My first memory is pretty bad. I was called by a substitute kindergarten teacher for talking during story time. You could argue that, in the grand scheme of things, getting into trouble at age 5 isn't that bad. But the story, and the way it's etched into my brain forever, is about a shared, brutal human reality: We cling to bad times — getting busted in kindergarten, botching a speech, breaking up with tomorrow. of the ball, feeling wordlessly judged by someone in richer clothes, feeling on a 3-2 count in the bottom of the ninth – with more force than we afford the good ones. Negative memories are monstrous beasts, gross, sticky octopuses that cling with fierce tenacity to the present. Science,Star Wars movies prove that negative powers aren't easily fought. Only the strongest and most disciplined minds can train themselves to destroy darkness with light.
Related: Why You Need Discipline To Achieve The Good Life I don't have such a mind. As such, SUCCESS challenged me to learn this discipline, to commit to a solid month of positive self-talk to see how it improved my mood, to answer the question: Can I strengthen my spirit? by simply focusing on good thoughts?I have no idea. But I know one thing starting out — during the Chicago Cubs' biting road to the World Series and the presidential election — if ever there was a time to test the power of positive thinking, this would be it. The idea of using affirmations has proven itself, a tangible merit. David Sarwer, a psychologist and director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, often begins treatments by asking patients to talk to themselves in a mirror, prompting them to use more generous and supportive terms about themselves before proceeding. start physical diets. Yet the first thing I learn about positive thinking is that the word positiveis a big lie. "Let's talk about what positive thinking really is," says Gregory Jantz, Ph.D., founder of The Center: A Place of Hope and author of 35 self-help books. “I can tell myself a lie. I'm in Seattle. I can say, "It's not raining" all I want, but that would be a denial of reality. Positive thinking is not about ignoring truths. “There is nothing wrong with having negative thoughts, but you need to be aware of them and take advantage of them to improve your behaviors.” It's not even about being happy. "If your goal is to have a consistent positive feeling, well, no one has that," laughs Courtney Johnson, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. “Our culture says we should be happy all the time, but that is not how we are wired. Negative emotions have meaning. They tell us important things. Sometimes things are really crummy. It's okay to have negative thoughts, but you need to be aware of them and take advantage of them to improve your behaviors. But there's good news: Johnson says it's a skill you can develop. It's one of those things that sounds easy in theory but is probably extremely difficult in practice, so I ask Jantz what step 1 might be. “Gratitude,” says Jantz. “If you start with gratitude, you start with a positive framework.” Gratitude breeds humility, which breeds sensitivity to others, which breeds learning to respond to negative stimuli in positive and productive ways.
Related: TED Talks: 'Do you want to be happy? Be grateful "If a friend doesn't return your call, you can respond in two ways," Johnson says. “You can say to yourself, Maybe they forgot or maybe they were busy and not having a strong emotional reaction. Or you can think, Oh no, they must not like me and the next time you see them, you don't talk to them. Jantz also has an example. “If someone cuts off traffic to you,” he says, “you can either respond angrily or say , Wow, this guy might be having a really rough day.You don't personalize things. If I live in a positive setting, I don't personalize. “I never once got cut off in traffic and never thought about how the other driver's day was going. But science is science, so I decide to start each morning with gratitude. I wake up at 6 a.m. and immediately feel grateful for the tiny things: the roof, my job, the unusually hot weather, the way my youngest son stayed in bed all night, to remember to schedule the coffee maker. “In our nerdy clinical world, we call it an inventory,” Johnson says. "It's about recalibrating what we pay attention to." Positive thinking is linked to increased lifespan, lower rates of depression, to a stronger immune system, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and to being invited to more barbecues. But these benefits come with a catch: you have toall the time . It's not like exercising three times a week or deciding against a sporadic brownie. Positive thinking involves a never-ending process of catching negative thoughts, filing them in a mental trash compactor, and replacing them with healthier ones. “Someone who suffers from chronic pain can wake up every day feeling bad and say: I'm in pain; it's my life, and it sucks.But these are thoughts,” Johnson says. “This pain doesn't mean you can't call your grandchild. The ability to think flexibly is what is helpful. Jantz says the approach is best done in groups. So I tell my wife, kids, and a handful of associates my plan to be a bright, happy person for a month. They give me a lot of funny looks, which I interpret with indulgence. This leads to many mental adjustments on the fly. For example, when my wife texts me asking how our boys behaved in the morning, I mean, "Ugh, they were feisty and took 20 minutes to change and brush their teeth and cried when I took away their cereals.” But I change your tone. I'm supposed to think positively, so I respond: “They were brimming with youthful energy and joy.” I continue. Do you deal with the home insurance people? This isn't some menu-deafening, automated hellscape; it reinforces the safety net that surrounds my family. The squeaking and squeaking sound of the trash can isn't a future $400 plumber's bill; it's probably something I could fix myself. My youngest son's propensity to spill chocolate milk on the table is not a twice-weekly dairy nightmare, but a lesson in taking responsibility for your own actions. My self-employment tax bills are not a monthly boost to the pancreas region but a reminder that we all need to do our part to keep our country running as one cooperative unit (dear Pete, this is hard ). I need help, so I go to the first place I usually turn: my phone. Launched four years ago, Happify is part of a predictably growing wave of apps that uses “happiness science research” to design activities, called interventions, designed to enhance your mindfulness. “We want people to insert these interventions and messages into their daily lives,” says co-founder and president Ofer Leidner. It works: Happify has over 3 million users who follow 1,800 specific leads covering everything from work stress to relationship stress to dealing with negative thoughts, which Leidner says is the most popular. Leidner reports that 86% of Happify users are happier within two months. I install Happify and similar apps like Headspace, ThinkUp, and Unique Daily Affirmations to push myself further. Most are very sensitive to the social component. Post photos here, share your score with your friends there. I also schedule my own reminders. For three weeks, I set my phone to ping me every few hours and remind myself to stop what I'm doing and be grateful for something, usually what was in front of me: a coffee,
Related:How to incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine “If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck. Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. But I worry that my self-imposed pressure to be happy is defeating its purpose – is my mood artificial? And I'm afraid 30 days is too short to effect meaningful change. But everyone I talk to says the time is well past for habit formation. “You can help yourself improve in five minutes if you do gratitude exercises every day,” Johnson says. Something else happened too. Exhausted from all this sunny business of constantly reminding myself to be happy, I decided to go for a run. I went out, cleared my head, listened to some really loud music, felt the sun on my face, and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not I felt the sun on my face and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not I felt the sun on my face and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is notfuturebliss, a glittering paradise or an unachieved goal/job/love on the road. It's also not the kind of synthetically forced happiness you often find in Facebook feeds. We shouldn't even call it happiness; it's better to stick with the idea that your current state has value, that this life is not a ladder but a (sometimes nauseating) roller coaster, that the only thing you can count on is change and that you can influence your own emotions. “When you sow the seeds of gratitude,” says Jantz, “you become focused on others, less absorbed in your own problems, and more optimistic.” A positive attitude doesn't mean happy stapling to your face. It means being okay with whatever is out there anyway.
Related: Why You Need Discipline To Achieve The Good Life I don't have such a mind. As such, SUCCESS challenged me to learn this discipline, to commit to a solid month of positive self-talk to see how it improved my mood, to answer the question: Can I strengthen my spirit? by simply focusing on good thoughts?I have no idea. But I know one thing starting out — during the Chicago Cubs' biting road to the World Series and the presidential election — if ever there was a time to test the power of positive thinking, this would be it. The idea of using affirmations has proven itself, a tangible merit. David Sarwer, a psychologist and director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, often begins treatments by asking patients to talk to themselves in a mirror, prompting them to use more generous and supportive terms about themselves before proceeding. start physical diets. Yet the first thing I learn about positive thinking is that the word positiveis a big lie. "Let's talk about what positive thinking really is," says Gregory Jantz, Ph.D., founder of The Center: A Place of Hope and author of 35 self-help books. “I can tell myself a lie. I'm in Seattle. I can say, "It's not raining" all I want, but that would be a denial of reality. Positive thinking is not about ignoring truths. “There is nothing wrong with having negative thoughts, but you need to be aware of them and take advantage of them to improve your behaviors.” It's not even about being happy. "If your goal is to have a consistent positive feeling, well, no one has that," laughs Courtney Johnson, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. “Our culture says we should be happy all the time, but that is not how we are wired. Negative emotions have meaning. They tell us important things. Sometimes things are really crummy. It's okay to have negative thoughts, but you need to be aware of them and take advantage of them to improve your behaviors. But there's good news: Johnson says it's a skill you can develop. It's one of those things that sounds easy in theory but is probably extremely difficult in practice, so I ask Jantz what step 1 might be. “Gratitude,” says Jantz. “If you start with gratitude, you start with a positive framework.” Gratitude breeds humility, which breeds sensitivity to others, which breeds learning to respond to negative stimuli in positive and productive ways.
Related: TED Talks: 'Do you want to be happy? Be grateful "If a friend doesn't return your call, you can respond in two ways," Johnson says. “You can say to yourself, Maybe they forgot or maybe they were busy and not having a strong emotional reaction. Or you can think, Oh no, they must not like me and the next time you see them, you don't talk to them. Jantz also has an example. “If someone cuts off traffic to you,” he says, “you can either respond angrily or say , Wow, this guy might be having a really rough day.You don't personalize things. If I live in a positive setting, I don't personalize. “I never once got cut off in traffic and never thought about how the other driver's day was going. But science is science, so I decide to start each morning with gratitude. I wake up at 6 a.m. and immediately feel grateful for the tiny things: the roof, my job, the unusually hot weather, the way my youngest son stayed in bed all night, to remember to schedule the coffee maker. “In our nerdy clinical world, we call it an inventory,” Johnson says. "It's about recalibrating what we pay attention to." Positive thinking is linked to increased lifespan, lower rates of depression, to a stronger immune system, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and to being invited to more barbecues. But these benefits come with a catch: you have toall the time . It's not like exercising three times a week or deciding against a sporadic brownie. Positive thinking involves a never-ending process of catching negative thoughts, filing them in a mental trash compactor, and replacing them with healthier ones. “Someone who suffers from chronic pain can wake up every day feeling bad and say: I'm in pain; it's my life, and it sucks.But these are thoughts,” Johnson says. “This pain doesn't mean you can't call your grandchild. The ability to think flexibly is what is helpful. Jantz says the approach is best done in groups. So I tell my wife, kids, and a handful of associates my plan to be a bright, happy person for a month. They give me a lot of funny looks, which I interpret with indulgence. This leads to many mental adjustments on the fly. For example, when my wife texts me asking how our boys behaved in the morning, I mean, "Ugh, they were feisty and took 20 minutes to change and brush their teeth and cried when I took away their cereals.” But I change your tone. I'm supposed to think positively, so I respond: “They were brimming with youthful energy and joy.” I continue. Do you deal with the home insurance people? This isn't some menu-deafening, automated hellscape; it reinforces the safety net that surrounds my family. The squeaking and squeaking sound of the trash can isn't a future $400 plumber's bill; it's probably something I could fix myself. My youngest son's propensity to spill chocolate milk on the table is not a twice-weekly dairy nightmare, but a lesson in taking responsibility for your own actions. My self-employment tax bills are not a monthly boost to the pancreas region but a reminder that we all need to do our part to keep our country running as one cooperative unit (dear Pete, this is hard ). I need help, so I go to the first place I usually turn: my phone. Launched four years ago, Happify is part of a predictably growing wave of apps that uses “happiness science research” to design activities, called interventions, designed to enhance your mindfulness. “We want people to insert these interventions and messages into their daily lives,” says co-founder and president Ofer Leidner. It works: Happify has over 3 million users who follow 1,800 specific leads covering everything from work stress to relationship stress to dealing with negative thoughts, which Leidner says is the most popular. Leidner reports that 86% of Happify users are happier within two months. I install Happify and similar apps like Headspace, ThinkUp, and Unique Daily Affirmations to push myself further. Most are very sensitive to the social component. Post photos here, share your score with your friends there. I also schedule my own reminders. For three weeks, I set my phone to ping me every few hours and remind myself to stop what I'm doing and be grateful for something, usually what was in front of me: a coffee,
Related:How to incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine “If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck. Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. But I worry that my self-imposed pressure to be happy is defeating its purpose – is my mood artificial? And I'm afraid 30 days is too short to effect meaningful change. But everyone I talk to says the time is well past for habit formation. “You can help yourself improve in five minutes if you do gratitude exercises every day,” Johnson says. Something else happened too. Exhausted from all this sunny business of constantly reminding myself to be happy, I decided to go for a run. I went out, cleared my head, listened to some really loud music, felt the sun on my face, and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not I felt the sun on my face and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not I felt the sun on my face and came back rested. Somehow, I did something that made me happy, after being tired of everything that told me to be happy. " Its good! Johnson laughs, when I tell him the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is not “Reinforcement is reinforcement.” Because, again, positivity is a big lie. "If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck," Johnson says. “Nobody understood that. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won't work. The idea, after all, is notfuturebliss, a glittering paradise or an unachieved goal/job/love on the road. It's also not the kind of synthetically forced happiness you often find in Facebook feeds. We shouldn't even call it happiness; it's better to stick with the idea that your current state has value, that this life is not a ladder but a (sometimes nauseating) roller coaster, that the only thing you can count on is change and that you can influence your own emotions. “When you sow the seeds of gratitude,” says Jantz, “you become focused on others, less absorbed in your own problems, and more optimistic.” A positive attitude doesn't mean happy stapling to your face. It means being okay with whatever is out there anyway.