How to be a Positive Thinker

a business woman conversing with co-workers
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Whether you believe in the Law of Attraction, The Secret, the power of positive thinking, or you think positive thinking is a bunch of new age bologna, few can argue with the fact that people simply are happier and feel more optimistic when they have positive thoughts.

For those in sales, positive thinking can lead to more creative thinking which can lead to more closed sales. Knowing how to think positively is as important as wanting to. Here are a few steps to how to be a positive thinker from the business world.

  • Difficulty: Average
  • Time Required: A second to start, a lifetime to master

Here's How

  1. Determine Your Desired Outcome: The problem with many people is that they don't know what they want out of life or a particular situation. Take a moment a decide what it is that you want out of a life event. Clear intentions yield clear results while fuzzy desires yield fuzzy results.
  2. Make A List of Things You Are Grateful For: Tony Robbins, well-known life coach, and motivational speaker says that no matter how much money you may have in your accounts if you are not grateful, you are poor. Gratitude is an amazing emotion in that it is almost impossible to feel negative thoughts when you are focusing on things you are grateful for.
    1. If you make a list of 10 things that you are grateful for every day, you will put yourself in a very positive mindset that will last your entire day.
  3. Learn to Count to 5: Most of us spend our lives reacting to events. How we react is usually governed by how we either learned to react or have reacted to similar events in our past. But simply reacting does not allow any room for creative and targeted thinking,
    1. Next time you find yourself in a situation that presents a challenge to your decision to be more positive, hold your reaction and count to 5. This brief break will give you the opportunity to decide how you want to respond, instead of simply reacting.
  4. Cut Back on the Nightly News: Whichever nightly news program you prefer, you probably are aware of how much negative news is reported. Expose yourself to an abundance of negativity and, like it or not, you will begin to be more negative.
    1. Negativity is like a drug. The more you expose yourself to negativity and negative people, the more you adopt negativity into your life.
    2. Instead, try to surround yourself with positive people and positive exposures. If you absolutely must know what's going on in the world, read the headlines on an Internet news stream and only read those stories that affect your world.
  5. Take Care of Yourself: The benefits of exercise, a healthy diet and getting enough sleep have been well documented. But just knowing about all the benefits does nothing for you unless you take action.
    1. Daily action!
    2. Someone who can exercise but who chooses not to is no better off than someone who cannot exercise. Daily exercise, when coupled with a healthy diet and enough rest can do wonders for your outlook. When you feel good, it takes effort to make yourself feel bad.
  6. Track Your Progress: As with any goal, the person who you become as you progress towards your goal is more important than accomplishing the goal itself. As you move towards being a positive thinker, expect that you will have as many "negative thinking" days as you do "positive, focused" days. But unless you keep track of your progress, you may not even realize that the numbers of days are shifting more towards the positive and away from the negative.

What You Need

  • A list of your goals
  • A journal
  • A commitment to living a more positive-thought based life