3 Personal Techniques to Improve Positive Thinking

3 Personal Techniques to Improve Positive Thinking
3 Personal Techniques to Improve Positive Thinking

Anxiety is a type of psychological disorder that is both physical and mental. Changing your physical body can be tough. You can eat healthy, exercise, and ensure proper nutrition, but you can’t change your genes or your body chemistry. However, your psychology can be changed with the right techniques, and doing so can and will go a long way toward helping you heal your anxiety.

The Power of Positive Thinking

Anxiety is a negative emotion caused by worry and concern. When your mindset is focused on the negative, including the belief that you’ll end up doing bad things or that bad things will happen to you, your anxiety will only increase. Positivity is its own cure. Believing that you’ll do great things and that great things will happen to you can ultimately reduce the worry or concern you have about the future, and may even affect your body as well.

Of course, thinking positively is naturally difficult when you have anxiety, so to help, here are some exercises that can create positive thinking.

Positivity Journal

The first step in changing your mindset is to force yourself to find or focus on positive things. You can do this with a positivity journal. Before any experience that naturally causes you anxiety, try to write out 10 to 15 great things that you expect to happen at the event. Focus only on things that are truly positive, including how you’ll act and what you’ll do.

After the event is over, no matter how well it went, write out 10 to 15 positive things that came from the event, such as ‘I was able to successfully have a five minute conversation with the chef’ and ‘I didn’t feel anxious when I walked by the stage.’ Longer lists are better, and always be as specific as possible. Over time, your mind will start to pay attention to these positive things and learn to think positively instead of focusing on the negative.

Cause Journal

Journaling is one of the better ways to change your mindset because it forces you to use your mind (thinking of the positive things) and turns it into an action (journaling). So another activity you can try is using a journal to write out the potential causes other than your worries that may be leading to anxiety. For example, let’s say you feel anxious when you talk to your boss, and you worry that you’ll say something wrong and potentially get fired.

Because of our mind and body connection, there is a chance that your anxiety isn’t being caused by your boss at all, but rather other life experiences (both physical and historical) that created the anxiety, such as ‘I drank a lot of caffeine today’ and ‘I once had a bad encounter with a previous boss that could be making me anxious about this one.’ Once you’ve found these alternative causes, you should learn not to believe that your anxiety is always due to some important reason, and you’ll focus instead on the positive things you can draw from your experiences.

Find Close, Supportive Friends
Friendships are an underrated part of maintaining a healthy relaxation level. Numerous psychological studies have shown that experiencing social support drastically improves confidence, which in turn helps you cope with life’s more stressful or anxiety producing events. But finding friends is not enough. You need to make sure that those friends are very supportive and you know that they stand behind you. Do that, and you’ll find that life itself feels much less overwhelming, and that you have more hope for the future.

Developing a Path to Positivity

Positivity is just one step in your approach to dealing with the causes of anxiety, but it’s absolutely an important one. Work on changing your mindset to one of positivity and your anxiety symptoms will quickly start to decrease.

About the Author:
Ryan Rivera takes a holistic approach to handling anxiety and has a website describing anxiety and its symptoms and causes at www.calmclinic.com.