10 Tips: Positive Thinking Can Be Easy!

In her piece "10 Tips to Overcome Negative Thoughts," which ran on TinyBuddha, Michelle lays out everyday ways to handle the negative chatter in our heads. She opens with a line from the Dalai Lama: "See the positive side, the potential, and make an effort." Staying upbeat is something most of us wrestle with now and then. Our minds are wired to hold onto bad experiences more readily than good ones, and the same slant shows up in our thinking, where the gloomy thought usually arrives before the hopeful one gets a hearing.

Michelle puts it this way: negative thoughts sap your energy and pull you out of the present. Feed them and they grow sturdier. She likes the picture of a tiny ball rolling downhill, picking up size and speed as it goes, until one small dark thought has become a huge, hurtling mess. The reverse holds too. A single small positive thought can roll outward into something lovely.

Here are her ten suggestions.

1. Meditation and yoga. Both are calming practices that settle the mind. They train you toward mindfulness and the present moment, and they help clear out negative or racing thoughts.

2. Smile. The act of smiling nudges the brain toward believing we feel happy and at ease, so focusing on a smile tends to seed positive thoughts. Feeling negative while you smile is genuinely difficult, which pushes your thinking in a better direction.

3. Keep positive people around you. Upbeat company can kindle good feelings in us, while negative company tends to drag our mood and thoughts down with it. As Michelle writes, when you're caught in a downward spiral, reach out to people who can restore perspective and won't pile onto your negativity.

4. Build positive thoughts on purpose. Instead of "We're going to have a hard time adjusting to our living situation," she suggests choosing something like, "We'll face some challenges with our living situation, but we'll find solutions we're both happy with." Deliberately steering a thought toward optimism generates an energy that feeds on itself and produces more of the same. Change how you think and you change how you feel.

5. Create your life. We hold more control than we often admit. Slipping into the victim role makes it easy to stay sour. When we treat our circumstances as at least partly the product of our own decisions rather than forces beyond our reach, we remember we can plan, act, and shift the world around us.

6. Help someone. Giving of yourself tends to stir up good feelings and thoughts. Even at your lowest, helping another person can recharge your sense of worth and lift your self esteem, which in turn feeds positive thinking and action. Point the attention away from yourself and do something kind for someone else.

7. Nobody is perfect. It really is true. Expecting perfection from yourself or from others breeds negative thinking. Dwelling on your past and old mistakes crowds out the present and the good situations you could be building right now.

8. Sing. Michelle notes that singing can lift your mood and ease stress. It feels good, it steadies your breathing, and it moves your mind into a space where positive thoughts come more freely.

9. Name five things you're grateful for right now. Writing down what's good in your life helps keep gratitude alive, and it reminds you of the resources and gifts you already have on hand.

10. Read positive quotes. Michelle keeps Post-It notes with encouraging lines on her computer, her fridge, and her mirror as little prompts to stay positive. She closes with Lao Tzu: "Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny."