Being Optimistic

When you have in your mind a clear vision of what you want your future to be, and you have a clear plan of how to attain that vision, optimism is the fuel that drives you through the problems and setbacks you encounter along the way. Goals and optimism go hand in hand. Simply put, if you have goals to work towards then being optimistic about your future is easy.

Being optimistic is a mental construct that you choose. And there is a plan that we'll lay out for you in a minute to follow to become optimistic, even in the face of adversity. But it's simple really, you can choose to feel a victim of the events of your life, or you can choose to effect positive life change through the challenges you encounter. Future planning, future mindedness, and an orientation towards the future all fold into the optimistic attitude. And optimism comes easier to people who have a clear idea of what they'll be doing in the future.

Imagine that you have a theory you can articulate that covers the main concepts of how you are going to move from point a to point b in your life. This is a theory only because you really don't know what tomorrow will bring, however, you can suppose that day to day events have less to do with the overall plan than how you deal with those events. That is to say, you may have minor setbacks today, but if you wake up tomorrow and keep on after the major goal, your progress from a to b is intact.

In this theory you could have ideals of the types of things that you think would enable your better life tomorrow, and from these ideas of things, you could create concrete, step by step actions you could take to bring about these things.

Now, imagine the theory as a working plan. An actionable list of activities that you do every day. Now you can see that you are taking theory into reality. And the reality of it is, you don't have to imagine this at all.

This is how you harness optimism. You come up with the concrete plans that will serve you in realizing your ideas. And you work on those plans. This keeps you forward minded, and it keeps you being optimistic. Optimism, and goal setting, will enable you to transcend daily setbacks.

As long as you have breath in your body and blood in your veins then you have what it takes to be optimistic about the future. Being optimistic is all about you keeping your vision on the future while you work today to bring that future to reality.

But optimism doesn't come automatically sometimes. “Sure”, you say, “I can have goals, but when I get knocked down its tough to get back on track. It feels that the world is against me...” But we have a strategy for that too.

This is the plan we were talking about earlier...

Martin Seligman, an optimism evangelist, sternly suggest that in the act of achievement, optimism is strongly called for. And in his most sage advice, learning to argue with yourself is key to disabling negative, pessimistic ideas, and allowing enabling positive, optimistic ideas to flourish. He puts it to us like this: When you feel that the cards are stacked against you, look to these four attributes to combat the naysaying

Evidence: Look for evidence to back up your pessimism, chances are you wont find much. We tend to look at our misfortune as the only misfortune that occurs anywhere on the planet. We, so we feel, are at the worst of it, and that is literally how we feel in the face of adversity. But when you look for the facts, you'll find that 1.) you're not alone and 2.) you're not as worse off as you think. We tend to sensationalize our personal events, both good and bad. Taking a step back and doing a reality check does one thing very well. It keeps it real. So don't be afraid to question yourself, even challenge yourself, if you find you feel negative about anything personal to you.

Alternatives: Okay, maybe there's a shred of truth to why your being pessimistic about some outcome. But does that mean that you are the single, sole cause of the problem? An alternative outlook may show you that there were other factors involved which were out of your control, and these factors may have had just as much influence, maybe more, than anything you did! So make sure you take into account external factors, always! That means that you have to acknowledge that sometimes life does get in the way, but that doesn't mean you have to stop.

Implications: Well, maybe you've found some evidence, and there are some alternatives, but there still seems to be a smoking gun in your hand. Ask yourself this: “What are the implications?” It could be that the exact thing you were attempting, and perhaps failed at, isn't a major catastrophe in your goal's pursuit. In fact, when you stop to think about it, there simply aren't that many things that happen to people in the modern industrialized world that are considered catastrophes in the first place, so chances are, what you've encountered is no where near catastrophic in scope. You may simply need to reevaluate a particular step in your path. Decatastropize the situation, don't make it something its not.

Usefulness: Let's say you've done steps 1, 2 and 3, but still can't get past the pessimism. It happens. So look at it this way. Maybe you really did fall off the wagon, or cause some plan to go awry. Okay. But is it worth it to cling to the idea that you've done it? Chances are, if you continue to hold onto the idea, you'll never be able to work past it. That's an absolute fact if you stop to think about it. If you continually focus on the failure, then you'll do nothing but focus on the failure. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. So what you need to do is acknowledge the fact, and move on. Simply let it go, and get on with rebuilding the path you need follow to achieve your goal. Lick your wounds, take your medicine, but in the end realize this: it is of no use to continually concentrate on any failure you may experience except for to learn from it. Drop it and move on.

Being optimistic is a simple and cheap teacher of many of life's virtues. And when you couple optimism with real, tangible goals, it helps you realize that your opinion and attitude about what you will be doing for the rest of the days of your life are fully in your control. Through choosing to plan, and being optimistic about your tomorrows, you are working in a way that transcends today, and yourself, into the larger idea that is the future of the world.

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How to Channel Positive Energy to Change Your Mind and Your Life

If you can stay positive even when the world is shoving some lousy experience down your throat, you'll make a difference not only in how you feel today, but you'll make a difference in what your tomorrows are like too.

Your ability to be positive channels energy that others around you feel, tune in to, and feed off of. And if you can do it, you'll make the world you live in a heck of a lot better. Better in ways that will return benefits to you in health, wealth, and happiness.

It's true. Positive people are healthier, live happier lives, and make more money than if they were negative. When you're positive, the good of the world attracts itself to you.

You have a choice. You always have a choice. And in every case, the most basic choice is the choice of being positive about life, or not.

Imagine more success at work, more success with family, more success in life, and more happiness. Imagine that you could learn ways that could forever transform the way you think, feel, and live.

If you could explain it to yourself, would you rather be happy than sad? Would you rather be optimistic than pessimistic? Would you be a brave soul with a healthy vision of what the future holds?

I imagined it. I imagined it because I had to, and that's why I started this site. To help people like you see that you can live a better, happier, more productive life. And you already have all the tools you need. You just have to learn how to use them.

When my life was its toughest, after the pressures of life literally pushed me over the edge and I had nowhere left to go but up. I learned how to turn from a life of pure pessimism and dread into a life of optimism and hope. It's a story I tell here on ThinkingRules. Because of what I learned, and what I share on this site, I now literally think, feel, and live the happiest, most productive lifestyle than I have at any other time in my life.

But what you find here isn't just my thoughts, it isn't just stuff that I conjured up in my own mind. I want you to know that what I talk about here comes from the best science and philosophy out there about living well, happy, and content.

I do nothing more than take from the realm of proven, tried and tested material and condense it to a blog. A lot of it comes from the current science of positive psychology. Stuff you can bank on as coming from the best minds in the field of positive living, beating depression, and positive psychology.

What I want to give you is what I've learned through years of reading, study, and even some masters level college work. ThinkingRules is dedicated to the idea that anybody can, and should, live their life in such a way that they are the most happy, productive, self-realized person they can be.

Here, let me start by giving you some tips for staying positive...

Seven Proven Techniques for Staying Positive:

• Be confident that your way of doing things will work out for the best


• Expect the best


• Have a clear picture of what you expect to happen in the future


• Have a plan of action


• Don't expect to lose


• Focus on opportunity and plan to do better


• Work the plan

But There's More to the Story:

As I said, there is more here than personal diatribe. There is fact, and writing about that fact. You can get only so much from this blog, and there is so much more for you to read, understand and learn about being positive and living a positive life.

And the best place to start is at the beginning, and that beginning is captured in a book by Dr. Martin Seligman called Learned Optimism.

Learned optimism goes where you need to go to build the foundation of staying positive in the face of adversity. It talks about the choices you make between being positive or being negative, and why you may prefer one way over the other. It helps you see that how you think directly affects how you feel, and tells you concrete ways to think more healthy so you can live better, and happier. It lays the groundwork for your understanding of positive living so you can find the success you deserve in life.

So, the true answer to how you can stay positive is that you learn how to do it. And there is no better place to start that journey then in Dr. Seligman's book, Learned Optimism.

Get your copy of learned optimism here: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life

And one last thing, you can be a part of the growing community here at ThinkingRules. Be sure to Get the Newsletter. We don't spam, and we'll keep you in the loop about the latest happenings in positive living!

Thanks,

Dan

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The Key to a Happy Life

One of the issues with western notions of mental health, particularly in dealing with happiness, is that the norms of western psychology need to be inverted in order to talk about happiness.

This blog started as a study of depression and how to get out of it. What I learned pretty quickly is that it's damned difficult to talk about getting out of depression when the breadth of data available about depression is illness focused rather than positive, proactive steps to alleviate it.

That is to say, the purpose of therapy in most western traditions is to figure out the problem you have in order to make you feel better. How many times have you said or considered “If I could only figure out what's wrong, I'd be alright?” How else could a western doctor coin the phrase “I'll figure out what's wrong with you...” to which they commence a labyrinth of extensive diagnostics in search of the needle in the haystack that's making you ill.

This is particularly an issue in the traditional practice of western psychotherapy – think: “I'm lying on a couch in deep Freudian analysis contemplating what went wrong with my childhood to make me the malfunctioning adult I am today.”

Even the venerable Cognitive Behavioral Therapy sets its focus on correcting maladaptive thought patterns.

We perpetually look for what's wrong with our conscious, our life, and our world in hopes of setting things right within ourselves. It's a vicious circle.

Here is the key to a happy life: get out of this vicious circle and start looking at what is good and right with your life rather than what is wrong or bad. Accept yourself as you are and strive towards your goals if you want to change. Live in forgiveness so that nothing can hurt you.

Psychology today is rife with antiquated, yet purposeful, philosophies related to the human psyche and the maladies that trouble it. The idea of something positive about the human psyche is relatively new, originating with the work of Dr. Martin Seligman in the late 1990's.

Positive living is so new to the field of psychology that Peterson (2006) suggest the psychology field will need “...a vocabulary for speaking about the good life and assessment strategies for investigating its components” (p. 137). In short, what that means is the field that is leading us in human emotional development, psychology and psychotherapy, has a difficult time talking about what is good about life. So it's no surprise that we laypeople have an even more difficult time with the concept.

So in the end it seems simple. Maybe too simple for us to grasp easily. The key to a happy life is to regard more fully the things in life that are good. Of course, that's not to say life is perfect, but when you stop to think about it, more often than not, the good outweighs the bad. It's just that we choose not to pay attention to it – we are programmed to ignore it, and take it for granted.

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References:

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology (Oxford Positive Psychology Series). New York: Oxford University Press

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Ten Things Happy People do Differently

There has to be something about being happy, something that people do different. And if I knew what those things were, I sure would do them...

Number 10: Exercise

Just about everyone knows about the psychosomatic effect where the mind makes the body ill, but few know about the somatopsychic where the body makes the mind well (Sharkey & Gaskill, 2007, p. 32). Happy people have physical activity. Walking, bike riding, jogging, swimming, dancing – whatever it is, the body moves and creates a physical wellness which leads to better mental wellness. You don't need to compete in an iron-man competition to be happy, but happy people know that some form of exercise is good for the body and the mind.

Number 9: Eat Well

Harvard doctors, Drs. Willett and Skerrett (2011), say that the proper choices of food can help you live well and longer, but they don't promote the typical dietary buzz that most people are used to hearing about. Instead, diet should be sensible and the aim should be “...to nudge you toward eating mostly familiar foods that have been shown to improve health and reduce the risk of chronic disease” (Willett & Skerrett, 2011, Chapter 1). Happy people don't diet. Happy people eat well, eat what they want, and eat sensibly. There are no villainous foods, but there are villainous choices. You need food to live, but approaching the concept of food with an educated idea of what is sensible and what isn't goes a long way to being happy. Happy people have a healthy eating lifestyle.

Number 8: Take Time to Smell the Roses

Happy people seek and recognize gratification. Seligman (2002) says that “...gratifications are activities we very much like doing...engage us fully, [and] we become immersed and absorbed in them...” (p. 102). Don't confuse this with pleasure. Pleasure is the sensory appreciation of the rose's smell, gratification is the conceptualization of the rose's beauty. The pleasure of the rose may vanish in a wisp of a second, but the gratification of the rose is the self-fulfilling experience of being with that rose regardless if it is there physically or in your mind. Happy people know what gratification is, and search it out in their lives.

Number 7: Know Friendship and Love

Psychology has long suspected and recently backed up in studies this fact: that of the major task to achieve in life for happiness, friendship and love rank high on the list (Sweeney, 2011, Five major life task). Knowing friendship and love are central to having happiness in life. Happy people choose to have friends in their life, and they choose love over the other emotions that make up living. Happy people like themselves, and they like others.

Number 6: Share Life with Others

Happy people are mindful of life's goodness, and they savor and share it. Happy people know that sharing mindfulness and savoring with others is to create happiness: “Savoring and mindfulness happen by sharing your pleasures with others...” (Seligman, 2002, p. 110). When happy people share, they themselves become happier. Happy people find something in life that truly is a wonderful thing and make it more than a memory by sharing it. Happy people create emotional connections and genuinely care and share life. Happy people engage with others in positive ways, they give.

Number 5: Forgive

“Forgiveness unifies one's own awareness and unites the consciousness of all humankind” (Miller, 2010, Where forgiveness leads). Numerous studies now exist showing that forgiveness is a cornerstone of well being. Happy people don't let others hurt them because they've forgiven them. You see, the nature of forgiveness isn't something you bestow on another, it's something you give yourself. When you forgive someone, you've told yourself they can't hurt you anymore. Happy people forgive others, and don't allow themselves to be hurt by them anymore. But sometimes, forgiveness isn't a onetime thing, and sometimes forgiveness is hard.

Number 4: Think Positive

“What is good about life is as genuine as what is bad and therefore deserves equal attention...” (Peterson, 2006, p. 4) but unfortunately, the bad is easier to see for a lot of us. Happy people tend to look at life in a more complete way, happy people see the good that is being obscured by the bad. Happy people tend to look at what is right in life rather than what is wrong.

Sure, life comes with hassles, but happy people don't focus on the hassles, happy people pay attention to the positive.

Number 3: Avoid Pessimism

Pessimism is a mild version of depression, and while normal depression occurs occasionally in everybody at some time, pessimism can be a fixture in life for some (Seligman, 1990, pp. 54 - 55). Pessimism is the perpetual notion that life is a glass that is half empty, that things are bound to go wrong, and that we are helpless to change these concepts as they are facts of life. But pessimism is a choice, and happy people choose not to be pessimistic. They instead choose optimism. Happy people don't confuse optimism with mindless disregard for life's reality, but instead they realize that there are two ways to look at a situation in life. One of defeat and helplessness, and one of healthy challenge and opportunity. Happy people see life's challenges as opportunities.

Number 2: Seek Order in Consciousness

Happy people seek satisfaction in what it is that they do. Happy people strive for order in what their daily routine means to their internal impression of their life. Happy people operate in a positive energy flow where “...the information that keeps coming into awareness is congruent with [their] goals...” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 39). Happiness in any moment of any day is when the mind and body are focused on the same thing, for positive reasons. Csikszentmihalyi calls this state flow, and happy people do their utmost to be in flow as often as possible.

Number 1: Be Flexible

It is simply unreal to expect that we will achieve absolutely everything we desire. The inevitability of failure is a fact for every human being on the planet. But failure in itself is no reason to not be happy, particularly if one thinks of failure as lessons learned in a journey of something much larger than can be seen at any moment. In this light, failure gives way towards a flexibility in realizing that life is long, and filled with opportunity. Happy people are flexible in their understanding of themselves and the world around them, and happy people see themselves as part of a larger system, not just as individuals in life. Happy people realize that “the life committed to nothing larger than itself is a meager life indeed” (Seligman, 1990, p. 284). Happy people are committed to living a larger life.

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References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: HarperCollins

Miller, D. P., (2010). The Way of Forgiveness: Letting Go, Easing Stress and Building Strength

Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology (Oxford Positive Psychology Series). New York: Oxford

Seligman, M. E. P. (1990) Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life New York: Pocket books

Seligman, M. E. P. (2002) Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press

Sharkey, B. J., Gaskill, S.E.. Fitness & Health - 6th Edition. Champaign Ill. Human Kinetics

Sweeney, T. J. (2011) Adlerian Counseling and Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Approach, Fifth Edition. 5th ed. New York: Routledge. [Kindle Edition]

Willett, W., Skerrett, P. J. (2011). Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy [Kindle Edition]

How to be Happy in Life

Don't confuse happiness with pleasure. Pleasure takes the form of orgasmic delights: warm fires on cold evenings, refreshing showers after hard work, the climax of love making, or the physical pleasure of bodily movements. This is not happiness, however it can make you feel that way. Pleasure is temporary.

Happiness is a more durable thing that you create in your mind, it is a mood rooted in some basic thinking and knowledge. Knowing how to be happy, just like knowing your depressed, is an awareness of the mood in your mind. Happiness is found in realizing you're quite capable creating positive happiness in life as well as negative depression.

Let's look at the positive side and consider how you can create positive energy. Seligman (2002) brings up savoring and mindfulness when talking about happiness. Savoring focuses on the ideas that we take the time to bask in our accomplishments, give thanks and be grateful for what we do have in life, marvel in the majesty that is life, and luxuriate in our ability to sense the world (pp. 108-109).

The concept of savoring makes sense when you stop to consider the hectic pace the modern world enforces on our daily living. It's as if “[t]he sheer speed of modern life and our extreme future-mindedness can sneak up on us and impoverish our present (Seligman, 2002, p. 107). We are living so fast, and with such concentration on what will happen tomorrow, that we are failing to stop and realize what goodness we have in the present moments of our lives.

Mindfulness is to act opposite of mindlessness. That is, to take notice of life as it is around you, and drink in the large swaths of pleasant surroundings that may be obscured by small swaths of unpleasant surroundings you are concentrating on.

Mindlessness is how most of us go through life, on autopilot, dealing with the fires that are exactly in front of us. In this concentration, we fail to observe what is beautiful in life, and because of this, our mindlessness leads to unhappiness.

It's true.

Think about it, if you never stopped to observe what it is that makes you happy, then how could you ever be happy? Mindfulness is the slowing of the mind, and allowing it to drink life in its beauty and pageantry.

These concepts, savoring and mindfulness, are cognitive. That is to say, they are rooted in your thoughts and thought patterns. It is a basic premise to many western psycho-dynamic approaches of mental health that cognitive patterns have much to do with our moods.

While savoring and mindfulness may bring about the feel of eastern philosophies in you, the cognitive aspect of western science should reassure you the validity of the approach. Cognitively speaking, to be happy in life, savoring and mindfulness are augmented in knowing how to stop negative thinking.

Depression has been studied and acknowledged as having its roots in negative thinking. When we are depressed, our minds are focused on the negative aspects of our lives. We sit in a vicious cycle of depressed ideas feeding depressed feelings. When we are depressed, it is hard to be happy.

In order to break this cycle, the mind must be given a positive data stream to consider. It is in this positive data that happiness can be found. And that stream is most likely to be found in savoring and mindfulness. It is very true to say at this point that when it comes to happiness, attitude is everything, and the best attitude to have is a positive mental attitude.

In order for you to be happy in life, you must first know that you are in control of your feelings. You create how you feel, mostly in the way of how you create how you think.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2002).  Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. (pp. 107 - 110). New York: Free Press.

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Positive Mental Attitude

How come so many people are exactly where they don't want to be in life? If a positive mental attitude and hard work can make what you strive for real, why are the realities of so many people so bleak?

Because they don't know what you know, or are trying to figure out: that living life well is about living life to its fullest, most optimum experience. A concept that means different things to different people, different cultures, and is even driven by conditions that are organic to physiological make ups as well as the neighborhoods people live in.

Genetic predisposition, socio-economic situation, circumstances and chance are all factors that go into the probability of your success in life, and these factors often act to try and bind, regulate and chain you to a particular way of living. A certain status, condition or level in life. There's an irrefutable truth here – sometimes life deals harsh blows to people.

But there are other truths at work here too.

The most basic of these other truths is things are changeable. Even in the face of whatever DNA hard-coding makes you up or the social situation you are in, if you have the cognitive ability to read this post, you can make changes in your life. Don't doubt this for a second. Individuals can create power.

Martin Luther King changed the perceptions of a whole country, Mahatma Gandhi freed a people of colonial rule, and a small group of American revolutionaries set in motion a chain of events that culminated in a society that changed the face of the earth. Never once was any of this easy, and neither did any of it occur blind to the prospect and dangers of utter defeat.

I assure you, at least one characteristic shared by all these leaders is they knew how to change negative thinking. In light of what these people accomplished with their lives, affecting change in your personal life should take on new perspective. A perspective of 'can-do'.

Living life is a cause and effect balance. If the effect you want is to get a better job, better relationship, or better anything, then you put causes in place to reach the desired effect. You train, study, reach out, ask questions, get answers, show extra effort or actively pursue opportunities that enable the change. Simply put, if you want to be a doctor you don't go to trade school to be a baker. But admittedly, becoming a doctor has issues and challenges not faced in becoming a baker. Regardless, if you want any change, you don't sit on the sidelines wishing for it. You simply do what you need to do, and that's where you draw on the power of a positive mental attitude.

Yogi Berra said it, “It's about 90% mental, the other half is hard work” – the math might not work, but there's wisdom in the words. Real change, the stuff that makes you sit up and take notice happens in a very simple way. First there is a thought, and then there are actions that support it.

Your ability to create the kind of life you want rests within your ability to envision a change, and then to reason a way to make that change happen. Nothing says it will be easy, nothing says it will happen overnight. But the simple fact is this, if you want change and do nothing about it, then everything says that nothing will happen.

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Creating Positive Energy

There's skill in living a positive life. Living in a way that transcends obstacles – creating from them goals. Goals that when achieved, provide a form of grace in teaching that living life best is living life through overcoming hurdles.

Some of us just seem to do this more naturally than others. It's always been a source of wonder to me the stories of how some people overcome tremendous odds to achieve great things in life. I've made a study of the subject. And what I've concluded is that anybody who's strived in the face of challenge has learned to do one simple thing. They've learned how to stop negative thoughts.

Your way of thinking carries a tremendous amount of power in determining who you are and how you relate to life. Too many people live their lives centered around negative thinking and all the associated poor self-image baggage that goes along with it. They live life on the sidelines while other people seem to get along in life with little or no trouble. What they miss is that trouble is finding the other people too. They just deal with it differently.

Positive people create their own juice to get them through trying times. And I've noticed that the ones who do it the best also have a grip on the reality of life. That is to say, they know life isn't always peachy keen, but they have learned how to manage most of the difficulties that get thrown in front of them.

The smart ones get life's duality – its positive and negative perspective and its positive and negative reality. The not so smart ones, however, overlook the fact that life is sometimes unfair, and that we often do not have control over whats going on, that we only control ourselves. This is the basic difference between being unrealistically optimistic and constructively optimistic.

A constructive optimist manages their negative thoughts by realizing them for what they are. First, they determine if they are valid or invalid. They'll disregard the invalid ones. For the valid ones that remain, they realize that when a negative thought enters their life's equation, it means something. Typically, it symbolizes a challenge that needs to be overcome. A challenge that has come to be in their attainment of a goal. What they do with this negative thought is pick it apart and identify what challenge to their goal it represents. And then, they'll lay out whatever steps are required to overcome that challenge. Essentially breaking the negative thought down into steps to overcome it. Then they work on those steps. It's that simple, and it's that hard. Hard because it usually requires some real work.

There's a lot of lip-service that gets paid to developing a positive attitude. But rarely does this lip-service go beyond words to tell you what to do to live a more effective life. In almost any circumstance, a more effective life means living every day a life that's filled with worthy goals, and working in attainment of these goals.

So keep in this in mind, you will always encounter some sort of negative thing in your life, and usually it represents challenges to your goals. Stopping negative thinking means taking the negative and breaking it into workable, positive steps to take towards your goals and successes.

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