Positive Thinking

Positive thinking is an emotional and mental attitude that focuses on the good and expects results that will benefit you. It’s about anticipating happiness, health, and success instead of expecting the worst. Leveraging the law of attraction, this mindset creates a positive feedback loop that brings even more good into your life.

Science suggests that positive thinking is indeed a learnable skill. But how do you learn it? What techniques and exercises are most likely to help you boost your positive thinking skills?

In this article, we’ll explore techniques, strategies, and worksheets for positive thinking. These tools can provide the needed resources for cultivating this important skill.

What exactly is positive thinking? You might be tempted to assume that it implies seeing the world through rose-colored lenses by ignoring or glossing over the negative aspects of life. However, positive thinking means approaching life’s challenges with a positive outlook.2

Some researchers, including positive psychologist Martin Seligman, frame positive thinking in terms of explanatory style. Your explanatory style is how you explain why events happened.

• Optimistic explanatory style: People with an optimistic explanatory style tend to give themselves credit when good things happen and typically blame outside forces for bad outcomes. They also tend to see negative events as temporary and atypical.
• Pessimistic explanatory style: On the other hand, individuals with a pessimistic explanatory style often blame themselves when bad things happen, but fail to give themselves adequate credit for successful outcomes.

  They also tend to view negative events as expected and lasting. As you can imagine, blaming yourself for events outside of your control or viewing these unfortunate events as a persistent part of your life can have a detrimental impact on your state of mind.

Positive thinkers are more apt to use an optimistic explanatory style, but how people attribute events can also vary depending upon the exact situation. For example, a person who is generally a positive thinker might use a more pessimistic explanatory style in particularly challenging situations, such as at work or school.

3 Techniques and Strategies for Positive Thinking

When evaluating your own or others’ positive thinking skills, it’s helpful to explore different types of positive thinking. So take a moment to explore the following positive thinking techniques and strategies.

Think positively about the past

When we think positively about the past, we may reminisce on the good things that have happened. We might bring those positive memories to mind, reflect on what we learned, or feel grateful for the good stuff (Quoidbach, Mikolajczak, & Gross, 2015).

These past-focused positive thinking strategies can help us feel better in the present moment even if the present moment is challenging.

Think positively about the present

When we think positively about the present moment, we might pay attention to what’s going well (rather than what’s not going so well), or we might try to shift our perspective on our present circumstances by reframing the situation or looking for silver linings.

By using these present-focused positive thinking strategies, we give ourselves more control over how we feel even in challenging situations.

Think positively about the future

When we think positive thoughts about the future, we try to stay optimistic. We hold more positive expectations about the future or focus on the good things to come rather than the bad. Future-focused positive thinking can not only help us feel better in the moment, but it can also lead to better outcomes (Rasmussen, Scheier, & Greenhouse, 2009).

Attempting to improve our skills for each of these three types of positive thinking strategies can help us build this skill and improve our well-being.

3 Helpful Exercises

To cultivate positive thinking skills, there are several helpful exercises you can try. Here are a few:

Cognitive reappraisal exercise

Cognitive reappraisal is the act of reframing a situation to see it in a more positive light. You can practice cognitive reappraisal in a few different ways. One is to watch a movie or TV show. Practice finding the good in difficult scenarios or think about the advice that you would give the characters to make themselves feel better.

After practicing this for a while, try to use this same strategy in your life by thinking about how difficult situations actually can have benefits or teach you important lessons (Troy, Wilhelm, Shallcross, & Mauss, 2010).

Three good things exercise

Research suggests that thinking of and listing three good things each day can contribute to increased happiness in the short term and longer-term (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005).

Even better, this exercise is simple to do. Just spend a few minutes each evening reflecting on the day until you think of three good things.

Best possible future exercise

One study showed that imagining and writing about your best possible future increases positive emotions (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). To do this exercise, set aside 15 minutes to write about what your best potential future could look like. Try not to focus on what could go wrong, and just think about what could go right.

This exercise can help train your brain to be more optimistic.

4 Useful Worksheets for Your Clients

When trying to grow positive thinking skills, it’s helpful to use worksheets. These guide how to do an exercise. Here are some worksheets to help you build key positive thinking skills.

Stacking the Deck

This worksheet explains how to make a card deck that helps you develop more positive thoughts about yourself.

Grab the Stacking the Deck worksheet for guidelines.

Things I Love

This worksheet provides a bunch of categories and questions that help you think of positive things in multiple areas of your life.

Check out the Things I Love worksheet to download it.

I’m Great Because…

Besides thinking of the things we love in the world, it’s helpful to think about the things we love about ourselves.

Get the I’m Great Because worksheet to practice this skill.

Valuing My Partner

Another aspect of positive thinking involves thinking positive thoughts about others. But sometimes it’s hard to think of all the good things about the ones we love.

Try the Valuing My Partner worksheet to practice reflecting on positive things about your partner.

Positive Thinking in the Workplace: 3 Tips

Any of the positive thinking skills and activities you’ve already learned can be applied in the workplace.

For example, we can use cognitive reappraisal, future-focused positive thinking, and valuing others. Here are a few more workplace-specific tips to implement positive thinking at work.

Write gratitude notes

Practicing gratitude doesn’t have to be hard. And one of the easiest ways is to leave gratitude notes to others on a sticky note or index card. Try to do this at least once per week by taking a moment to think of something about one of your coworkers that you’re grateful for.

For example: Hey, I appreciate you giving me feedback on my project yesterday. Or, Thanks! You always make me laugh. A simple gratitude note can get you thinking of the positives, and by sharing them with others, you make them feel good too.

Find the good in failure

We all have failures at work. We don’t perform as well as we might like, we fail to meet our boss’s expectations, or we don’t get the promotion we want. These experiences can be difficult to manage, but we can make them easier by trying to find the benefits of failure.

Just ask yourself, what did you learn from this experience? Did this help you build character? What will you do differently next time? Reframe failure as a learning experience and get all you can from it to shift your thinking in a positive direction.

Shift your attention to the good things

Even when our work is miserable and we can’t imagine getting anything positive from it, we can still use positive thinking to feel better.

For example, during the hardest parts of the day, try to focus your mind on something outside of work that brings you joy – maybe seeing your family, eating a good meal, or going to an upcoming event that you’re looking forward to. By focusing on the good stuff, we can help ease some discomfort.

The health benefits of positive thinking

Researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:

• Increased life span
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress and pain
• Greater resistance to illnesses
• Better psychological and physical well-being
• Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease and stroke
• Reduced risk of death from cancer
• Reduced risk of death from respiratory conditions
• Reduced risk of death from infections
• Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

It’s unclear why people who engage in positive thinking experience these health benefits. One theory is that having a positive outlook enables you to cope better with stressful situations, which reduces the harmful health effects of stress on your body.

It’s also thought that optimistic people tend to live healthier lifestyles — they get more physical activity, follow a healthier diet, and don’t smoke or drink alcohol in excess.

Identifying negative thinking

Not sure if your self-talk is positive or negative? Some common forms of negative self-talk include:

• Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all the positive ones. For example, you had a great day at work. You completed your tasks ahead of time and were complimented for doing a speedy and thorough job. That evening, you focus only on your plan to do even more tasks and forget about the compliments you received.
• Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.
• Catastrophizing. You automatically anticipate the worst without the fact that the worse will happen. The drive-through coffee shop gets your order wrong, and then you think that the rest of your day will be a disaster.
• Blaming. You try to say someone else is responsible for what happened to you instead of yourself. You avoid being responsible for your thoughts and feelings.
• Saying you “should” do something. You think of all the things you think you should do and blame yourself for not doing them.
• Magnifying. You make a big deal out of minor problems.
• Perfectionism. Keeping impossible standards and trying to be more perfect sets you up for failure.
• Polarizing. You see things only as either good or bad. There is no middle ground.

Focusing on positive thinking

You can learn to turn negative thinking into positive thinking. The process is simple, but it does take time and practice — you’re creating a new habit, after all. Following are some ways to think and behave more positively and optimistically:

• Identify areas to change. If you want to become more optimistic and engage in more positive thinking, first identify areas of your life that you usually think negatively about, whether it’s work, your daily commute, life changes or a relationship. You can start small by focusing on one area to approach more positively. Think of positive thoughts to manage your stress instead of negative ones.
• Check yourself. Periodically during the day, stop and evaluate what you’re thinking. If you find that your thoughts are mainly negative, try to find a way to put a positive spin on them.
• Be open to humor. Give yourself permission to smile or laugh, especially during difficult times. Seek humor in everyday happenings. When you can laugh at life, you feel less stressed.
• Follow a healthy lifestyle. Aim to exercise for about 30 minutes on most days of the week. You can also break it up into 5- or 10-minute chunks of time during the day. Exercise can positively affect mood and reduce stress. Follow a healthy diet to fuel your mind and body. Get enough sleep. And learn techniques to manage stress.
• Surround yourself with positive people. Make sure those in your life are positive, supportive people you can depend on to give helpful advice and feedback. Negative people may increase your stress level and make you doubt your ability to manage stress in healthy ways.
• Practice positive self-talk. Start by following one simple rule: Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to anyone else. Be gentle and encouraging with yourself. If a negative thought enters your mind, evaluate it rationally and respond with affirmations of what is good about you. Think about things you’re thankful for in your life.

3 Activities for Group Sessions

Are you trying to teach positive thinking skills to a group? Here are some activities to try.

Dispute Negative Thinking

In this activity, have 3–5 people fill out the provided cards with one of their typical negative thoughts. Shuffle the cards and place them in a hat, then invite a participant to pick one at random and read it aloud.

Ask them to quickly and thoroughly dispute it, then move on to the next participant and repeat. As group members work through the pack, they will benefit from fresh perspectives on their negative thoughts and become more confident in what they can achieve.

Capitalizing Positive Emotions With Active Constructive Responding

This activity is designed to be undertaken by two people. However, it can easily be adapted to suit a group therapy context in which participants take turns and everyone has the chance to share and listen or respond.

Ask group members to think of a positive event that has recently happened in their life and use all of their senses to connect to the event through visualization. Each person has 10-15 minutes to share the key elements of their positive event with the group, during which the other participants have a chance to practice active-constructive listening skills and savor the speaker’s positive experience.

Research has shown that savoring a positive experience by actively reflecting on thoughts and emotions related to it can be an effective way to enhance well-being and happiness.

Expressing Gratitude To Others

As this article has discussed, practicing gratitude can facilitate positive thinking. While this Expressing Gratitude To Othe exercise is designed for individuals, it can be turned into a group activity in which participants share their experiences of the exercise with one another.

In this activity, participants create a list of all the people who have positively impacted their life and who inspire a sense of thankfulness in them.

After doing this individually, participants choose a way to demonstrate their appreciation to one or two of these people. They can then discuss how it felt to express their gratitude to the other group members.

How to Increase Positive Thinking in Your Life

What can you do to increase positive thoughts and take advantage of the “broaden and build” theory in your life?

Well, anything that sparks feelings of joy, contentment, and love will do the trick. You probably know what things work well for you. Maybe it’s playing the guitar. Maybe it’s spending time with a certain person. Maybe it’s carving tiny wooden lawn gnomes.

That said, here are three ideas for you to consider…

1. Meditation — Recent research by Fredrickson and her colleagues has revealed that people who meditate daily display more positive emotions than those who do not. As expected, people who meditated also built valuable long–term skills. For example, three months after the experiment was over, the people who meditated daily continued to display increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, and decreased illness symptoms.

Note: If you’re looking for an easy way to start meditation, here is a 10–minute guided meditation that was recently sent to me. Just close your eyes, breathe, and follow along.

2. Writing — this study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, examined a group of 90 undergraduate students who were split into two groups. The first group wrote about an intensely positive experience each day for three consecutive days. The second group wrote about a control topic.

Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences had better mood levels, fewer visits to the health center, and experienced fewer illnesses.

3. Play — schedule time to play into your life. We schedule meetings, conference calls, weekly events, and other responsibilities into our daily calendars … why not schedule a time to play?

When was the last time you blocked out an hour on your calendar just to explore and experiment? When was the last time you intentionally carved out time to have fun? You can’t tell me that being happy is less important than your Wednesday meeting, and yet, we act like it is because we never give it time and space to live on our calendars.

Give yourself permission to smile and enjoy the benefits of positive emotion. Schedule time for play and adventure so that you can experience contentment and joy, and explore and build new skills.

6 tips to start “thinking positive”

Having a positive attitude takes practice. If you struggle with positive thinking, know that you can’t completely change how you practice self-talk overnight. It can be challenging for people with more pessimistic thoughts to change their habits of thought.

It’s important to understand that sometimes you’ll slip back into thinking negative thoughts, but that’s okay. What matters is that you’re trying to empower yourself to have a more positive mindset by becoming aware of your automatic negative thoughts and reframing them to be more positive.

Becoming aware lets you question your negative automatic thoughts. Many coaches recommend some version of these questions to ask of your thoughts:

• Is it true? Meaning: Is the sky falling, or is there another possible interpretation?
• Is it helpful? Meaning: Does this interpretation help me get through this moment productively or inspire me to find new solutions?
• Is it kind? Meaning: Does this thinking help me feel capable and able to reach out to others for help or support?

Here are six more tips to help you start thinking positively:

1. Remember to be grateful

You can be grateful for many things in your life, both big and small, like having your family close by or the rain holding off during your walk to work. Write down whatever you’re grateful for and keep it in a gratitude journal. When you’re feeling pessimistic or upset, reflect on what you’re thankful for in your life to boost your mood.

2. Get plenty of sleep

Are you getting enough sleep each night, or at least trying to? Being well-rested sets you up for a better day. It helps us recharge and get our tasks done. Dwelling on how tired you are won’t help your attitude, either. Your self-talk will be filled with wanting to get your day over with impatient thoughts, so try developing a good nightly routine that prioritizes your sleep schedule.

3. Accept situations as they are

If you’re in a negative situation, there’s no sense in being in denial and pretending it never happened. For example, if your brother has taken the car and you have to walk to an appointment, reframe the situation: this gives you the chance to get some exercise and fresh air.

Understand your locus of control. Accept what you can’t change and do your best to think of the positives instead.

4. Identify areas you need to work on

Is there one particular situation or environment that makes you incredibly pessimistic? If you can identify areas that throw off your positive outlook on things, you can start to work on strategies that’ll help. It can be something like your commute to work that gives you negative thoughts.

Try to have fun with the challenge. Next time, create a fun playlist of music to put on when you head to work. Avoid people or places that drain your energy, and try spending more time with positive people.

5. Remember to laugh

Trying your best to find humor in your daily life helps you look on the bright side. It also helps you to manage your stress levels and reduce your heart rate, potentially improving your physical health.

If you can’t laugh, then at least smile. Laughing along with yourself can help you accept any mistakes and calm yourself down. If you need to, watch a funny video or phone a friend that can make you laugh.

6. Keep it real

While we love positive thinking benefits, you have to remember to be reasonable and logical with your mindset. Only considering positive thoughts blocks out any thoughts about how you’d react or prepare for something negative.

Positive Thinking and Students: 3 Tools

There are several tools for teachers to help students increase their well-being.

Here are a few activities that may be especially helpful.

From My Way, No My Way, to OUR Way

Sometimes we can end up getting angry or frustrated when others disagree with us. This exercise can help young people resolve these negative emotions by seeing that there is no right or wrong way to do things. Instead, they’ll be urged to think of compromises that work for everyone.

What Is Hope?

Hope is an optimistic frame of mind. Helping students understand their relationship to hope can help them develop this form of optimism. This exercise can help young people explore what gives them hope and how to create more hope in their lives.

Linking Feelings and Situations

Most of us have positive or negative emotions and don’t think much about where they came from or what situations cause these emotions for us.

In this exercise, students can explore when they feel different negative emotions as a first step to reducing negative emotions.

Teaching Positive Thinking to Kids and Teens

Teaching positive thinking to kids and teens may be especially beneficial, given that their brains are still developing and their capacity to gain new skills is high. Many of the same exercises we’ve already discussed in this article can be used or modified in ways to make them simpler.

When using these activities with kids, keep in mind that kids may have shorter attention spans and need more stimulation to make the activities engaging. So existing tools may need to be modified for younger kids.

Another important thing to consider when teaching positive thinking to kids is that it’s not a panacea and should not be described as such. Positive thinking is just one strategy that can increase positive emotions and improve well-being, but it is not the only one.

Many other strategies can optimize mental health, and people vary in the extent to which each strategy is beneficial. Positive reappraisal, or reframing a situation as more positive, was ineffective for some people in a sample of people with a history of non-suicidal self-injury (Davis et al., 2014).

All of this is to say that it’s important to be flexible about teaching positive thinking, especially when working with kids.

A Look at Journaling for Positive Thinking

One way to put together many of the tools, exercises, and tips we’ve discussed here is by starting a positive thinking journal.

A positive thinking journal can be used each day, every few days, or once per week.

A gratitude journal can also be useful for writing about positive events, imagining positive possibilities in the future, and creating lists of positive things. Any of the written positive thinking exercises can be kept together in a journal to help an individual build positive thinking skills.

Are Positive Thinking Exercises for Everyone?

A recent review synthesized past research and reported that many positive activities help people increase their happiness (Layous & Lyubomirsky, 2014). These include writing letters of gratitude, practicing optimism, and using one’s strengths in a novel way. However, this report also highlighted some important considerations. Namely, some exercises work better for some people than others.

The report states that the extent to which any positive exercise will work for us depends on several factors. Our motivation and beliefs are some of the biggest factors that may influence whether an exercise is effective. More simply, if we don’t think an exercise will work or we’re not motivated to do it, it’s not likely to work very well, if at all.

Another thing that impacts how well exercises work is how much effort we put in. If one person is dedicated to doing an exercise every time they feel bad, and another person does it only occasionally, the person who exerts more effort is likely to benefit more.

Lastly, our culture affects how effective different positive practices are. For example, Eastern cultures place more emphasis on harmony and connection, while Western cultures focus more on independence. These characteristics may affect the extent to which different exercises are beneficial.

Overall, the message is that it’s important to keep in mind that we are all different and therefore are likely to benefit differently from different exercises (Layous & Lyubomirsky, 2014).

Resources

We’ve already shared a bunch of resources from PositivePsychology.com that you can put in your positive thinking toolkit. Here are a few more than can help you build related skills that can improve positive thinking and happiness.

Dispute Negative Thinking

Sometimes our challenge isn’t so much about thinking positively, but about reducing negative thinking. That’s why it’s helpful to talk back to our negative thoughts, telling them why they are wrong. The Dispute Negative Thinking activity can be a good resource for building this skill.

Build a positive emotion portfolio

When we’re not feeling so good, it’s hard to remember all the times that we felt good. That’s why it can be helpful to build a positive emotions portfolio for a record of the times when we felt a variety of positive emotions.

Visualize Success

When we visualize success, we help shift our minds in ways that may help us more easily achieve success. By imagining the details of success, we can get into it, making it feel more real. For guidance on how to do this visualization, check out the Visualize Success tool.

17 Positive Psychology Exercises

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others enhance their well-being, this signature collection contains 17 validated positive psychology tools for practitioners. Use them to help others flourish and thrive.

Conclusion

Positive thinking is a beneficial skill that can be boosted by having a variety of tools in your toolkit.

The best positive thinking toolkit would benefit from tools focused on various aspects of positive thinking. For example, tools we enjoy will be easier to use when needed because they’re fun. We should also include tools we struggle with. By doing challenging activities that help us grow, we can likely make greater improvements.

Over time, we should also swap out tools in our ultimate positive thinking toolkit, since some tools may become boring as we use them more often. By having a wide variety of tools in our toolkit, we’re always challenging our brains to think in innovative ways and always have something new and fun to learn.

Overall, using the guidelines, tools, and exercises presented here can help you improve your positive thinking skills and help others do the same.