You’ve probably heard plenty about positive thinking, but does it work?
We often hear about positive thinking within the positive psychology field, which is devoted to the study of what makes people happy and fulfilled. Positive thinking means approaching life’s challenges with a positive outlook. Life is always unpredictable, sometimes bad things happen out of our control. If you’ve had a nightmare of a year, the last thing you want to hear is “Be positive!” Instead, you need an actual strategy to dig yourself out.
While cultivating a positive mindset forcing too much positivity is not just unhelpful, it’s toxic.
Positive thinking could be very toxic and acts as a mask of false gratification when the person follows it while suppressing his shadow and negative emotions, therefore true positive thinking is the fruit of one’s confronting his demons, not running away from them and adopting an illusionary pattern of existence, because as Carl Jung said: There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own Souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Positivity and positive thinking have found themselves in a place of omnipotence in this century’s way of thinking, like a solution for every issue but in fact, it’s not more than a way of escapism.
How to practice positivity at its core, Try some of these…
1) Practice self-compassion: this is done by talking positively to oneself, encouraging oneself, and avoid an auto judgmental attitude.
2) Practice gratitude: Keep a daily journal where you can express 10 things in your life you are grateful for and why, repeat this exercise daily. Practicing gratitude has shown its positive effects on the induction of the brain’s plasticity, our brain can change itself and therefore we become better persons on a psychological and emotional level by being grateful.
3) Meditate: practicing daily meditation induces huge benefits physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually according to science. By mediating 20mins per day you will embrace real positivity. Studies have shown different positive changes in the meditative brain like:
- SHRINKAGE in the amygdala we became less reactive to stress and negativity and less impulsive towards negative life situations.
- GROWTH in the prefrontal cortex: associated with more strategy, clarification, and rational thinking.
- GROWTH in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC): associated with empathy, altruism, focus, and less mind wandering.
- GROWTH in the pons: more secretion of positive hormones that regulates mood and behavior.
- GROWTH in the hippocampus: associated with good memory and learning capacities.
- Interested in mind mastery techniques to achieve true positivity? You can enroll in our teaching modules.