“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” ~ Albert Einstein

Do you want to invite more happiness and opportunities in your life? Do you want to have a positive mental attitude? Well, here are 6 ways to create a positive mental attitude which you can use to improve your life and stay happy.

1. “Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.” Appreciate all the things and people around you. Learn to stop saying “I’ll be happy when this thing happens to me” or “I’ll be happy when I buy that” because to be honest, you can be happy now. Look around you, you already have so much to be thankful for and be happy for.

2. “These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” This is a quote from William James. The key to having a positive mental attitude is to start believing in your thoughts, your abilities, your dreams and yourself. It actually makes all the difference when you start believing. You learn that you can get what you want when you desire it with all your heart and mind.

3. William Allen White once said “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.” Do not be afraid to take risks, try doing something new everyday. You can try out a new restaurant in town or even just taking another route to work or school. Challenge yourself and do not let yourself get into a rut.

4. Always try to get what you love or you will be forced to love what you get. Figure out what you enjoy in life. Who knows, you might be able to make money out of whatever you love doing.

5. Keep yourself healthy. A healthy body can actually keep you happy. You can also see things differently when you are relaxed as compared to when you are stressed out. You see things clearly when you aren’t stressed so try to chill before you make decisions. Exercise also promotes the release of endorphins which makes you feel happy.

6. Get to know yourself. Know what keeps you motivated, what keeps you happy, what your strengths and weaknesses are. Then love yourself for what you are. Even if you want to change things about yourself, the first thing you should do is to accept who you are.

There are more than 6 ways to create a positive mental attitude and it is up to you to experiment and find out what can help you think positively and stay happy.

I just got sent this compilation of clips from interviews with actor Will Smith and I have to say that the man should have “great thinker” on his passport too! It is one of the most inspirational and motivating things you will see all year.

Click on the link below to check it out…

NowThis Is Some Positive Thinking!

Maybe it is turning into one those weeks after all. You may have read about the flood that I was greeted with on my return to my apartment a couple of days ago. It is still a right old mess and starting to make everything else smell a bit damp and mouldy. Not too nice to live in. But I am staying positive about the situation and just trying to get on with things despite being now cooped up in one room.

So just when I was getting used to a slightly different way of doing things at home and thinking that I was still able to do what I need to do work-wise on a daily basis, I somehow managed to delete the homepage of this blog by messing about with my ftp program. Now I am not the most tech-savvy person around but usually, if I do something on my computer that I really didn’t mean to, and it causes what on the face of it looks like a distaster that will ruin days or weeks of work, with a bit of thought and a calm approach I can put it right again.

Well if you are reading this I must have been able to do it this time as well. But, I have to be honest, that at the time it looked like I had really managed to screw myself. I stared at the screen of my ftp client long and hard but nothing popped into my head as regards how the hell I was going to reverse what I had done. And just a little, I started to panic that I had lost weeks and weeks of hard work. I realised that if there was any chance of getting the blog back to its original and fine-looking self I was going to need help.

Now, the guys at the help desk of my web hosting are very quick in their response to support queries so with quiet confidence I sat back and awaited a reply to my problem. Time passed. And a bit more. Still no response. This was unusual, so I started to think about the consequences of the lost/wasted time this was costing. I began running through all the work I had planned to do that day but now couldn’t. And I started to feel a general air of gloom descend on a day that I originally thought was going to be productive and positive.

What had happened was that a perceived calamity which in all truth I made out in my mind to be far worse and of greater magnitude that it really was in all probability had turned my initial positive mental attitude into a negative one. My thoughts had been positive to start with, but had been eroded and replaced with negative ones. This can happen to us all too easily if we let it.

But there are ways to limit this kind of mental slide from positive to negative. There are techniques we can learn to mentally take a stepback from whatever life throws up to try and ruin our day. It may take some practice (looks like I need more!) but it can be done.

What did I do? Well I wrote this blog post of course-in notepad! I took a few moments to guage my reaction to this set-back, and then tried to practice what I preach and look for positives in seemingly negative scenarios. A bit of self anaysis and talk can be a good thing, as it allows you to put things into perspective more logically, gives you a chance to weigh up your options and then proceed with the best plan of action.

As long as you have no medical condition regarding your mental health such as depression, it is generally regarded that positive thinking really can have a huge impact on your life. If you can train yourself to think more positively you will feel freer, have more self belief and the power to shape your own destiny.

Although naturally positive people do exist, they are generally quite rare. As children, our default response to challenges we meet is one of positivity. We see the world as a wonderful and exiting place to explore and have fun in. When we get older this attitude is replaced with one that tends to looks for reasons not to do things-face a new challenge, try a new activity, meet new people etc. This is to protect us and keep us in our comfort zone-the world we know about and already accept-even if its not the one we really want to inhabit.

Over time, negative thinking patterns and thoughts are embedded in our subconscious minds to the point where we often don’t realise they are having an impact on our decision making or view of the world. As you may know, the subconscious part of our mind is very powerful and governs many aspects of our behaviour. These aspects are often the actions and tasks that we can perform “without thinking”, the things we take for granted that we know we can do easily and without effort.

Unfortunately this also applies to the less positive aspects as well, the bad habits we have formed over the years, maybe a negative self image (affecting  our self esteem and confidence) reinforced by others, and whether we have “glass half-full”or “glass half-empty” attitude to life. But just as these negative traits have formed in time, so they can be replaced with positive ones.

The subconscious mind is like a pet that responds to repeated commands and eventually does its masters bidding, like a dog being trained to retrieve a stick you have thrown. If you start feeding it new positive thoughts that it can assimilate and believe, it will take these on board as truth, thus creating a new “default” setting-a positive, happy one.

Thus it is entirely possible to reprogram yourself to think positively using tried and tested positive thinking techniques. These techniques include affirmations, meditation, hypnosis and general immersion into positive thinking materials and knowledge. They will teach people how it is possible to instantly remove any negative thought before it has time to manifest itself and affect how you think .

In a way, you can perceive this as a sort of an automatic negation system, one that will protect you from  lack of self confidence, low self esteem, fear and negative thought patterns. These methods will make you feel much more confident, less anxious and certainly less predisposed to depressive illnesses. You will be able to stop any negative thinking without too much effort and eliminate much of the unnecessary stress from your life.