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Personal Development comes about when you make a personal choice to be more self-aware and deliberately work on different things to help yourself to grow into someone better than you currently are. It can take place in numerous areas of your life. Whether it be a skill, mental/physical health, psychological as in perhaps an attitude, or thought process. Perhaps it’s working on a habit or a better routine. As I said it can be a lot of different things, depending on what you choose. And that is the big part – choose! As in you personally decide for yourself that this is what I would like to change, improve, or learn. The second big part about it is that it generally takes time, and sometimes becomes a lifelong endeavor.

The first thing you should work on is positive thinking. It’s really more of a positive attitude you want but to get it you practice paying attention to how you think. Once you are aware you can then start working on thinking in a more positive way. Over time and practice, it becomes a habitual way to think. And that’s when it turns from conscious action into more of a general mental attitude.

Reasons Why you Should Practice the Skill of Positive Thinking

1) Positive Thinking Creates Self-confidence

It starts as thinking positive and over time you end up with a positive attitude. Other people start seeing you as a positive person. So now people in general like you more, and more people become attracted to you because you have such a great positive attitude toward things. Which then gives you natural self-confidence.

2) You grow Smarter with Positive Thinking

When you start observing your own thinking process, you start catching yourself with negative thoughts. Now you can learn to cut them off. Next, you start learning how to reverse it and in time you start thinking positively. With continuous practice, you build the ability to think of solutions before thinking of problems. Now you are becoming smarter due to how it seems natural to figure out a way to fix a problem, instead of only thinking of the problem.

3) Positive Thinking Increases your Success

Because you worked on your personal development of positive thinking. You learned how to think of a solution to the problem without thinking it won’t work. Instead, you see it from a different angle or viewpoint and come up with ideas to try. People become impressed with how you solve things. To you, it’s only normal to come up with solutions so you can keep going forward. That makes you more successful.

Why Positive Thinking can be Hard for Some

Positive thinking in principle sounds easy enough but really it`s a life challenge. True, to some people it comes more naturally. However, not for everyone. There are various reasons why it can be difficult to think more positively. Here are a few but not limited to:

Fear: For some people, they are afraid of what others are going to say or think. Afraid that their friends and family will notice and make fun of them. More so for the individual that knows they have anger issues or are known for snapping at people. What these people fail to realize is that if they tell friends and family that they are attempting to work on it and try to be more positive friends and family tends to be supportive and sometimes even proud of them for working on it because now they know you are aware of the problem.

Media: For some people, they have been kind of programmed from an early age through the media. Bad news sells. So they see it on tv and read it in newspapers and magazines. They hear it on the radio and on social media on the internet. Negativity, for the most part, is normalized. However, it does not mean you can’t change it for yourself. You can choose how to think.

Failure: Because you tried something in your life, and it didn’t work out, is no reason not to try again. A lot of people inwardly don’t like attempting anything considered new or risky because they failed at something in the past. Sometimes in relationships or starting a business. It doesn’t really matter what it was. The point is they mentally created this idea of ‘I might try once but if it doesn’t work then it’s not for me.’ The thing is personal development can take repeated attempts. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing but more of a progression of successes doing a little better with each attempt.

So if you can see your way past the conditioning the world has imposed on you from your past then you are well on your way to changing how you think. When you learn the ability to change the way you think, you then have the power and ability to change just about anything in your life. Such as how you act, what you do, and how you do it.

How to Cultivate Positive Thinking

So if you’re still with me, I will guess you’d like to make a conscious choice to work on the concept. Alright, so how do we go about it? Well, I believe using a slower method of self-observation is best for the long run. Another thing is going to depend on each individual and his or her current way of thinking as to what stage they’re at. So the best I can do is try to give you a basic pattern. You will most likely have to tweak it to your personal needs. If you are doing that then you are well on your way to personal development. Because making personal choices is what it is all about.

First, you want to observe. If you have trouble observing your own thinking, then practice first watching and observing others. Whether you’re observing others or yourself, you’re not to judge. Merely accept that you, or others, feel the way you feel. There is nothing wrong with accepting your feelings. It’s more about how you think that is important here. A lot of times during the observation stage, feelings will vanish on their own.

So once you’re able to observe your own thoughts, you can then focus on stopping the negative thinking pattern. At first, you may not catch your thinking but you might catch yourself reacting to something. You can tell yourself you’re going to stop, walk away, or go sit down. Again all I can do is give a guideline because everyone is different.

Now maybe you used to react to situations and over time you are able to notice when you’re heading mentally in a bad direction. Perhaps now you’re starting to even see yourself thinking negatively, so you are starting to stop the process and do something to relax your mind. You go get a cup of tea, put some music on, or go for a walk. Whatever you choose is a sign that you’re now taking control of your own thoughts.

The next step is to start mentally asking yourself, how can I or what can I do to perhaps prevent this thought process. Or what can I learn from this? This is the point where with continuous observation and practice you slowly slide into thinking of positive solutions instead of reacting and giving up or getting frustrated.

The next thing you know, at the first hint of a possible situation, your mind is already coming up with ideas of how to get past it, around it, back up, or go a different way. You’re using positive thinking about whatever the situation is.

Tidbits of Information to Keep in Mind

Now, this does not mean you will never run into really big problems in life. Sometimes a situation can knock you for a loop. What it does mean is the recovery time from the real big problems becomes a little shorter. Once you have time to deal with your emotions your ability to think positively will resurface when the timing is right. Also if you work on reducing or eliminating toxic negative people that will help you to develop the skill faster.

One last thing to keep in mind. Remember the past, don’t dwell on it. Learn from it if you can, but definitely let it go. As often as possible focus on the moment. Be in the now, the present, while at the same time have a general direction you want to go towards your future. The clearer your direction, the better your odds of making it.

A couple of quick questions:

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Thanks for stopping by and enjoy life to the best of your ability.

Razz