What is a Positive Attitude?
Positive attitude is the latent power you have within you to bring about what you want. It is your own personal “happy face” designed just for you.
A positive attitude is your ally; it is on your side no matter what. That’s the reason you decide to look for it and adopt it. Think of that happy face as an animated character that jumps into your arms and looks admiringly up at you, longing to bring you a brighter outlook. That happy face wants to make you happy, not just lift you up.
The beneficial side of any unhappy circumstance is there, you only have to find it, extract it, and put it to work for you. You don’t have to remain stuck in a negative reaction to any situation. You have the power to change it.
Positive Attitude Leads to Love
Let’s take a look at how one 26-year-old young man discovered “positive attitude” before he even knew what to call it. Jeff had just begun dating an elegant woman named Jeanne, but to his heartbreak, he soon learned she still had feelings for another man in her past. “Jeanne was a beautifully sensitive woman, very feminine,” Jeff said. “I longed for a relationship with her. But when I realized she wasn’t over her past love, my feelings were hurt, my ego was deflated, you name it: I was in the pits. If I had kept dwelling on Jeanne’s past love and our lack of a future together, I would probably have manifested an empty life for myself,” Jeff reasoned. “So, almost as an experiment, I began to think about Jeanne and me as a couple, a team. I visualized her going forward with me, and giving up her unhappy past.
“I did this out of desperation; I wasn’t particularly focusing on trying to be positive, but that’s the way it came out. I knew Jeanne and I had a shot at something good, and it was worth a little effort.”
Jeff discovered by accident what positive-attitude lectures have been trying to teach us for decades. Jeff drew on that one spark of mutual confidence hidden within a potentially static situation. He got into the spirit of thinking bigger; he did not accept the miserable barrier that was looming between him and Jeanne.
“I wanted her to see me in the present moment,” Jeff said. “I drew my confidence from a character in American Graffiti. This guy in the film spots a pretty girl and wants to go out with her, but she’s already dating someone far away at another high school. So he bravely smiles and says to her, ‘Hey, if you ever get tired of going steady with a guy who’s not around, I’m up for grabs.’
“That scene fit me and Jeanne, in a way. I kept reminding Jeanne that I was there in the flesh, the other guy wasn’t calling or coming around anymore. Little by little, I distracted Jeanne with my attention to her. I helped her give up her sadness over the man who was gone.”
Jeff became excited when he made a further discovery, and laughed, “But you know, I think I was really teaching myself how to have a positive attitude just as much as I was teaching Jeanne. It was worth the investment, I figured. If all else failed, at least I would learn how to be bolder and take positive steps toward a goal I wanted.
“As it turned out, Jeanne responded in my favor and our prospects for a future together are looking good. But if Jeanne had chosen to keep mourning her lost love, I think I would have reached a point of saying, ‘well, if she can’t move on, maybe I better move away from her’.” As we’ve discovered through Jeff’s experience, positive attitude is an opportunity to react favorably. It literally is a choice we decide to make.
Look up at the Sky
We can look down at the ground and become deflated over the events in our lives, or we can look up at the vast sky and think, “There are as many solutions and possibilities as there are stars in the universe.”
What Positive is Not
Positive attitude is not a forced buoyancy. It doesn’t mean you have to go around feeling like Little Miss Mary Sunshine or Jack Be Nimble. You don’t have to be elated all the time to be positive. You don’t have to do back flips.
Take it from Gloria who unearthed a positive attitude in the midst of her “daily blahs.” As Gloria tells it, “I go around in a depressing mood half the time, for no particular reason. Maybe I don’t feel well, or I’m just generally bored.
“One day I put on a positive-attitude tape, with absolutely no intention of carefully listening to it; I just wanted the background noise while I was cleaning up. The tape told me about new ways to look at old situations, and it must have sunk in. I talked myself out of feeling bored. I felt an urge to put on a “new face” and go out around people, just mingle. So, I called a girlfriend of mine and we went to church later that morning. Lo and behold, a young, single, substitute minister named Chris was there and he and I clicked; maybe because I had forgotten to carry my ‘daily blahs’ with me. Chris and I are becoming friends and who knows what may happen. He even likes it when I’m a little melancholy; it gives him a chance to joke with me.”
Positive attitude is not hoping-against-hope. But being positive does mean that you can take your “divine discontentment” and use it as a springboard to a better lifestyle that does bring you contentment.
Hoping and wishing won’t get you there, though. But being certain within yourself that you can be a loving and happy person is taking a positive action. Changing your attitude is action; hoping is merely daydreaming. You “hope” he or she will call, you “hope” he or she will ask you out.
What can you do though to move the process along? Well, you can put him or her on the back burner and go out with someone else; let your answer machine do the waiting for you. That is positive attitude, taking action and not merely hoping. Looking to see the built-in solution in any problem constitutes a positive action, one that causes you to think and act creatively. And creative thinking will yield positive results and that will give you confidence. “Hoping” will only bring you a passive feeling of helplessness unless you take affirmative action in your mind.
Real-Life Revelation: How to Create a Positive Attitude
“Ya gotta put your behind in the past.” This hilarious wisecrack, from a bumbling animated character in the Disney film “The Lion King” is as true as it is funny. Whether you put your past behind you, or put your behind in the past, the message is the same: resolve it, turn your back on it, and live in the confidence of a new day.
Mowing down those overgrown mind weeds of past relationship “failures” clears the field for a new and better crop of romantic notions. You haven’t forgotten how to be romantic just because you’ve been a little beaten down in the dating game or in a stale partnership. By resolving to start fresh daily, you can grow only positive thoughts; that is, thoughts that make you feel good about yourself in a relationship regardless of the past. What you did or did not do in past involvements cannot be changed. What can be changed is the attitude you carry with you in your search for everlasting love. You can choose to view the past differently for starters. Look back and mentally change the outcome of an involvement that went wrong.
That’s what Mark did. “I carried around a lot of hurt and guilt over my failed marriage,” Mark said. “But I got tired of thinking myself a failure, just because I was young and ignorant when I married. So I reran the marriage in my mind. I imagined how I would have done things differently had I, and my wife, been more mature. Once I did this, I felt okay and I thought, ‘Gee, I can have a good relationship; it’s not so terrifying’.”
A friend of mine, Bob, changed his self-perception when he was 30 and had gained much wisdom about himself in relation to other people. He wanted to let go of the selfish boy he had been in the past, and really learn to relate one-on-one.
“I wrote out a whole soliloquy about the new person I was becoming,” Bob said. “And I ended it by having my ‘old self’ say to my ‘new self,’ ‘Old Bob has moved and he didn’t leave a forwarding address; New Bob, you can’t go back to him’.”
Positive Affirmation
Positive attitude is about living for today and creating a new “head set” for a more fulfilling future. One of my favorite affirmations is so simple because it doesn’t antagonize the mind.
Write down what you want to occur in your life, using this thought: “It’s just possible that _________ can happen.” Fill in that blank and see how easy it is.
“It’s just possible that I can be happy and grow in a relationship; that can happen.”
“It’s just possible that everlasting love can happen to me.”
“It’s just possible that true love can happen.”
This affirmation is exciting to me because it focuses on possibilities, not limitations. And it is wide open; you can fill in that blank with as many things as you desire your mind to accept. No matter what restrictions you imposed or encountered in the past, this affirmation can help you move past them and design a new relationship- life.
Creating a positive attitude in yourself is just one side of the coin though. The other side is creating a positive attitude in the people you encounter. No, you cannot change other people. But you can change the way you view them, and they will most likely respond to your positive notions. Visualize the good in other people, no matter how offensive they may appear to you. No, you don’t have to put up with offensive behavior; that’s not what we are talking about here. You are using your visualization power for them, just as you use it for yourself.
Picture, imagine, and absorb yourself in how you want that person to be in your presence. Imagine a favorable outcome when talking with that person. Extract that person’s positive qualities and enhance them in your mind. If nothing else, you will have opened a door for dialogue. And who knows, that “negative” person may just become very positive by being around you.
How to Maintain a Positive Attitude
Practice not only makes perfect, it perfects what it makes.
Try a little experiment, just to keep you on the positive track. For five minutes each day, close the mental doors on every negative thought that comes into your mind. After a month, you will have conditioned yourself to automatically shut out thoughts that tear you down.
For instance, if you meet someone you would like to know better and your mind says “you’ll never have a chance,” stop the thought right there. Replace it with “I am worthy to know that person better; I have the confidence to socialize with that person.”
Changing your attitude, on an ongoing basis, is a powerful proposition. Be prepared for the deluge of hot dates, good friends, and everlasting relationships that can come into your life if you build up positive thoughts, and believe them!
One man I know, Charles, found the love of his life, Sara, by simply saying every day: “I want a woman who will try to understand me and who will allow me to understand her.” This is what he wanted, this is what he believed, and this is what he found. “Not only do Sara and I understand each other more and more deeply as we interact, but we carry what we’ve learned together into our business lives. We attempt to understand and accept the many kinds of people who frequent the small market we own and manage,” Charles said. “I’d say we have a large number of repeat customers because we take a few moments just to walk-in-their-moccasins.”
Positive Affirmations for Self-Love
Another exercise in positive attitude is to look in the mirror and tell yourself what you want to hear. This is especially powerful if you live alone and don’t get enough compliments from other people. Give those compliments to yourself. That person in the mirror is the most important person you will ever know; his or her opinion is really all that matters in the long run.
Remember, it is always futile to try to control another person. You wind up either chasing rainbows or chewing up your fingernails in chronic anxiety. The only thing you can ever control for certain is your reaction to any situation.
For instance, if a lover dumps you for someone else, don’t dwell on it ad-nauseam. Let someone else put up with your erstwhile lover, and think of how lucky you are to be free to find someone better.
Successful thought patterns, like everything in life that endures, are built up slowly, one by one. Take control over your “failure” thoughts. Visualize what you want until you believe in it, and go for it! After all, it is successful thoughts that motivate us; depressing thoughts stop us in our tracks.
Each moment is precious to you in your search for everlasting love. You can’t afford the luxury of a depressed mind if you want a fulfilling partnership.
Say to yourself each evening: “What did I do with my beautiful day today that will guide me closer to the love I want.” You’ll be surprised how creative your mind can become in searching out that right partner.
