"I
always hear people talk about positive thinking and its benefits. Can really
positive thinking really change the status of one's life? Shouldn't' it be
'Critical Thinking'?"
What is Positive Thinking?
“A
pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty.” (Winston Churchill, 1987)
In
simple thus physiological terms Positive thinking is a mental attitude. Further positive thinking is a emotional attitude
that focuses on the bright side of life and expects positive results.
Science In Positive Thinking?
The
scientific term used for positive thinking is called "Neuroplasticity".
It means that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains.
(Source: Barrie Davenport.
(n.d.) How Positive Thinking Re-Wires Your Brain. Retrieved from
http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/how-positive-thinking-re-wires-your-brain/).
The idea about the scientific side of positive thinking was first introduced by
William James in 1890, but it was got rejected by scientists who believed the
brain is rigidly mapped out, with certain parts of the brain controlling
certain functions.
Neuroplasticity is widely accepted as scientists have
proven that brain is endlessly flexible and self motivated.
It has the power to change its own structure, even for those with the severe
neurological hardships. People with problems like strokes, mental illness etc
can train and educate the other areas of their brains through repetitive mental
and physical activities. It is life changing.
The
5 Step Process of Manifestation According the theories of Positive Thinking
Below
describes the steps to be followed to get guaranteed results.
1)
Know your desire - Many
people do not really know what they desire. People think that they want this,
that or the other, but never consider it in a great deepness. Knowing what you
really do want is an extremely important. It is really important that you
really do take as much time as is
necessary to decide and to know without any doubt that you genuinely need the
object of your desire and believe that your life will be enhanced by it in a
positive way. It is also
important to only focus on one objective at a time. Wasting your time on daydreaming or fantasizing about many things would not help you to achieve the goals
and desires of your life.
It
is a human assembled and a hypothetical method which says that the universe is consuming
energy in the form of bits of physical metal, paper or electronic bits and
bytes stored on a computer system. The Universe is infinitely abundant and everything you could possibly wish for already
exists. However large or small, and all you need to do is to bring it into your
physical awareness, and therefore your physical reality. Always ask for exactly
what you want, and never place a monetary value upon it and again never, but
never, ever ask for money.(Source: Adrian
Cooper (n.d.) 5 simple steps to create whatever you desire,
http://howtocreateyourfuture.blogspot.com/2006/08/5-simple-steps-to-creating-whatever.html)
2)
Ask for your desire - All
we need to do is to know how to receive the desire. Asking it in is an important
and very precise step in this process. You need to be positive, clear-cut and
precise about how you ask for your desire to be realized. The process for
asking the desire can be purely in the Mind, however one of the most powerful
methods of asking is to simply write down your request on paper. The physical
action of writing down your desire motivates and impresses the wish on your
subconscious mind that is directly is in communication with the universe.
Write
down your wish in the present tense and now all you need to do is to ask the universe. It is important to have complete
faith in the universe and on God to bring the object of you the desire into
your physical reality. Any lack of faith will have a very negative effect on
attracting the object of your wishes into your physical experiential reality by
sending out vibrations that say you do not believe the object of your desire
will manifest into your reality, in which case it will be granted and will not
manifest.
3)
Experience your desire - Experiencing
is an important step towards allowing and therefore receiving the object of
your desire into your physical reality. In order to experience you must allow
it to be visible in to your physical reality. This is a fundamentally important
and one that many people fail to realize
when they are subconsciously transmitting wishes, thus failing to attract and
experience the object of their asking.
With
or without knowledge everyone transmits desires. These desires are in the form
of vibrations sent out to the universe. The vibrational harmony in these
transmitted desires allow people to receive the object of their desires.
Allowing
is to receive, and a very powerful method of receiving is to experience.
Experiencing the object of your wishes will bring you into vibrational harmony
with those wishes, thus enabling them to be attracted and manifest into your
personal, physical reality. (Source: Adrian
Cooper (n.d.) 5 simple steps to create whatever you desire,
http://howtocreateyourfuture.blogspot.com/2006/08/5-simple-steps-to-creating-whatever.html)
Whenever
you have the opportunity to remain uninterrupted and your mind is clear of
other thoughts, sit down comfortably, relax as deeply as possible by taking a
few deep breaths, and imagine yourself to be in the presence of the object or
situation of your desires.
This
process is powerful just before sleep at night and just after awaking in the
morning and before arising from bed. Use all five senses within your
imagination to the maximum extent in order to experience your desires. Feel it
and live it and further make it an
integral part of you.
Wishes,
desires and expectations are always in the present tense as the knowledge that
the desire beyond any doubt that the object of your desires already exists
within endless universe and that all that you have to do is to receive the
object of your desires into your own personal reality.
4)
Action towards your desire - Although
the Universe will deliver into your physical reality you should wish and ask
for. This will empower the process if you take your own steps towards your
desires. This has many positive benefits including reinforcing on your
subconscious mind your total commitment to realizing your desires in a totally clear-cut
way.
This
does not mean that you actually have to go out there and do everything
yourself. By taking positive steps towards your desire you invoke another very
powerful energy of intent. The energy of intent will work in group with the knowledge,
asking and experiencing in a very powerful way by reinforcing your claim on the
object of your desire that already exists in the "Eternal Now of the
Universe".
In
addition to the Energy of the goal you must also impress your subconscious mind
the fact that you are very serious indeed about achieving the object of your
desire into your physical experiential reality. Your subconscious mind is
extremely powerful and is in direct communication with universe. If you therefore
have your subconscious mind as well as your conscious Mind influencing all of
the necessary Energy in the direction of bringing the object of your desire
into your physical reality, it will be much more powerful and the object of
your desire will manifest sooner as a result.
As
soon as you know your desire, have asked for it, and are experiencing it, you
must then take steps towards it and allow the Universe to manifest your desire
into your physical experiential reality in ways The Universe will take care of.
5)
Gratitude for your desire - Gratitude
is another extremely important emotional Energy that you really must project
during the course of manifesting your desires.
In
the context of manifestation, gratitude is another extremely powerful emotion.
The power of gratitude functions at several levels. To feel sincerely grateful
is to be in tune with the Universe. It expresses the energy that you already
know and appreciate the fact that you are an integral aspect of the universe,
and that you are grateful for being a mindful co creator within the magnificent
universe in all of its energy levels of majesty and creation.
Gratitude
also conveys an acknowledgment for having received the object of your desire. One
must always at all times think in terms of physically having the object of your
desire actually within your physical possession. Along with those thoughts
should be the feeling of the most intense gratitude for what you have already
received from The Universe. Gratitude makes the object of your desires a real,
tangible, integral aspect of your own reality, and the more real it is to you
the sooner it will manifest into your personal experiential reality.
Gratitude
conveyed with genuine sincerity brings you more into harmony with the Universe,
and with it you become an even more natural creator of your desires. Those
people who are completely aligned with the Universe gets a magical life.
One
should never take anything for granted.
Always feel deeply grateful for everything that happens in your reality,
regardless of whether you consciously attracted it or whether you perceive it
to be positive or negative. In the grand scheme of things everything that
manifests into your physical reality is directly for the benefit of your own
personal evolution, and you should be most grateful for it whether you
consciously brought it into your own reality or not.
Being
deeply grateful also helps to ensure that you never convey of dissatisfaction,
which is a very negative and a very destructive emotion. Dissatisfaction,
ungratefulness or unhappiness will send the wrong Energy into the Universe,
which will in turn react with immutable perfection in reciprocating those
negative emotions with more of the same. So whatever you feel dissatisfied,
ungrateful or unhappy about will appear into your physical reality even
stronger than ever, creating a vortex of negative Energy as causes with correspondingly
negative effects.
Conversely,
those things that you feel extremely satisfied, grateful and happy about will
create a much higher, positive vibration, attracting more of the same into your
life. The Universe always naturally moves in the direction of expansion and
evolution, and never of contraction or destruction, so positive emotions are
always much more powerful than negative emotions even though they are both
Energy causes with the corresponding effects.
These
then are the five powerful steps to attracting anything you could possibly
desire into your life, where you can enjoy those desires into your own
experiential physical reality. All of these five steps are individually very
powerful indeed in their own right but
collectively they influence Energy so powerfully that you can manifest almost
anything you desire into your personal reality with what might seem like
amazing speed.
The
entire Universe always moves in the direction of development so you should
personally work hard to achieve your desires and create towards this
development. Never be ashamed, hesitant or unhappy about creation. Everything
you desire with great Joy, Love and Gratitude will be yours as your desire is
real and your want is genuine.
Mentioning
all these about positive thinking there exists a group who sees this concept a stupid. Though positive thinking sounds
useful on the surface they think it is too a soft and fluffy that is easy to
dismiss.
Being
a balanced judge let me explain about "Critical Thinking" which most
youngsters or the Gen Y or Gen 20,20
believe in and do a comparison to choose the best and evaluate what
exactly needs to be followed whether it is "Positive Thinking" of
"Critical Thinking".
What is Critical
Thinking?
Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly
and realistically. It includes the ability to engage
in reflective and independent thinking.
Competencies of a critical thinker are :
- understand the logical connections
between ideas
- identify, construct and evaluate
arguments
- detect inconsistencies and common
mistakes in reasoning
- solve problems systematically
- identify the relevance and
importance of ideas
- reflect on the justification of
one's own beliefs and values
A
critical thinker is able to reason out the consequences from what she/he knows,
and she/he knows how to use of information to resolve problems, and to search
for relevant sources of information. Critical
thinking can help us to gain knowledge, improve our theories, and strengthen
arguments. We can use critical thinking to enhance work processes and improve
social institutions.
Some
people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity because it requires
following the rules of logic, but creativity might require breaking rules. This
is a misconception. Critical thinking is quite compatible with thinking
"out-of-the-box", challenging agreements and following less popular
approaches. If anything, critical thinking is an essential part of creativity
because we need critical thinking to evaluate and improve our creative ideas.
Mind
frequently does not examine thoughts and opinions before accepting them. If
what it hears, sees and reads is always negative, it accepts this as a
standard. Similarly if what your mind always hears, sees and reads positive
stuff then the mind accepts positivity as the standard.
To
get disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open minded, and informed by
evidence there is a specific set of
steps which one should follow:
At
the heart of critical thinking is the ability to ask questions. To get clarification,
to consider alternatives one should always ask open ended questions starting
with “What if…?” , “Why?” , “How?” or “What’s
next?”. Sometimes you’re asking questions of others, but often you are
formulating questions by yourself to help you analyze assumptions, evaluate
competing evidence, and to consider future consequences. You
may be required to conduct your own research to get the necessary information
as well as back ground information which will help you more and more about the
particular incident or the scenario.
Critical
thinking does not believe in everything is sees thus analyze everything around
it and then come to a conclusion which i believe is the best thing to be done.
Positive
thinking can be a part of critical
thinking thus critical thing carries positive thinking thus rather
thinking about the better and the happy sides of it critical thinking
concentrates about the consequences and possibilities and take early steps to
mitigate the ricks before they occur. It is always better to mitigate the risk
or unexpected disturbances rather staying expecting the positivity which will
never achieved due to the occurrences of unexpected ricks.
Can Positive Thinking
Alone Bring Success?
My
answer to the question "Can Positive Thinking Alone Bring Success?"
is NO. So what actually does separate
the losers from the winners? What Do winners have in them so special to make
them winners.
Successful
people or the winners do many things that success requires:
1) They
dream about being successful
2) They
set goals.
3) They
get to work early.
4) They
do important rather than busy work.
5) They
network.
6) They
have a bias for action.
A winner
naturally will dream about success which
is according to the positive thinking though she/he will never stop at that
point rather will take actions towards the goal. Other than dreaming
envisioning or asking the need from the universe they will set the goals and
make strategic plans to achieve them like making net works and
even being selfish. They will work really hard to achieve these goals
and desires in their lives. What do failures do?
1) They
try to do as little work as possible.
2) They
avoid responsibility.
3) They
watch a lot of television.
4) They
spend lots of time on internet doing nothing but face booking.
5) They
blame their failings on others.
6) They
sleep more than it is necessary.
The secret to
success is action, not attitude. No matter what the attitude is as long as you
spend most of your time and effort towards achieving your goal. If you do the
right things you will be successful regardless of your emotional condition or
mental attitude. If you do the wrong things, no amount of positive thinking
will save you. If you want to succeed in life, don’t spend any time looking at
yourself in the mirror and shouting. Don’t bother start acting positively
towards your desires.
Can
Positive Thinking Change the Reality?
People
who believe this myth see a problem and believe that positive thinking will
only ignore the ugliness of their reality. The truth is positive thinking
doesn’t ignore the problem; it helps you see the problem in a new light. In
fact, you don’t even see ‘problems’ as problems. Think about it; regardless of
how you react to an external situation, the situation will still be the same.
If being upset doesn’t change the outcome of a past situation, wouldn’t it
serve you, and your health, to see the positives?
A
positive mental attitude creates a mindset of abundance, enthusiasm, and
solutions. Instead of thinking about what can’t be done, a positive thinker
will not be constrained by ‘can’ and ‘cannot.’ A positive thinker is free to
think of new ways to solve problems because they are not limited by fear of
failure. When we are in a state of abundance, we provide a fertile ground for
possibilities and making dreams a reality. We are in a state of allowance,
openly accepting the gifts of life to flow to us. When I realized this
principle and shifted my thinking habits, miracles started popping up in my life.
A
positive mental attitude can – and indeed does – change reality by allowing a
person to act in an entirely different way, thus harvesting entirely different
results.
Concept of Never Giving
Up Vs Knowing When to Give Up?
Never Giving Up?
At
some point we embark on in our lives, sometimes we get to a point where we feel
like giving up. Sometimes we give up before we even start and other times we
give up just before we are about to make that huge break through that we have
been putting so much effort in to achieve.
There
are reasons why we should never give up and listed below are such reasons which
one should keep going rather giving up.
1) Because
your goal is realistic
2) Because
your strong
3) Because
you can prove to yourself - You CAN and WILL achieve what you set out to do
4) Because
you have done if before
5) Because
you believe in your dreams
6) Because
of your family and friends.
7) Because
you want to improve your world
8) Because
you deserve to be happy
9) Because
your inspire others
In
life there are going to be many people who will try to bring you down and tell
you what you want to achieve is not possible. Don’t let anyone destroy your
dreams. Always have a motivation to your life and high energy towards the
goals. They may be personnel, professional or even social thus being hyper
about it will always help one to stay stick to the goal.
Knowing When to Give
Up?
Though
I said so many things about positive thinking and critical thinking combined
with all the high tech scientific words as human beings where is always an
instance where we decide then we can't hold to it any more.
Are You Physically, Emotionally, and Financially
exhausted?
If
you are experiencing exhaustion you should probably give up your goal/desire
and move to another expectation for life. Your exhausted means that your body is attempting to tell you what you
mind will not accept: it’s time for a desire/ goal change. It could
be that a specific part of your desire, but it’s often the sum of your
circumstances that need shifting.
What Will Be Your Contentment Level When You Achieve
Your Desire?
You
work really hard, spend lots of time and effort to achieve a necessity or a
goal thus if you will not feel that satisfaction and contentment which you
wanted to have is not what after putting all this effort, one should always
think through when deciding on the goal or desire it is very important to think
about the final satisfaction and contentment
level as well.
People
of this earth do things by putting time and lots of effort to have a happy and
contended life. Most of the time though people spend lots in time and effort
and achieve the need or the desire the contentment level seems really low. We
all want to be happy and achieve our goals though too much anxiety, anger,
depression, and other unpleasant emotions cause suffering. The tolerance of
these emotions may reduce the ultimate contentment thus there can be many other
reasons behind. The balance between contentment and
growth is very much important to be maintained from the very stage of
initializing the desire / goal or attending to the goal towards the very end
which is achieving the goal.
This
can be one of the instances when it makes sense to seek outside help and
advice. If you are facing a harsh life decision, seek help and advice from
other people who may have experiences that you have not yet encountered. This
is how we borrow wisdom from others.
Opportunity
Cost of the Desire/Goal?
Knowing
the difference can come down to "opportunity cost". You pay a price
either way in most choices, whether you decide to accept reality or whether you
decide to try to change it. In either case you lose out on the benefits that
you would have received had you taken the other path.
In
the very first place one should think about what she/he want to achieve in life
and the satisfaction level one want to achieve. If at a instance you and heard
feel that you can achieve more contentment by doing something else by
attempting another goal if you feel that your life status will go up than the
current goal which you are trying hard evaluate it from your brain and stop
attempting to it. Select the goal with a high opportunity cost rather wasting
the time.
Thus
there is always going to be a component of potential regret if you keep second
guessing yourself. There is likely a silver lining in any path that you choose,
so when you take a different path, you are going to miss out on some sort of
lesson.
Remember
: During some instances though the Return of Investment (ROI) of attending to
your desired goal is really high than the other alternative the contentment /
satisfaction may lead you towards the desired goal which has a lower ROI. At
such instances I would recommend to attend to the path which contains much more
happiness factor as at the end of the before the death one might remember the
moments of happiness gather achievements.
Does Your Ambition is Negatively Influencing Other
Objectives?
Making
commitments is great as it keep us grounded, focused, and, hopefully, energized
in positive pursuits. However, when that focus becomes too constricted,
suddenly our lives are narrowed into slender lines. So it is very much
important that you be a balanced soul and attend to all your work.
Giving
up on dream -the dream of a perfect relationship, a perfect job, or a perfect
family), is one of the most painful things that one can do. But it’s
often also one of the most important. But if one is not sure then visualizing
what it would be like to give up. If in imagining this, you find yourself
feeling calmer, lighter, or more peaceful, there’s your answer.
Concluding
the article the author thinks that critical thinking is more practical and
realistic as it can also be a combination of positive thinking and critical
thinking both. There are some instances in life where you have to believe in
positive thinking as you have no other choice saying that in some instances in
life positive thinking would not do anything but critical thinking and the
necessary actions to achieve the goal or over some the issue.
It
is all based on the situation and circumstance though even at instances where
you have no potion it is always a good idea to think twice about the
consequences and decide on your path.
References:
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/critical/ct.php
http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_00002d.htm
http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/scientific-proof-thoughts-intentions-can-alter-physical-world-around-us.html
http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/how-positive-thinking-re-wires-your-brain/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ted-kaptchuk-versus-placebo-effects-again/
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/22-reasons-to-never-give-up/
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TXRKP/conversations/topics/6566
http://www.careerattraction.com/knowing-when-to-give-up-4-signs-its-time-to-change-your-career-and-what-to-do-about-them/
