Positive Thinking
Positive Thinking Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else. —HENRY WARD BEECHER ARISTOTLE, perhaps the greatest philosopher of all time, studied the human condition more extensively than any other man in history. He concluded that the ultimate goal of human life and endeavour was happiness. He said that every act a person takes is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. You want to get a good job. Why? To earn more money. Why? To be able to provide for your family and enjoy a good lifestyle. Why? To achieve personal and financial security. Why? So you can be happy. The True Measure The true measure of how successful you are in life is how happy you are—most of the time. If you are wealthy, famous, or powerful but you are not happy, you have failed in your primary responsibility to yourself as a human being. Every human act is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. This does not mean that every act leads to happiness. Many people make a complete mess of their lives attempting to achieve happiness and often end up unhappier and more dissatisfied thanthey would have been if they had done nothing. The positive emotions of love, joy, peace, excitement, success, and the feeling that you are fulfilling your complete potential are what everyone aims at almost all the time. What Successful People Do Successful people practice positive thinking most of the time. As a result, they are happier, more genial, more popular and derive more real pleasure from life than the average person. The opposite of positive thinking is negative thinking. Negative thinkers tend to be hostile and suspicious. They are distrustful of others, and they expect negative things to happen to them most of the time. They have negative personalities and are highly critical of both themselves and the people around them. No matter what happens, they are seldom satisfied for any period of time. Life to them is a series of problems and difficulties over which they feel they have little control and about which there is nothing they can do. When I began asking the question, “Why are some people more successful and happy than others,” I started studying the contrast and difference between positive emotions and negative emotions. What I found changed my life forever. The Great Discovery What I discovered is that everyone wants to be happy, however he defines it. The main obstacle between each person and the happiness that he desires is negative emotions. Negative emotions lie at the root of virtually all problems in human life. If there was some way that you could eliminate negative emotions, you could wipe out most of the problems of mankind. There is a way to do this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you eliminate negative emotions, your mind automatically fills with positive emotions. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become a fully functioning person. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become capable of fulfilling your full potential. The main job of life, then, is to eliminate negative emotions. One Thought at a Time Your mind can only hold one thought at a time—positive or negative. But if you don’t deliberately hold a positive thought or emotion, a negative thought or emotion will tend to fill your mind, at least at the beginning. Negative thoughts tend to be easy and automatic, the default setting of the brain for most people. Thinking positively actually requires effort and determination until it becomes a habitual response to life and circumstances. Fortunately, you can become a purely positive thinker through learning and practice. The starting point of eliminating negative emotions is to understand where they come from in the first place. The good news is that no child is born with any fears or negative emotions. All fears and negative emotions must be taught to the growing child in his or her formative years. And because negative emotions are learned, they can be unlearned. Because negative emotions are habitual ways of responding and reacting to people and situations, they can be replaced with constructive habits of responding and reacting. This is very much a matter of choice. Abraham Lincoln said, “Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” The New born Child Children are born with two wonderful characteristics, fearlessness and spontaneity. The new born child is completely fearless. The growing child will touch, try, or taste anything, however dangerous. Parents have to spend the first few years of the child’s life preventing the child from killing himself or herself. The child is also born spontaneous. He or she laughs, cries, pees, poops, and expresses himself or herself without limit or constraint, twenty-four hours a day. A child has no concern about the reactions and responses of others. He or she simply does not care. Fears of Failure and Criticism At a young age, because of mistakes that parents make, children begin to develop the two main fears of adult life, the fear of failure and the fear of criticism. When parents, in an attempt to restrain or constrain the child’s behaviour, tell the child, “No! Stop that! Don’t do that! Get away from there!” and, even worse, physically punish the child for fearlessly exploring his or her world, the child soon develops the belief that he or she is small and incompetent. Soon the child refrains from reaching out and trying new things. He or she starts to say “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” when confronted with anything new or different. This feeling of “I can’t” soon turns into the fear of failure. As adults, it becomes a preoccupation with loss or poverty. Adults fear the loss of money and time, the loss of security and approval, the