Positive Thinking: Why It Doesn't Work For Everyone - And How It Can Work For You

By Bob Lancer

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Everyone has heard about the power of positive thinking. Filling your mind with inspiring thoughts and exposing yourself to inspirational messages are great keys to personal development and success. And yet, only the very few top performers in any field really apply this age-old wisdom for its full benefit. The reason may lie in the fact that positive thinking requires more self-discipline than most people realize or are willing to apply. The purpose of this success article is to help you understand the self-discipline it demands and to motivate you to apply it for the positive results you desire.

Positive thinking means, basically, thinking that motivates you and that directs your life where you want it to go. When you occupy your mind with inspirational thoughts by, say, reading motivational articles (like this one), you fuel your motivation to work to your fullest capacity to achieve what you desire. When you add to this clear, specific thinking about your goals, the form or content of your positive thinking provides you with an aim for your activities and shapes your future.

Thinking of yourself as healthy and fit, in a prosperous condition, in a loving relationship, with great career success represents examples of positive thinking. The challenge, though, all too rarely addressed in the plethora of inspirational messages and self-help advice that abound in self-help books, recordings, and videos, as well as in inspirational poetry, is that harnessing the full power of thinking positively demands a special effort to become conscious of our thinking.

You may deliberately practice positive thinking for a while, but then all too easily slip into negative thinking without realizing it. Negative thinking involves worrying about what you do not want to happen. Negative thinking has as much power to de-motivate you and to form conditions that you do not want, as positive thinking empowers you to accomplish your goals.

Positive thinking deliberately practiced from time to time is not in and of itself enough to make your life a triumph. It's great to read inspirational poems like Rudyard Kipling's classic If, but to be as successful as you can be, you need to apply the self-discipline necessary to observe your thinking throughout the day. As you become more aware you can recognize and reject the negative thoughts that you do not want to come true.

We also need to discipline our minds to avoid wasting precious attention, time and energy on thinking that is simply not useful, not related to our aims and purposes. Allowing the mind to dwell on trivial matters wastes its creative power.

It is also necessary to practice not thinking. In the here and now is where your opportunities show up. If your attention is too absorbed in thought, you will miss the opportunity that your positive thinking has wrought!

One simple way to harness the power of positive thinking involves building a collection of your favorite positive quotes. You can find an infinite number of these readily available on the Internet. Create a journal of them, or write them on index cards that you can easily carry around with you. When you have a moment, or catch yourself dwelling on a negative thought, refocus your mind into positive thinking by reading one or more of your positive quotes.

Reminding yourself of where you want to go in life reinforces your life's direction. Thinking of your goals is a self-fulfilling prophecy, particularly when you take action to move in their direction and practice the mental awareness needed to weed out negative and pointless thinking. One quite useful form of positive thinking is to simply think about being positive!