This is a tutorial about shifting your thinking into positive.

The time factor

I´ll start off with the reason why this is all so easy. I also couldn´t believe that it is that easy. So I´m beginning with the time factor, which is very convincing I think, to get started with the whole thing.

The day has got 24 hours. Let´s say you sleep 6 to 8 hours. There are 16 to 18 hours left. In these remaining hours there are many situations where the outer circumstances capture your attention. These are situations where you are focused on doing something. You are concentrated and there are no positive nor negative thoughts. This is quite a long time every day. If you go to work 8 hours a day it could be almost 7 hours and if you got domestic work to do, or you have to go and buy stuff, there´ll be some more hours there. Then there´s the leisure time where you might be concentrated on TV, a book or contents on the internet… I´d say there are approximately 1-3 hours maximum, where you actually think and what needs to be influenced. (I´m just claiming that now, though there´s evidence on how we spend our time, e.g. in studies about flow  and I´ll be giving my insights on that interesting theory in the future on this blog.)

So let´s say there´s just 0ne to three hours per day you got to influence. That doesn´t sound so hard, does it? It´s just very little time you got to be aware of and do something about it. Imagine there´s a day you are highly concentrated and got even less time to think freely? You could maybe shift only a dozen of thoughts and get an entirely postive day! And everybody knows days like that. Even if you think that it´s not so easy for you: do you remember days like that from your childhood? Where everything was just easy and felt like adventure? Where everything was fun and you had no sense of time at all. Those were the days where you fell asleep happily and cosy and awoke the next day with a smile on you face. Believe me, those were the days you were entirely positive and where your thinking was pure and open. With the strategies I´ll give you, you´ll get right back to this stage.

But back to why it works- is it hard to control one to three hours of thinking daily? It might be, if you want to do it at once. But we are getting there gradually. You can influence some of your thoughts this week and if you are starting and have the first successes it will be like an avalanche. Really! It is somesthing that is reinforcing itself. It´s just getting more and more. Because whenever you think positive, it will increase the probability of other positive thoughts to come to your mind.

Why does positive thinking reinforce itself?

I´ll try to give you the essence, to make it short.
It´s fairly easy, although it´s psychology, but you´ll understand it easily. Our thinking works like a network. Informations are stored there like in a network.

Whenever you see something a whole lot of information is automatically activated. When you see a bee, for instance, you don´t only think of a bee. Many informations connected to the bee are activated and are instantly accessible. The whole concept “bee” contains a lot of information that helps you to behave in a way that leads to the outcomes you want to have. (So even if a bee is cute and fluffy you wouldn´t try to stroke it. If there´s a kitten cute and fluffy you might not hesitate.)

It´s obvious that the network is not about words. So many things are stored in such a concept: smell, sound, taste, other perceptual informations, but also past experiences and memories. A certain smell of a flower might remind you of a moment in your childhood, a place where you´ve  been, circumstances, people…maybe a certain situation comes to your mind and you get vivid impressions of a past experience. That is all stored in the network.

This network has a huge influence on our perception. In former days people believed, that the human mind is working like a computer. All the information is coming in and we somehow filter what is relevant for us. Psychological science showed something completely different. It seems like we are not capable of getting all the information. We got a certain focus and the more we are focused on something the more we retrieve connected information and the less we notice information that doesn´t suit to this concept. We are not selecting out of all the information, but highlighting a certain set of informations which are used for further processing. Like with a spotlight we are just concentrated on certain concepts.

Because of this process everything you are thinking about has a huge influence on your perception. Let´s say you want to have a child. Suddenly you see pregnant women all over the place. You´ll count heaps of prams all over the day, you´ll hear little children babbeling. You might even get the impression that many people are suddenly talking about babies and children. Many people experience things like that and wonder: where have all those pregnant women been before? They´ve been there- but you didn´t notice! You just directed your spotlight on those topics recently.

 

Now we get to the most important part for us: the affective component. The more intense we experience a connection the faster it comes to our mind. Let´s say you loved new years eve as a child. You loved your father buying fireworks and see the colours in the sky. Everybody celebrating and having fun. If you now hear a loud gun-like noise on new years eve, it might elicit a completely different set of informations and feelings as let´s say a person right out of a warzone, always interpreting loud noises as a life threat.

Studies have shown, that the affective quality, means whether you perceive aspects as positive or negative, has a huge influence. That means, when something is feels good to you, or you are in a positive mood and you see something that might even be seen as neutral, you´d rather see the positive aspects of it than the negative.

When you got a tendency to the negative, you´d get all the negative aspects right at once and it might take energy to think differently again. On the other side, if you tune yourself into positive, the positive aspects you memorized come to your mind.

And the most important thing: it´s got a huge impact on perception. When you are in a positive mood, you also notice positive things more likely. That´s what makes it reinforce itself. YOu don´t only talk positive and think positive- the postive aspects of your environment get right into your awareness ALL THE TIME!

Always when you focus on something negative, you´ll remember more negative things, negative words, you´ll notice more negative things and you´ll store negative information better.So also the good news is: ALWAYS when you focus on positive aspects, you´ll remember more positive experiences of the past, more positive words, expressions and explanations come to your mind and you´ll store positive information better.

The same you can get an expert on pregnancy and know everything about that, you can get a positivity expert. You can actually get so used to focusing positively, that always, when you are not paying attention, the first thing that comes to your mind is something positive.

Activation gets chronical

Now, on 16 Oct of 2016 I´ll be using the strategies for exactly 5 years. As I told you I am a psychologist. I am counseling people with different psychological problems. I got many experiences with very negative thinking- the thinking on the other end of the continuum- and that makes it very easy for me to explain what happens, when you are thinking predominantly positive.

When somebody experiences depression, the person does the same I propose for the positive, in the negative spectrum. People in a depression focus on the negative aspects, they think more and more negatively. Remember, when you think negatively, more negative memories come to your mind, you´ll retrieve rather negative information and you´ll notice negative aspects better. Imagine it´s your birthday. You just got a nice present of your brother and some people congratulated you on facebook, but a close friend has not called you yet. What are you most likely focusing on? Will you be thinking about how blessed you are to have a brother thinking about you so fondly? No! Because you might not even notice. In case you notice, you might get some rationalizing thoughts, even obliterating the present. “I guess mum told him to send me something because I am so annoying for them being depressed”. That is truly what is happening to depressive people, believe me! Once you focus on the negative predominantly, it seems so much more plausible and rational when you think further negative thoughts!

And rational thinking is very convincing. You might even convince others that your brother had base motives to present you. If you are good at it you might even convince your brother. If you are depressive you are a true expert on negative thinking and rationalizing. And because of the spotlight on the network you´ll always prove yourself. And when you talk to others you will make them switch their spotlight on the negative, too. So if they don´t want to annoy you, they´ll try to understand you and focus on the negative, too. It works. The more you think negatively the more and more your negative network connections get hard-wired. And you are always fostering negative focusing in your social environment. You are a negativity-pro!

Avalanche ahead

The same happens with positive thinking. When you use strategies to think more positively, after a while, you´ll get a completely different mindset. The connections between the postitive contents in your network get hard-wired. The connections to the negative associations seem to losen.

 

The more the strategies worked for me, the more likely I noticed positive aspects in my life. I woke up in the morning with a good mood for no reason. I started seeing everything more and more positively. It was easier and easier for me seeing other people´s potential. I´m so happy about my life. It seems that I am only meeting nice people wherever I go. I get more and more joyful. You start using the strategies and then you get to a stage where things get rolling. It feels like no effort anymore.  (It took quite a while though- I wrote something like a diary, so if you want to know how long it took, tell me, I´ll write something about that on the blog then.) That´s why I compare it with an avalanche. You´ll get to the stage, where it just gets bigger and bigger with no effort at all.

The strategies don´t only make your thinking more positive, you also reach a better awareness of what you are thinking about, which can lead to very positive feelings. For instance, when I´m standing in a queue I´m not bored at all and it never bothers me again. Then, many times, I´m realizing I´m standing in a queue, having a good time, actually enjoying myself and great joy is flooding me. Because I remember the times, when it was different. When my mood was influenced by tiny little things like that. And I tend to get really grateful that my mindset is so different now. Now many things are so much fun to me. I am always seeing the positive. I sometimes can´t understand anymore what the negative contents are about. The person in the queue next to me is getting really angry. To me it is like somebody pretending to drown in a puddle. What difference does it make, when he steps out of the supermarket 5 minutes later? I don´t have a clue. In such situations I realize how far that habit got. You just get used to be aware what you think and you train yourself more and more into positive. That´great fun and you can do it, too.

Tipping the ratio (The Trevor-Index)

Finally it is all about tipping the ratio between negative and positive thoughts. I claim that whenever the positive thoughts:negative thoughts ratio is >1 you train your postive connections in your network and positivity gets hard-wired.

(Explanation: OK, not everybody loves maths. If you think twice as many negative thoughts as positve and you calculate e.g. 6 divided by twelve you get 0.5. If you´re thinking twice as many postive thoughts you are getting a number bigger that one. E.g. 10:5 = 2)

That also means: if you think positive quite frequently, but you think negatively more often- you´ll not make it to the tipping point. This is so logical and it explains a lot. For instance why some people gained so much and don´t seem to be happy at all. Or why some people have had hard times and hard conditions and are truly confident and happy.

Wow. This is rad! I now realize my ratio must be around 90:3 – I might be at 30 by now. No wonder I´m such a exuberantly happy happy-go-lucky one today.

Now right in this moment I had the idea to call it the Trevor-Index. I just thought of that very mean GTA-chracter that would surely score very close to zero. So this makes it easier, because I don´t have to say  “postive-to-negative-thoughts-per-day-ratio” anymore.