kind of encoding of an image or feeling. To generate thoughts, images are exchanged between consciousness and unconscious processes. Consciousness transforms the received information into coded formulas that flow into feelings and sensations.

For an experiment to determine brain activity, an electroencephalograph is used, which recognizes the impulses of billions of neurons in the operator’s skull.

Electroencephalographic device

The operator's task is to calibrate mental activity, allowing the computer to read his commands from a distance. The screen presents four scales, symbolizing the execution of operator commands sent to the computer. When receiving the first command, the first column grows, the next - the second. Four columns show on the monitor how much the intensity of the power of thought increases.

Developers plan to create robots that read the biopotential of the brain. Machines will use the power of thought to carry out commands. It is also possible that new interfaces controlled by the power of thought will emerge.

Benefit

Laws, positive thoughts and inspiring images - everything that the theory of positive thinking offers sounds beautiful and fascinating. However, in practice, as they say, excellent results can be achieved. What do you get by joining this concept:

improved brain function due to a positive way of thinking;
short-term therapeutic effect (for example, self-hypnosis relieves pain);
getting rid of self-blame and self-abasement;
confidence in the ability to change life (views, attitudes) for the better;
altruistic orientation;
personal responsibility for one's own well-being;
taking an active life position;
getting out of depressed states;
independence from external factors, circumstances, people - focusing only on internal forces.

After such promises, I really want to quickly plunge into the world of mental positivism and change my life for the better.

How to attract positive energy into your life

Visualization of desires - what is this method, how to properly materialize thoughts

Lack of the right mood can turn even an ordinary weekday into a cloudy night. Conversely, energy charging can change the situation for the better under negative circumstances.

Psychological method

By initially setting yourself up for failure, your chances of achieving success are reduced. Psychologists explain this simply: thinking ability deteriorates during experiences. The brain is deprived of the incentive to work at full capacity and begins to make mistakes. The right attitude, even in difficult situations, will ensure a positive outcome.

On the way to your goal, self-hypnosis will be useful. The exercise includes three steps:

Formulation of the request;
Determination of the feelings experienced when achieving a plan;
Achieving an emotional state as if a wish has come true.

You need to practice the exercise daily. If you learn to enjoy positive feelings, the Universe will create the conditions for your desire to come true.

Girl meditating

Meditations

If you have free time, you should give preference to meditations that help attract positive emotions. The results of building positive images in the mind are stunning. People feel better, increase their chance of success at work, in business, in love. Positive change is caused by a stable, positively charged aura of individuals.

Affirmations

Af, “I am the richest”) serve as a prototype of thoughts, they should be known and repeated daily. In the morning and before bedtime, motivating phrases are remembered best.

Harm

There is, however, a fly in the ointment in this whole barrel of honey. Many people wonder if there is harm from positive thinking. If taken too far, this concept can lead to negative results. The most common:

manipulation of one's own consciousness;
an obstacle to the natural process of spiritual development;
loss of contact with reality;
silence about weaknesses and problems;
neglect of social contacts and interpersonal relationships.

There are also contraindications for using the theory of positive thinking:

lability;
lack of critical thinking;
depression;
weakly expressed self-awareness.

To protect yourself from the unpleasant consequences of joining mental positivism, avoid the following pitfalls.

Danger

A person tuned to peace and goodness turns out to be defenseless in front of the world around him. He is so open to everyone that he subconsciously turns off the instinct of self-preservation. It is easy to offend him, cause him mental injury and even physical injury. This pitfall of positive thinking is well demonstrated in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange. An experiment is carried out on a teenager with criminal tendencies. He ends up in prison, where his aggression is artificially removed. He becomes meek and patient. However, this irritates the other prisoners and they begin to mock him.

Eruption of negativity

A positively thinking person ignores everything bad that he encounters: inclement weather, an unbearable boss, problems in his personal life, misunderstandings with children. He smiles and believes that everything is fine with him. However, in reality, everything negative that he so carefully runs away from does not go away. Resentment from the betrayal of a beloved spouse cannot simply dissolve into thin air or evaporate along with sweat. She will go deep and hide. And the longer all this is stored, the more dangerous the powder keg becomes. The smallest spark is enough for it to explode. This threatens not just a nervous breakdown and depression - many end up in a hospital bed in psychiatry after this.

Behavior of people with positive thinking

Reassessment of capabilities

Positive thinking teaches self-reliance, increases self-esteem and makes people more confident. This is all great, but it’s so easy to go too far and end up in another trap! Over time, this develops into overconfidence. “I’m already the best”, “I’ll succeed anyway”, “There are no barriers for me” - after such constantly repeated attitudes, thoughts about one’s own exclusivity come. Why prepare for a project or exams, build relationships with people, make efforts if the Universe itself is working for you and failure is impossible? Falling from such a pedestal is incredibly painful.

False Sources of Happiness

You need to look for the positive in everything. With an adequate understanding of this attitude, people learn from the lessons of the past mistakes and move on. If you were fired from your job, it means you need to look for a better paid one. If you get sick, you can finally take a break. However, people who are too keen on positive thinking begin to see good even where there is simply none. The wife continues to love her tyrant husband and grovel before him, enduring all the insults and humiliations. A small employee hates his job, but he is honestly trying to change his attitude towards it - he tries, stays overtime, and does not take vacation. In both cases, nervous exhaustion is the only outcome of this trap.

Happy involuntarily

Often self-hypnosis turns into ordinary self-deception. Proponents of positive thinking believe that they are happy. Although in reality the picture of the surroundings can be terrible: the husband is cheating, the son is a drug addict, the boss finds fault with every little thing, excess weight is off the charts. Instead of solving problems, they avoid them. The result is invariably the same - the collapse of everything that was dear: the spouse leaves for another, the child dies of an overdose, they are kicked out of work.

Energy and thoughts

Our thoughts consist of subtle energies - vibrations of a certain frequency. All our hopes, fears, plans, worries, remorse, grievances, dreams do not disappear after they leave the areas of our consciousness.

They turn into thought forms, vibration waves that are sent to the general information field of the Earth.

It is inaccessible to simple perception, because it belongs to unmanifested reality.

But it exists, and this fact has long been recognized by many scientists.

So, any of our thoughts is a vibration. But we cannot ignore the fact that our inner essence also has a vibrational basis.

When we focus on some object, desire, goal, we send a vibration of a certain frequency, which coincides or does not coincide with the frequency of your Inner Essence.

Frequencies coincide when we mentally support ourselves in the right direction when we move towards our goals. When we deviate from the frequency of the Inner Essence, we begin to experience emotional discomfort. This is an indicator of whether we are moving in the right direction or not.

You can learn about the work of the Mind and what the space of our thoughts consists of in the article Thoughts and State of Mind

Diagnostics

Do you want to know what type of thinking prevails in you?

The simplest test

There are 3 possible answers to the questions: yes, maybe (possibly, sometimes), no.

Do you feel younger than your age?
Are you self-confident?
Do you suffer if you have to work under duress?
Do you like listening to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other classics?
Do you strive to connect with others?
Is an inferiority complex not about you?
Can you handle everything?
Do you often generate ideas and become the initiator of something grandiose?
Do you often need to get out of difficult situations?
Do you always achieve your goals?
To everyone else, are you positive?
Do you never get discouraged?
Do you often get interested in something new and unusual?
Are you able to experience happiness to the level of bliss?
Are you ready to meet fate's challenge?

Each answer “yes” is scored 2 points, “maybe” - 1, no - 0. Let’s add up. Let's look at the results:

21-30 points

You are the perfect candidate to be one of the biggest proponents of positive thinking. You see only the good and bright in everything, you are focused exclusively on success, you love everyone. Undoubtedly, you achieve many heights, making the world around you kinder. However, the main thing here is not to overdo it and not fall into traps (see above). You run away from problems, deliberately not noticing all the difficulties that life is full of. Don't overestimate yourself.

11-20 points

This is the golden mean between the polar sides - negativism and positivism. You realistically assess the situation and know how to control your mental balance. You are friendly, but only to a select few. You enjoy life, but at the same time you know how to see not only the sun, but also the rain. You achieve success thanks not only to natural abilities, but also to hard work. However, your big disadvantage is too many doubts and unclear answers. You often stand at a crossroads, which leads to constant breakdowns.

0-10 points

You definitely have a lot to learn from the positivists. You are a bright representative of pessimism. You are one of those who hopes for the worst and the best will come. However, sometimes you have to wait for luck for years. You are probably a good worker, a reasonable person, a caring husband (tender wife). However, those around you are often burdened by your whining about how bad things are for you. Think about what you are talking about with others: the economic recession, the failed political regime, your mortgage, quarrels with your wife - nothing but problems and complete hopelessness. Change this worldview urgently. At least find other topics to talk about.

Rorschach color test

What do you see in this picture?

Associations such as:

flower in warm pink and orange shades;
violin;
human's figure;
butterfly;
crab in pinkish tones, reminiscent of a holiday on the Cote d'Azur.

The tendency to negative thinking manifests itself in the presence of the following associations:

flower in cool, bluish shades;
an unpleasant arthropod that causes a chill on the skin;
heads of wild animals;
gargoyles;
fantastic beast from a horror movie;
mask;
skull, internal organs, pelvic bones.

Doubts when a person cannot decide what he sees in the picture also indicate that he needs to work on his attitudes, which are still far from positive. Or he simply experiences unpleasant sensations when looking at her.

Set a goal

To achieve a dream, clarity of vision is as important as the dream. People talk a lot about their wants and needs to achieve their dreams, but often do not set the necessary goals.

Specificity is necessary to make your dreams come true. You want a big house, a luxury car, a multi-digit bank account, a good job and a loving partner. You dilute your goals by diluting them with other goals. Thus, you are less likely to focus on your desires due to lack of goal setting. You will waste more time wanting to achieve everything that is practically impossible. However, if you set a goal and work hard to achieve it, success will get closer and closer.

How to develop positive thinking

Affirmations

Affirmations are great for helping you develop positive thinking. A set of attitudes, practiced daily, will allow you to take a completely different look not only at the world around you and other people, but, first of all, at yourself. For them to work, you need to pronounce them correctly:

ideally, work with affirmations compiled by a psychologist specifically for your type of thinking and life situation;
they should be as brief and specific as possible, reflecting the essence of what you feel;
they should be read daily, the number of repetitions is not limited (you can read a list of 50 affirmations once, or you can say 1 affirmation 500 times a day);
you need to create a certain mood - relax and calm down, in a nervous state they will have no effect;
you cannot work with affirmations in moments of anger or illness;
one of the mistakes is pronouncing attitudes out loud in the presence of someone; they should act exclusively on your subconscious, without being sprayed onto the aura of someone else;
you must believe in what is being said.

As an example, we bring to your attention 20 ready-made affirmations taken from the positive thinking program:

I calmly let go of all my fears and anxieties, I cleanse myself of negative thoughts and images.
I love life.
I radiate positive energy.
My radiant smile fills the hearts of those around me with light.
I am in my place, doing what I love.
I always make the only right choice.
I get rid of any tension in my soul and body.
In my life, everything always happens on time and according to the best scenario.
I am at peace and at peace with everyone and with myself.
There is joy, peace, love in my soul.
Every day my thoughts become cleaner, more harmonious, clearer.
I do everything that depends on me. I'm doing everything well.
I am grateful (grateful) to the Universe for all the material blessings in my life.
Today is the best day of my life.
I have everything I need to enjoy life here and now.
I attract spiritual and material well-being into my life.
Every day my life becomes easier, more comfortable.
I am filled with enthusiasm and energy.
I see positivity in every event in my life.
My life has improved. My life is in complete harmony with my mind and others.

If you don't know how to learn positive thinking, start with affirmations. They will consolidate positive attitudes in the subconscious, which will intuitively prompt the desired emotion, sensation, reaction at one time or another.

Meditative positive visualization

Meditative visualization helps you tune into positive thinking. It is here that all the characteristic features of this direction in psychology are manifested. The essence: regularly recreate a positive dream image in your thoughts. How it works: the brain and psyche, as a result of constant meditation on the same message, begin to perceive it as a norm, a base, an essential element of life. Accordingly, everything that happens is subconsciously viewed from his point of view. This makes achieving your goal more realistic.

The meditation technique of positive thinking is often used by psychologists in sessions. It’s easy to do it yourself at home:

Create a verbal image of a dream (goal): I want a Ferrari car, a villa in Italy, marry Baskov, become an astronaut, etc.
Find a thematic bright picture of your dream, which, in your opinion, reflects its very essence. Consider all its details. Remember every detail.
Relax: exclude extraneous noise, sit or lie down comfortably, turn on relaxation music, close your eyes.
Mentally imagine your dream in all details. Think through and “look through” every little thing: the glare on the windshield of a Ferrari, the flower bed near the villa.
Induce olfactory sensations: smell a new car, smell flowers.
The culmination is to mentally evoke tactile sensations: to feel the cool steel of a Ferrari under your hand, to walk up the steps into a house, to walk through its rooms.
Enjoy the moment for 7-10 minutes.
Open eyes.
Smile. Speak out loud the verbal image of your dream.
Sit in a relaxed state, without thinking about anything, for another 1-2 minutes before returning to your daily activities.

Meditative visualization is an everyday setting for a positive psychological attitude.

Hypnosis

If you don’t know how to change negative thinking to positive on your own (sometimes this is impossible due to too deep psychological attitudes), the best solution is to seek help from a psychotherapist. Hypnosis will help introduce correct, positive, optimistic instructions into a person’s subconscious. In this case, a soft Ericksonian approach is used, which is completely safe for human consciousness. Sessions organized in line with this concept help:

turn off the flow of anxious thoughts;
see the positive aspects in everything;
switch to the positive in time;
control negative emotions;
The positive attitudes instilled by the hypnotherapist become more firmly embedded in the subconscious with each session.

Hypnosis has a fairly effective effect on the development of positive thinking. However, there are a few things you should know before signing up for such sessions.

First, you will have to carefully search for the right specialist. We need not just a good psychotherapist, but a hypnologist with appropriate education, confirmed by documents (certificate). In addition, he must conduct sessions precisely in line with positive thinking. If you go to a specialist who helps you out of binge drinking in this way, he is unlikely to be able to help you.

Secondly, there are many cases where hypnologists instilled positive attitudes in patients right away, as they say, without prior analysis of past experience. This “here and now” technique often ends with psychological traumas being driven inside, and extraneous directives being layered on top of them. When they come into conflict, they end up manifesting themselves in nervousness and sometimes split personality.

Thirdly, contraindications for hypnosis should be taken into account:

schizophrenia, acute or manic-depressive psychosis;
alcohol intoxication;
borderline mental illness;
epilepsy;
acute appendicitis, heart attack, infection, inflammation.

You can also purchase recordings of audio hypnosis “Positive Thinking” on the Internet. They are not as deep as regular sessions with a specialist, but if the situation is not advanced, they can help.

What thoughts need to be eradicated?

All negative thoughts materialize sooner or later. If you think that your husband is irresponsible, then, according to the law of reflection, he will behave irresponsibly towards you.

But once you start thinking about your man, that he is always attentive to your requests, that he approaches issues responsibly, and soon he will correspond to your idea of him. And this applies to absolutely all areas of life.

Typical negative thoughts about relationships:

no one loves me
I cannot build a harmonious relationship with another person,
I can't meet a worthy couple,
my partner is cheating on me,
I cannot count on my spouse in a relationship;

Typical negative thoughts about your career:

in order to achieve a lot, you need to weave intrigues and play games,
I won't be able to build a good career because I'm not worthy,
getting a job in a big company is only possible if you have connections,
a good career requires a complete renunciation of personal life,
at one time I was not able to enter a prestigious university, which means I will not be able to build a successful career;

Typical negative thoughts about money:

money is evil
You can only make good money through illegal means,
Only the chosen ones or the lucky ones get rich,
money comes from hard work,
money flows away like water;

Typical negative thoughts about health:

I have had poor health since childhood,
I get cold easily
I have a high risk of developing hereditary diseases,
I can't live normally without pills,
I'm allergic to literally everything.

How to learn to restore internal strength?

The power of positive thinking is impossible without the ability to restore internal strength. Often there is a feeling that everything is wrong, life has failed, nothing is working out. What is the reason? Such thoughts arise as a result of fatigue - physical, emotional.

The most common causes of negative thinking:

lack of sleep;
stressful environment at work, at home;
physical fatigue from work;
a series of failures;
misunderstanding of others, lack of support;
health problems.

What to do when you notice frequent negative thoughts? This is a symptom, you need to analyze what the cause is, find it and try to influence it, minimize it.

If the reason is physical fatigue or illness, then you should pay attention to getting proper rest and improving your health.

If in the emotional, mental sphere, then we will use the following technique:

What's bothering me?
Why do I think so, what evidence is there for this?
How can you perceive this situation differently?
What are the options for resolving the issue, what can I do?
Remember past successes, believe that there are no hopeless situations.
Find the optimal solution and begin implementing the plan.

The following methods can be used to influence a depressed emotional state for no apparent reason::

turn on your favorite music;
a walk in the fresh air, observing the world around you as if for the first time, noticing all the details (flowers, trees);
communication with a beloved friend;
meditation, self-hypnosis with calm music;
any productive activity that can bring joy (knitting, embroidery, cooking, poetry);
playing sports.

It’s always worth looking for interest and positivity in life, it makes life easier and solving emerging difficulties. There is no way out only from the grave, the rest is the little things of life.

The essence of positive thinking is the ability to maintain a calm state of mind, find joy in life, not succumb to difficulties, and not perceive the negativity floating around.

A person, like a sponge, absorbs the world around him if he does not install an internal filter.

Often at school they don’t like children who have their own opinions; it’s easier to control the crowd, but this is the only way you can become an individual, find your way, open up to the world, believe in your potential. Anxiety and suspiciousness lead to uncertainty and the inability to become leaders in life. And people who know how to enjoy life, regardless of circumstances - grades, problems and in the future - easily cope with difficulties and do not lose heart.

We come to the conclusion: a person can change the world by changing himself from the inside at the level of thinking and perception of life. This path is the most correct, because changing those around you is a thankless and unrealistic task. And in your new role, you will attract new situations, new acquaintances with like-minded people, and gain more opportunities to move forward. The power of positive thinking helps to create miracles in life and make significant changes.

Someone can independently tune in to the desired wavelength using self-hypnosis, listening to music, someone resorts to religion and reads the Bible. There are many ways, everyone chooses the one that is closer in spirit. Often the state of stress is associated with excessive stress and feelings of guilt, which interfere with a normal life.

You need to fight this, learn to let go of the past and forgive yourself for past actions, trying to be better in the present and future, to match your inner image. Otherwise, problems, illnesses, and constant failures are inevitable. A person himself does not allow himself to live a life full of joy on a subconscious level. Likewise, resentment towards other people destroys inner peace, interferes with positive thinking, and leads to stress and illness. You should rely on yourself in everything and accept that the world and people are imperfect and prone to making mistakes and forgetting something. When doing good to others, do not expect gratitude, learn to rejoice at the opportunity to help, to make the world a better place.

Often by helping your loved ones realize themselves and believe in themselves, you yourself gain inner strength and become more open to the world and life.

To change your life and achieve success, think more often about future victories, smile, be ready to accept something new, create a positive atmosphere around, filling the world with joy. You shouldn’t always expect good things from life, more often you first need to give: love, care, make efforts to achieve a goal - and the world will reciprocate!