How to Shift Your Perspective and Focus on the Positive

How we think and feel about things can make a big difference, especially when faced with challenges. However, having a positive mindset, focusing on the bright side of things, and having hope don’t come naturally to everyone.

Positive people are better equipped to deal with stress. In addition, other people tend to like being around them, so they get more support from their social connections.

Being a positive person is like having a little cheerleader inside you. Even when things don’t go as planned, your personal cheerleader cheers you on. It helps you not to give up in the face of obstacles and keeps pushing you toward your goals and dreams.

For many of us, staying positive isn’t always easy. Setbacks, perceived failures, and criticism can weigh heavily on our minds and chip away at our optimism. Our internal struggles, like negative thoughts, self-doubt, and the fear of the unknown, can make us even more miserable.

The benefits of positive thinking

Focusing on the positive can be beneficial for our minds and bodies. Here is what you can expect:

Reduced stress. Seeing things in a good light may help reduce stress, which is good for overall health and well-being.

Improved mood. Focusing on the positive can boost our happiness and help us feel good about the world around us.

Better health. According to a study conducted by the University of Queensland, older adults who focused more on positive information showed stronger immune functioning.

Enhanced resilience. Psychological resilience is the ability to bounce back from stress. The ups and downs of life all require a certain degree of resilience, be it work, school, or family issues. Being resilient is somewhat similar to having a strong rubber band: it stretches, but it doesn’t break! You can measure your emotional resilience here.

So, how do we become more positive?

How to Focus on the Positive Step-by-Step

Step 1: Identify negative thought patterns

To become a more positive person, you need to become aware of your negative thoughts and negativity bias. These negative thoughts are like tricky traps your mind can fall into. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), they are called thinking errors. Here are some of the common ones:

Catastrophizing. Ever felt like a small problem can turn into a disaster? That’s catastrophizing! Thinking of the worst possible scenario, even when unlikely, is catastrophizing, too.

Overgeneralization. Making a big deal out of one bad experience is overgeneralization. If you make one mistake, it doesn’t mean you are likely to fail at everything. If one person is rude to you, it doesn’t mean that everyone hates you. You overgeneralize when you take a single negative event and make it a rule for everything.

Personalization. Personalization is blaming yourself for things that aren’t your fault. For example, if your friend or family member is stressed out, it isn’t necessarily your fault. There may be many reasons why they are in a bad mood, and you shouldn’t automatically assume that you caused it. If you insist on feeling guilty and blaming yourself for their bad mood without evidence, you are personalizing.

Jumping to conclusions. You jump to conclusions when you form a judgment with little or no evidence, often assuming the worst possible situation or outcome. If you text your friend and they don’t answer within a few hours, you might decide that it is intentional and they are mad at you or don’t like you anymore. However, there are alternative explanations that don’t sound as bad, such as being busy or forgetting to reply.

For more examples of thinking errors, check this page.

Another thing to remember is that many people lean toward noticing and remembering negative events more than positive ones. This tendency is called negativity bias. It’s a bit like having a spotlight that keeps shining on the gloomy parts of our lives. To make things worse, negative experiences often affect us more deeply, and because negative things tend to stand out, they can sway our decisions more than positive things.

Understanding these negative thought patterns and the negativity bias can help us control our thoughts better. Once you realize that your mind may be falling into one of these thinking patterns, you can question it more readily and choose to focus on the good stuff instead.

Step 2: Reframe negative thoughts

When negative thoughts cloud our minds, we can learn to shift them into more balanced ones. Reframing is a cognitive restructuring technique that can help change the way we think about things. Here is how to reframe your negative thoughts:

1. Identify Negative Thoughts:

Start by recognizing and acknowledging the negative thoughts you’re having.

2. Examine Evidence:

Challenge the negative thoughts by asking for evidence. Are there actual facts to support these thoughts, or are they only assumptions?

3. Consider Alternatives:

Explore alternative explanations or viewpoints for the situation. What are other possible reasons for what’s happening that might be less negative?

4. Reframe:

Reframe negative thoughts by looking at the situation from a different, more balanced angle. For example, instead of saying, “I’ll never get this right,” say, “I am learning and figuring things out.”

What not to do: Toxic positivity

Finally, it is important to differentiate between genuine positivity and toxic positivity. Being positive is not about refusing to acknowledge negative feelings and concerns. It isn’t about invalidating other people’s feelings either. Toxic positivity isn’t, in fact, positive because you repress your emotions, deny reality, and refuse to deal with problems. It can also lead to many relationship issues because you may feel tempted to shame people for having negative feelings or refuse to have difficult conversations.

Repressing negative feelings will not make them disappear, but facing them the way we described above can help us understand and process our emotions, leading to healthier coping mechanisms, improved mental well-being, and more authentic and fulfilling relationships with ourselves and others.

Learn more about how to use CBT here.