Our outlook on life determines everything. If we have a positive mental attitude, it will impact how we respond to our circumstances. Your attitude affects your thoughts, emotions and all your actions. This, in turn, will determine the results you experience.
No person has a positive mental attitude all the time. There are times when you feel positive and enthusiastic and where everything seems possible. Other days perhaps not so much.
It’s easy to become cynical when you have had difficulties in your life. But this type of negative mental attitude could mean that achieving your goals will be difficult unless you change your outlook.
Control your thoughts
The only true control you have in your life is your ability to control your thoughts and choose how you react to them. While your inner critic may be telling you many untruths, you are the only person who can change that narrative.
Resentment and complaints can destroy all your chances of becoming truly happy. And these feelings can even repel opportunities to achieve your goals in life.
We are all human, and we all have a mixture of positive and negative, light and dark, resentment and appreciation. Yet, what we allow to dominate in the long term will determine how our life turns out.
Don’t postpone happiness
Most people believe that happiness is something we gain after achieving something. However, research has found that happiness is not a result of something. Rather it is a cause that we can make happen.
Cause and effect rules are common in science, and the same is true for our mental attitude. Everything that happens has been caused by something. In human beings, the effects of our every thought, word and deed cause how we feel.
Thus, if you believe you can only be happy when something wonderful happens to you, then you are mistaken. You are actually only postponing the possibility of happiness right now.
Happiness is a choice.
You choose at every moment how you react to your circumstances and how you wish to feel.
Dr Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics, a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one’s self-image leading to a more successful and fulfilling life.
He believed “man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is built that way, he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made, that is, to function as a goal-striver. Thus, true success and true happiness not only go together, but each enhances the other.”
Success and happiness always enhance each other
When life is difficult, providing you are still taking actions to achieve your goals, it’s still possible to be happy.
Happiness is actually a state of mind that you choose
Just like any emotion that you experience. We may believe that our happiness or sadness is created by external factors, but this is not true.
It is within us all the time. However, it is often triggered by external events.
When we choose to create strong, enduring happiness in our lives, it is more difficult to change that state of happiness as events occur.
When we constantly blame our circumstances for not allowing us to be happy, we are not fully responsible for our lives.
The universal law of cause and effect states that everything that happens to us results from our own actions and reactions.
Never allow your present circumstances to define who you are and what you become.
Find solutions to your problems
When you control your dominant thoughts and emotions, you have the ability to change your mental attitude. And you can choose to do this at every moment of your life.
One way to help switch up your negative thoughts and give you a positive mental attitude is to focus on solutions to your problems.
It’s very easy to look at the problem and consider all of the difficulties that it will create for you. However, when you start focusing on solutions to the problem, everything can suddenly change.
Negative thoughts dominate when you focus on problems. But when you start focusing on solutions, your mind kicks into a positive mental attitude. You feel empowered, even though the situation may not change immediately.
So to keep a positive mental attitude and make life work for you. Don’t look at problems as a negative thing. Think of them as new and exciting opportunities waiting to be discovered.
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