Day: March 1, 2011

Positive Thinking Your Key to Success

 by Remez Sasson

 Positive thinking brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness and satisfaction. It also helps the daily affairs of life move more smoothly, and makes life look bright and promising. Positive thinking is contagious. People around you pick your mental moods and are affected accordingly. Think about happiness, good health and success, and you will cause people to like you and desire to help you, because they enjoy the vibrations that a positive mind emits. In order to make positive thinking yield results, you need to develop a positive attitude toward life, expect a successful outcome of whatever you do, but also take any necessary actions to ensure your success. Effective positive thinking that brings results is much more than just repeating a few positive words, or telling yourself that everything is going to be all right. It has to be your predominant mental attitude. It is not enough to think positively for a few moments, and then letting fears and lack of belief enter your mind. Some effort and inner work are necessary. Are you willing to make a real inner change? Are you willing to change the way you think? Are you willing to develop a mental power that can positively affect you, your environment and the people around you? Here are a few actions and tips to help you develop the power of positive thinking: Always use only positive words while thinking and while talking. Use words such as, ‘I can’, ‘I am able’, ‘it is possible’, ‘it can be done’, etc. Allow into your awareness only feelings of happiness, strength and success. Try to disregard and ignore negative thoughts. Refuse to think such thoughts, and substitute them with constructive happy thoughts. In your conversation use words that evoke feelings and mental images of strength, happiness and success. Before starting with any plan or action, visualize clearly in your mind its successful outcome. If you visualize with concentration and faith, you will be amazed at the results. Read at least one page of inspiring book every day. Watch movies that make you feel happy. Minimize the time you listen to the news and read the papers. Associate yourself with people who think positively. Always sit and walk with your back straight. This will strengthen your confidence and inner strength. Walk, swim or engage in some other physical activity. This helps to develop a more positive attitude. Think positive and expect only favorable results and situations, even if your current circumstances are not as you wish them to be. In time, your mental attitude will affect your life and circumstances and change them accordingly. Follow the tips and suggestions in this article, and prove to yourself the reality the power of positive thinking. More advanced and powerful techniques, instructions and exercises can be found in the following books

Toxic People
What They Are and Why to Avoid Them
By Marcia Purse

Long ago, before I was even diagnosed with depression (my first psychologist had said I was “highly neurotic”), I was a transcriptionist at an insurance company in Iowa. The woman who sat in front of me would sometimes become upset about something that happened and start to talk about quitting. This frightened me because she was the senior transcriptionist and I was a raw beginner who needed her help frequently.
I would try to calm her down but she would rant about everything that was wrong in our department, all of it true because it was not well run. I’d grow more and more unhappy listening to her until she went back to work leaving me feeling bad for some time.

Eventually, I noticed that after she unloaded her anger onto me, she was cheerful. She had successfully transferred all the negativity to someone else and could continue her day in a better frame of mind. This was the first time I recognized toxicity in another person.

This woman wasn’t entirely toxic. She could be gracious and helpful, and in fact, when I had surgery on my arm a few years later, she was the only one of my co-workers to offer assistance with my household chores (she did ALL my accumulated laundry). And once I knew not to absorb her negativity, we had few problems working together. But I’d begun to learn a valuable lesson: there are toxic people in the world.

Who are the severely toxic people?
They are the ones who complain all the time. They are the ones who always blame you. They may always turn things around so things you felt they had done wrong are suddenly your fault. They overreact to bad events.

They drain your energy. It may be that they get you to spend a lot of time and emotional strength trying to cheer them up. They may bombard you with their negativity so that you have to spend energy trying to fend it off. Perhaps their constant pessimism infects you, or they always make you angry. They may be leeches who feed themselves by making you give them your positivity.

People with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, major depression or even depressive tendencies are particularly susceptible to toxic people. We are more easily triggered than others. When manic or hypomanic, we may be less sensitive to depressive triggers – or we may not. During mixed or depressive episodes, or when we’re more or less stable, we are more likely to have a somewhat weaker grip on emotional stability than most people, making it easier for a toxic person to affect our moods. That’s not to say that people who do not have mental illnesses can’t be affected by the toxicity of others. But we are more vulnerable.

Toxic People in Your Life
Do you know someone who always makes you feel depressed, angry or just plain tired? Think about this person. Is he or she a complainer, or someone who always expects things to go wrong, or someone who constantly finds fault with you? Does he or she always seem more cheerful after ranting to you? If any one or more of these is the case, you likely have a toxic person on your hands.

If you have an easy way to get this person entirely out of your life, you’ll be better off instantly. Of course, often it is not so easy, when the toxic person is a co-worker or family member or even a long-time friend. If it’s a co-worker, is there a good excuse like “I’m right under an air vent that’s chilling me” to get your desk moved? Perhaps you can say, “You really ought to talk to the supervisor/manager about this” and calmly return to doing your work.

With family members and friends, it may be more difficult. A seriously toxic friend may require that you gradually decrease the time you spend with this person over a period of months so it isn’t particularly noticeable. When the toxic person is a family member, it may be possible to get the person into therapy, which is often needed to solve the underlying issue behind the negativity. If not, you need to train yourself to “tune out” when the complaining, fault-finding and energy-draining behavior starts.

Toxic Situations
I had a supervisor who used to bring me a pile of two days’ worth of work and tell me she wanted it done by 2:00 p.m. I’d look it over, tell her it was impossible, and the fight was on. Sometimes we screamed at each other so loudly that people down at the other end of the floor would stand up to see what was going on. This happened again and again.

When I spoke to a social worker about it, she asked what I was doing to set the supervisor off, as opposed to what the supervisor was doing to set me off. Well, I was always telling her the truth – that there was no way I could get the work done that quickly. But after discussing the situation for some time, we had devised a plan.

The next time my supervisor brought me an impossible stack and said she wanted it done by 2:00 p.m., I said, “I’ll try.”

And that solved the problem. Never mind that the work wasn’t done by the deadline. The important thing was that I had not said “impossible.” My supervisor and I never fought over work again.

This supervisor actually wasn’t a toxic person, but in this case, the situation was poisonous. In cases like this, the solution may be at your fingertips.

Ultimately, the answer is that you can’t change the other person’s behavior, but you can change your own. If someone you know always triggers depression, anger or tiredness in you, examine how you react when the negativity starts and see if changing your reaction helps. If your reaction doesn’t contribute to the problem, or you can’t make such a change, find a way to lessen this person’s presence in your life. It will be good for your health.

Associate With Positive People

Jeff Keller

Have you ever heard the phrase, “We become part of what we are around?.” Have you given much thought to how this principle has been molding and shaping your life? It’s worth thinking about. The people you associate with have a profound affect on how you feel and what you’ll ultimately achieve. I’m sure most of you have heard this principle before. Some of you have heard it a hundred times. But this is one of those areas where there is a large gap between theory and practice. In other words, you know it’s important to limit involvement with negative people, yet you continue to hang around with them.

By the way, I’m not talking about your relationship with your spouse or significant other. I’m referring to discretionary relationships, both at work and in your leisure hours.

In today’s literature, we frequently see the terms toxic people and nourishing people. As you might expect, toxic people are the ones who always dwell on the negative. The dictionary defines toxic as “poisonous” toxic people continually spew their verbal poison. In contrast, the dictionary definition of nourishing is “to nurture or promote the growth of.” Nourishing people are positive and supportive. They lift your spirits and are a joy to be around.

Negative people will always drag you down to their level. They hammer away at you with all of the things you can’t do and all of the things that are impossible. They barrage you with gloomy statements about the lousy economy, the problems in their lives, the problems soon to be in your life, and the terrible prospects for the future. If you’re lucky, they might even throw in a few words about their aches and pains and recent illnesses.

After listening to toxic people, you feel listless, depressed and drained. Psychologist Jack Canfield describes them as “energy vampires” — they suck all the positive energy out of you. One thing is certain: these “vampires” will wear you down and kill your dreams.

On the other hand, how do you feel when you are around people who are positive, enthusiastic and supportive? I’ll bet that you are encouraged and inspired. You start to pick up their attitude, and you feel as if you have added strength to vigorously pursue your own goals.

If you had a choice, wouldn’t you rather hang out with nourishing people? Well, in fact, you DO have a choice. It’s up to you to determine who you spend your time with. If toxic people surround you in your daily life, you can do something about it.

To begin with, develop friendships and associations with people who are positive and supportive. In addition, seek out people who are action-oriented and service-oriented. As you spend more and more time in the company of people who have these traits, you, too, will develop the same successful characteristics and put them to use in your life.

Consider who you have been spending your time with. Examine your friendships and relationships at work and during your leisure hours. Those who occupy your time have a significant impact on your most priceless possession … your mind! It is your responsibility to regulate what you allow into your mind.

Here are some steps you can take to be more responsible in this area:

* If you regularly have lunch with toxic people at work, stop it. You should be able to find a diplomatic way of extricating yourself from this “poisonous” group.

* If you have a toxic relative (which could be your mother, father, son or daughter), it is important to put some limits on your involvement with them. This does not mean that you abandon this relative and never speak to him or her. However, you should not go out of your way to call that person several times each day if he or she is going to put you down or fill the conversation with negative remarks.

* Form your own positive group with friends or colleagues. Make a commitment to meet with these people on a regular basis (e.g., once a week or once a month) to discuss goals, exchange ideas and offer support. These should be people who accept you as you are and yet challenge you to be the best that you can be.

In case you’re wondering, I’m in favor of trying to help friends who are negative. I think we should make efforts to steer them in a more positive direction. But if we’ve been trying for the last 9 years and the person insists on being negative, maybe it’s time to severely limit the amount of time we spend with that person – or to stop spending any time with that individual.

As you increase your associations with nourishing people, you will feel better about yourself and about your ability to achieve your goals. You’ll become a more positive, upbeat person — the kind of person others love to be around. I used to think that it was important to associate with positive people and to limit involvement with negative people. Now, I believe that it is essential if you want to be a high-achiever and a happy individual.

By the way, as you continue to associate with positive people, the law of attraction starts to kick in. That law states that LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE. When you are positive, you’ll attract more positive people into your life. Of course, if you are NEGATIVE, you’ll attract negative people.

So, surround yourself with positive, nourishing people — they will lift you up the ladder of success.

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About The Author

 Jeff Keller is a motivational speaker and author of the best-selling book, Attitude is Everything.