What is so important about a positive attitude?
Why do we always seem to focus on having a positive attitude? What is the big deal about thinking positively? Is being ‘Pollyanna’ really that important?
Well if you have to ask then you need to re-think your perspective in life and interactions with all personal and workplace relationships. It boils down to this choice, how do you want to feel every day, happy or miserable, how do you want people to treat you and react? It is a choice.
Can we learn to have a positive attitude? Yes, it takes, awareness, self patience and lots of practice. A positive voice inner head can boundless happiness if we are willing to switch that negative self-talk to a positive encouraging voice. Anyone can do it!
Anytime you are trying to change a pattern of behaviour or pattern of thinking it takes time mostly because we get ‘hard wired’ to keep doing the same things. Our brains get lazy and that is why it takes time and more time. The good news is that anyone can learn to have a positive attitude.
A positive attitude has many benefits for our physical and mental health by reducing stress for example. From the article
Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress
Understanding positive thinking and self-talk
Positive thinking doesn’t mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life’s less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that you approach unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. You think the best is going to happen, not the worst.
Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information.
If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you’re likely an optimist — someone who practices positive thinking.
Here is a personal example of doing the work to change a negative pattern of thinking to a more positive one. As an RCMP officer and dealing with workplace bullying and harassment, it was easy to focus on the negative because nothing was being done to improve the workplace toxic culture. My inner voice was shaming blaming and not very nice.
Having started therapy, began to see my patterns of thinking and was learning to shift from negative to positive. Sounds easy but it wasn’t. It took lots of time, self-awareness and self patience in navigating the change to a more positive perspective. Realizing I could not change the workplace culture and I could not change the individual bully but what I found empowering was I could change my attitude. This was the beginning of a complete mind shift to a more positive attitude. In other words, when I came to work and experienced bullying instead of taking that negative energy, feeling worthless, stupid and not valued, I focussed on something positive such as after work, getting out of this ‘hell’, I’m going to spend time with my daughter baking cookies. It is a shift in our think and these are small changes. After one particular horrible yelling, humiliating exchange, I can remember thinking ‘wow I am so glad I am not married to you’. Interestingly enough I began to smile at my sense of humour, which confused the bully. He was confused and stomped out of the room.
Over the years I learned to catch my negative thoughts and pivot to a more positive mindset. At Christmas, we love to have our daughters home for the holidays and this is not always possible with conflicting schedules and flights. It is about how you want to look at the holidays, December 25 is a day, can you have the dinner or festivities on another day, like the 22 or the 29th? Set yourself up with thinking about how to make it work, there is always a way to find a positive spin. Our holidays range from December 20 to 31 at any time we can have our ‘Christmas’. A positive attitude says ‘make the choice to be happy instead of right’, it is also good for our mental health. Life is already filled with frustration of all kinds.
Ask yourself what is holding you back in achieving a positive attitude? Fear of the unknown? I am too old to change, what is the point? It is an individual choice. I like to hang out with the positive folks and set firm boundaries on the negative. Negative people can suck the life out of a friendship, marriage, workplace and life in general.
A positive attitude is a life skill and we all deserve to feel happy, content, loved and safe. Developing an attitude of gratitude is a wonderful emotional space to live. Being thankful for the little things is the beginning of a positive attitude.
Does a positive attitude take away the pain and fear in life? No, a positive attitude is what gives us resilience in life, helps us cope and bounce back from the trauma, fear and pain we may experience.
Having a positive attitude does not take away the pain of death, accidents, workplace bullying, sexual violence, loss of a job, grief or sadness. Nothing can erase suffering. A positive attitude gives us courage, resilience to get through our darkest times and find meaning as learn to trust ourselves to handle life.
We have a choice to take the lessons of the pain. It is always your choice in where you want to be, what you want to feel at every given moment. To me, this is EMPOWERING. By the way that is my favourite word, empowering. Take a chance and start to change your attitude. You can do it!