Having a good mindset, a positive attitude, and using the power of positive thinking can help you achieve all of your goals. In this post, you’ll learn how to have a strong positive mind, the benefits of positive thinking, and how you can use affirmations for positive thinking.
I have an exercise for you to do tomorrow morning when you wake up.
Before you moan and groan about exercise, I’m not talking about some sort of physical exercise.
Instead, a mental exercise.
When you wake up tomorrow morning, say to yourself, “I’m a positive person.” 3 times.
“I’m a positive person.”
“I’m a positive person.”
and once more:
“I’m a positive person.”
Then go about your day the usual way you would.
Mindset is everything. Having a strong mental game is as important as having skills or talents. Positive thinking has been proven to lead to more success than negative thinking.
While this probably sounds good in all, let’s dive a little deeper here into the power of positive thinking.
In this post, I’m going to share with you the benefits of positive thinking, talk about affirmations, talk about how thinking positive thoughts has changed my life, and share with you how you can have a strong, positive mind.
The Benefits of Positive Thinking
There are many benefits of positive thinking.
Some of the benefits of positive thinking includes:
- Increased life span
- Better coping skills in timing of hardships
- Better psychological and physical well-being
- Increased willpower when looking to achieve our goals
Positive thinking and having a good mindset and outlook on life can be very beneficial for trying to create a life you want and deserve.
Our minds are incredibly powerful and can quite literally create its own reality.
The power of positive thinking can manifest itself in living the life that you want to live.
Telling yourself you are a positive person will result in you becoming a more positive person.
You are what you say you are.
Saying, “I’m a negative person who can never accomplish anything” is a reinforcing trap. Saying this sort of thing will result in you being a negative person who will never accomplish anything.
Likewise, telling yourself, “I’m a positive person who can accomplish anything” will lead to accomplishments beyond your wildest dreams.
The human mind has a way of creating it’s own view of the world and through this view, that is the world.
One way in which you can create a good mindset for yourself is with affirmations. In the next section, I’m going to share with you how you can use affirmations and give you some examples of affirmations for positive thinking.
What are Affirmations and How You Can Use Affirmations in Your Life
Let’s start simple. What are affirmations?
An affirmation is a statement of truth.
Affirmations strengthen us because we can “trick” our brains into thinking what we want in this world.
An affirmation is as simple as the following statement, “I’m a nice person.”
An affirmation also could be more involved, such as, “I’m a person who is looking to become better in my relationships and I’m focusing on asking better questions.”
Typically, the statement you choose will be something you want to change in your life.
If you want to become a nicer person, tricking your brain by saying, “I’m a nice person”, will result in you becoming nicer!
By using affirmations, we can trick our powerful brains into becoming who we want to become.
“Every time you choose the easy thing, instead of the right thing, you are shaping your identity, becoming the type of person who does what is easy, rather than what is right.”
How to Write an Effective Affirmation
Writing effective affirmations, for yourself, is easy.
First, turn inward and think for yourself for a minute.
What do you want to change in your life? Who do you want to be? What are you struggling with?
Right now in my life, I’m struggling a little bit with focus and balance.
Taking this struggle, I can flip it around into an affirmation which will bring my brain to focus on what’s important.
Here’s my affirmation for the day:
“I’m able to focus for long periods of time and get my work done.”
Notice a few things:
- I started my affirmation with “I”
- Taking control of your life is critical to becoming better.
- I wrote in the present tense
- Right now, I’m focused – not, I’m going to focus (if I’m going to, I never will)
- The affirmation was positive
- Positive thinking is incredibly powerful and will lead you to where you want to go.
Using the three bullet points above as a loose framework will help you write affirmations for yourself.
Examples of Affirmations for Positive Thinking
Back at the end of 2016, I got really into affirmations. Recently, I was digging through my drawer of old notebooks and found some of my affirmations. Below are some of those affirmations.
12/11/16 “I am charming, easy going, and can get along with many types of people. I”m capable of brightening the lives of other people with my great smile and big heart. I will ask good, penetrating, and thoughtful questions at work and at home to gain a better perspective on life. At the end of each day, I will reflect on the questions I asked people to better understand my interactions and to increase my ability to connect with others.”
12/12/16 “I am persistent, diligent, and detail oriented in my work. I want to climb the ladder at work. By doing the work I have done, I believe I can get there. More responsibility brings more money and options, and I want more money and options. To get there, I need to ask good, penetrating and thoughtful questions. I will do what is right, not what is easy, and will achieve this goal.”
12/16/16 “I am the owner of what happens in my life. I want to meet and hang out with amazing, beautiful women. It’s time to align my goals with my actions. I want a beautiful family. By being charming, easy-going, and kind, I will accomplish this.
12/17/16 “I am patient, I am kind, I am aware.”
12/18/16 “I am reliable, I am friendly, I am determined to succeed”
12/21/16 “I am capable of coming up with creative ideas”
12/27/16 “I’m an investor. I’m building financial wealth. Is today the day I find an opportunity to make a deal?” (I was reading The Millionaire Real Estate Investor)
After spending a month doing these affirmations, I was feeling much better about my situation, but still had a lot of work to do. I was looking to find a girlfriend, and later did in 2017. A hope of mine was for a raise at my corporate job. 16 months later, I had received 2 promotions. Finally, I wanted to create a blog and business, and since have.
These affirmations allowed me to tap into my powerful brain and manifest my wants and goals. Now, it’s your turn.
Tap Into Your Powerful Brain and Influence Your Life With Affirmations
Becoming a better person, and someone who is more successful in what they do, will take time, but it can be accomplished.
Here’s the thing: you have a powerful brain.
By thinking critically about what you want, asking good, penetrating, and thoughtful questions at yourself, and getting answers will result in some action items to implement.
With these action items comes a call to become better as a person and a shift in your mindset.
With affirmations, you can influence your life and become who you want to be.
Now, let’s talk about how you can develop a strong mindset for yourself.
The Power of a Good Mindset and How Mindset is Everything
Having a good mindset and a strong will to want to work towards your goal is something great to strive for.
Having the grit to want to keep going is something rare and can set you apart from the rest of the herd.
Success in this world comes from action and consistency.
Consistent efforts added up over time WILL lead to amazing success and results.
Many people, myself included, deal with a lack of consistency.
Think about exercising. Maybe you exercise 3 times one week and only 1 the next. Maybe the week after 0 times and the week after that 2 times. The results you want probably won’t come from this routine.
With mindset, this inconsistency can be avoided.
Saying “I’m a person who is consistent and does not procrastinate.” will affect your actions.
It’s a tough world out there, but with our words and powerful mind, we can accomplish a lot.
While things may not have gone to plan in the past, that’s okay.
Having a strong mindset is accepting the past for what it is and moving on to bigger and better things.
How Thinking Positive Has Changed My Life
When I was younger playing sports, I didn’t have a strong mental game. I’d let things get into my head and couldn’t let them go.
My dad always harped on me to try to not let those emotions get the best of me. I had to look inwards and seek out the answers. I had to tap into my powerful mind to control the emotions of anger and sadness and funnel them towards performance.
It took a number of years, but over time, I was able to control my emotions and understand that bad things happen. Good things also happen. If I could stay level headed – not get too high or too low – I’d see more success.
Change is really hard.
In physics, the first law of motion, put simply, is an object at rest will stay at rest.
To start moving, energy and force must act on that object; otherwise, it will stay at rest.
Change is beautiful.
Have you ever started to work on something new and felt worse about yourself? I can’t think of a time where I actively pursued growth and didn’t become better.
Over time, I got better. It was beautiful, fulfilling and fun.
Change is okay.
Resisting change is a recipe for sadness.
If something is not going well, you have the ability to change and you are free to do what you can to make the situation better.
How to Have a Strong, Positive Mind
Make no mistake, taking control of your life and becoming success is tough.
Developing a strong and positive mind will not happen overnight, but you will be able to go it over time.
Improving over time will be tough, but is possible with getting into the right mindset and understanding the right thoughts will get you to your goals.
Without community and helping others, the personal growth and change is empty.
There are three concepts I want to talk about with regards to change in this article:
- the herd mentality
- how you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with
- the fact that you have the ability to change your situation
Let’s dive more into each of these.
Think Critically, Don’t Accept the Herd
One of the things which is absolutely CRITICAL for success in life is critical thinking and determining what is important in life.
Something I’ve been seeing a ton lately in the media and blogging space is the comment:
“the stock market always goes up! keep dollar cost averaging!”
Many of these people are the EXACT same people who were bashing the run up of cryptocurrencies.
There are a lot of things on my mind which are outside of the scope of this post (namely, inflation, how energy – not money – drives the economy, and debt fueled corporate buybacks) and I don’t want to fear monger either.
With this said, when you are on the side of the majority, sometimes it’s good to do a little research and reassess your position. Confirmation bias is at play here as well (another concept I won’t get into in this post but worth mentioning).
Naturally, humans form tribes, migrate in groups, and perform cooperative work. It’s in our DNA to follow the group for safety and sustainability reasons.
Because of the herd mentality, we can sometimes get trapped in thoughts which control and restrict us.
In terms of change, those following the herd will not change for fear of losing their status in a tribe.
If your tribe isn’t progressing as you’d like to be progressing, maybe it’s time to make a change.
You are the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With
Something that I’ve struggled with in my life is making friends.
After I grew up a little and found a great group of friends in high school, and then in college, I found myself falling into ruts and not getting to where I wanted to be in life.
Building extreme wealth is one of my goals in life, and many of my friends did not share this same goal; they were happy with getting by comfortably, but not willing to push the envelope.
Over the past few years, I’ve started to shift my friend circle to include more entrepreneur types, people who are interested in pursuing different extremes, and people who are on the way to financial freedom.
Not only has this motivated me to become better, it’s exposed me to new ideas, new views, and my worldview has changed for the better.
Many of my friends didn’t understand my choices or decisions. “Come on, let’s play some Xbox tonight! Stop reading!”
You may have noticed this as well, but there are certain people who don’t want to see you succeed or who are haters.
People who live like this have a scarcity mindset – living in abundance is foreign to them, but not to us.
You can win and I can win – and when we both grow, we are capable of so much more.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with in all areas of life: physical fitness, career, emotional intelligence, street smarts, wealth, etc.
I’ll never forget where I came from, but I’ve realized that to achieve my goals, I needed to make a change. Now, I have to value my time, I’ve changed my habits, and I’m raising my average by hanging out with people more successful than me.
There’s an unstoppable force living inside of you
Change for the sake of change is not what I’m recommending. Change for the sake of change, if rooted in rash decision making and not thinking for yourself, will not lead to success.
The human brain is incredibly powerful.
You have a potential inside of you which is unstoppable. Through simple daily disciplines, through critical thinking, and through tweaking habits in your life for the better, you will be successful.
YOU have the power to change your situation.
Make no mistake: CHANGE is really hard.
Like a rock rolling down a hill, the first push is really hard to do and the rock only moves a few inches. The next push, a few more inches. Another push and a few feet. After a few more pushes, the rock is rolling down the hill with little effort on your part.
Change is beautiful. Motion is beautiful. The rock is rolling down the hill without much effort and isn’t stopping.
My main recommendation for you in this post is to understand change is okay. It’s okay to do things a little different than others; it’s okay to think differently than others as well.
Change is difficult, change is beautiful, and change is okay.
Thinking critically for yourself and seeking a better life will be fulfilling.
