“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey
Norman Vincent Peale published the book in 1952 called ‘The Power Of Positive Thinking’. And then as time went on, this idea was turned into a whole entire industry. Each aspect of the “positive thinking” process picked apart and made into books, DVD’s, and seminars.
The premiss technique used is affirmations. Affirmations are a way to constantly repeat a word or phrase that has three components:
- Intention behind word or phrase
- Emotional attachment word or phrase
- Visualization when mentally repeated
The power of positive focus has been proven to enhance your emotional state, bodily functions, and actions.
Contributor Kendra Cherry of About.com goes into what positive thinking is:
“I always hear people talk about the benefits of positive thinking. What exactly is positive thinking and how can it be used to improve health and wellness?”
Researcher and positive psychologist Martin Seligman says, often frame positive thinking in terms of explanatory style. Your explanatory style is how you explain why events happened. People with an optimistic explanatory style tend to give themselves credit when good things happen, but typically blame outside forces for bad outcomes. They also tend to see negative events as temporary and atypical.
According to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking is linked to a wide range of health benefits including:
- Longer life span
- Less stress
- Lower rates of depression
- Increased resistance to the common cold
- Better stress management and coping skills
- Lower risk of cardiovascular disease-related death
- Increased physical well-being
- Better psychological health
One study of 1,558 older adults found that positive thinking could also reduce frailty during old age.
Therefore, it is safe to say that by concentrating on a positive outlook, our life will improve. We can see many additional benefits as time goes on. The key here consistency. Consistently look at what you are thinking and make sure you are concentrating your efforts on a positive outlook — positive things will, then, start happening.
Yes, positive thinking helps, but only to a certain extent where improved humanhood might be concerned. It does not partake the nature of permanent and true spiritual healing wherein consciousness, itself, is transformed leading to transcendence over the human condition.
In the realm of duality, the two polarities or opposites are but two sides of a single coin, that flips now and then under the human condition. What’s positive today will easily turn negative in the future when the right trigger comes along. The reason for this lies in the fact that positive (or negative) thinking is only a CONDITIONING or a RE-conditioning of the mind. The human mind continues to be a conditioned mind.
On the other hand, spiritual healing in mystical practice aims to DE-condition the mind, that is, to eliminate the conditioning (the belief in duality) that is programmed into the human mind. This is the heart of Buddhist and other mystical teachings and the key to illumined living.
It is interesting to note that, according to neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her book “My Stroke of Insight,” the usually dominant left hemisphere of the brain (intellect-reasoning functionality) has a predisposition toward pessimism, as opposed to the more wholistic right hemisphere (intuitive-holistic functionality) which tends toward optimism. Neuroscience tells us that during meditation the right temporal lobe of the brain becomes highly active. Perhaps this is a clue that optimism is a function of the intuitive mind (right brain) arising from its inherently holistic nature (ergo, the need for meditation practice), and not the result of selecting the positive over the negative in a given situation based on a judgment, assessment or referenced opinion rendered by the intellect mind.
On a personal note, before coming to the mystical path I spent years with positive thinking as a self-help tool with good results but with truly much effort and difficulty, as well, to maintain a positive outlook. Often times, when the positive outlook crashed due to the onslaught of a contrary negative experience, it became a really hard blow to me as the pendulum of duality swung the other way. It was only when I took up contemplation and meditation as a psycho-spiritual DE-conditioning practice and when I began to understand the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the mind-body continuum, that I experienced the ease, naturalness and authenticity of spiritual transformation — transformation rooted in nondualist oneness, not in the mental belief in duality.
Excellent post! I am finishing one on the same topic.