Basic Methods: Positive Thinking

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” - Abraham Lincoln
“For myself, I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.” - Winston Churchill

Let's be honest: Most people hold the belief (whether consciously or not) that happiness is a shallow and fleeting thing, but that unhappiness is abiding and reality-based. If you don't believe me, just look around you at how people react to happiness, feel-good movies, upbeat ideas, etc. “Ok, that was nice. Back to reality…” Sure, happiness sometimes is a thin and brittle shell borne of denial or trying to look good, but the same can be said of its opposite emotion. I won't go into it much right now, but I want to be clear on the point: an emotion is an emotion, a sign of things and not the thing itself. It should ideally be based on what is, but is easily and often derailed by misconceptions.

The various benefits of happiness will have to wait for a later article, as will a discussion of its artesian source, joy. For now, I ask you to take as granted that even a fleeting sense of happiness is inherently good and useful.

It's also the first and most obvious result of thinking positively. By “positive thinking” I mean a general sense and specific vision that things will go well, will improve, will recover, or will otherwise bring a brighter future. As many wiser heads have observed, you can be as vague or as precise as you desire with your optimistic mindset, and each level of precision carries its own benefits. All, however, lead directly to an improvement of mood.

Adopting positive, “can do,” “will happen” stances toward the world on a longer term begins to convert the bright future into a bright present, simply because we become what we believe we are. This is ancient wisdom, proven over and over every day throughout millennia. Again, look around and you will quickly see that it's true.

“As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” - Proverbs 23:7

What do you want to be? Believe that you not only can be it but that you are already on the road to becoming it, and it will begin to be so. What do you want to do? Believe that you can and you eventually will.

“Yeah, right,” I hear from the curmudgeon in the back. “Nice new age fluff you have going on, there. Your own in-skull cheering team. Rah rah rah, sis boom blah. Wishful thinking sets you up for a fall.”

In some ways, the curmudgeon is right. Wishful thinking is worse than useless. What comes of saying “I wish I was a better person, more self-disciplined” other than reminding myself that you aren't better, aren't what you know you should be, reinforcing the fact of it? It lets you think that something might happen while preventing motion that direction. Good thing we're not talking about that, huh?

No, Positive Thinking looks like its hapless, helpless cousin Wishful Thinking, but doesn't act like it at all. It says, “You can - and you are!” It draws you forward into the light, and more than just promoting dreams, it encourages all of your mind, conscious, subconscious and unconscious alike, to see the ways to the goal that come along and which are already there. Like magic, you will begin to become your true self.

It's a pretty well-known fact that once you're aware of a thing, you will suddenly see it popping up all over. You may never have noticed Australia in the news, but plan a trip there and I promise you'll see references to it all over. And yet a Lexis-Nexis search will show that there's no sudden up-tick of Aussie news. Develop a concern with (to grab something pretty random) corn-based products and they'll start practically throwing themselves at you. This applies in so many ways it's hard to comprehend. Most importantly for this discussion, (a) think about good things and your world will be a brighter place, (b) focus on bad things and your world will be downright depressing, and (c) keep what you want to be and do in your mind as a will-happen notion and the path to get there will present itself.

Really, it's as simple as this: “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.” - Willie Nelson

Goals and Means

This little experiment's goals fall into 2 categories: practical ends and mind-hack curiosities. (Ok, that last sounds bizarre, but I can't seem to think of a better term. If you come up with one, let me know.) Here's a quick summary of each:
Outcomes
Freedom to work as I wish
A fully satisfying relationship
Following my passion/fulfilling my dreams
Financial independence
Dramatically improve lives around me

Mind Methods
Determine the value of positivity in various aspects of life
Objectively prove the Law of Attraction
Discover the most effective way for me to be who I really am
Identify and utilize my mental/spiritual gifts

It's tempting to label one of those categories “the means” and the other “the ends” - but which is which? Achieving the first list is the proof of the second list's items' validity; performing the second list's items correctly will reward me with the first list's items. Round and round it goes. I truly, deeply hope that the freedom aspects of the Outcomes list comes around, since the endless busy-ness of my life is interfering with even this, the record of the attempt to rectify it!

The Outcomes list could use some further explanation, and will, but as it stands reasonably well at it is, I'll get right to discussing the Mind Methods. After all, they really are the core of the experiment. Do we not all want that first list, or a variant thereof? To be happy, perhaps content, engaged in the activities we most enjoy? There are so many ways to attempt that, and so many things calling us to try them, promising to be the best way. Funny how many of us (myself included) dive right into ways that we have seen so often to absolutely not work, ways that deliver ever-increasing doses of misery. This journal was created to observe, as it develops, an honest attempt at a different way.

So what is this new way? Well, first of all, it's not new. It's actually pretty well-known just now, though the way it gets applied frankly doesn't make a lot of sense much of the time. The Mind Methods list (truly, I would love a better title) lays it out pretty plainly. I intend to become what I am, what I truly should be; use positive thinking (to coin the hackneyed phrase) to guide myself in better, more energetic directions; and experiment with the Law of Attraction (LOA for short). This last is one of the more exciting parts of the experiment, because it involves testing the rather mumbo-jumbo-sounding ideas discussed in The Secret and similar publications to find out, as much as possible, whether they work.

Strange to say, it may not actually be a crushing blow if they don't. No, really. Consider the most basic tenets of working with LOA: be grateful; focus on good things; don't wallow in mistakes, but learn from them; be positive; imagine good happening. Even if I get nothing from that part of the experiment but significant amounts of time thinking joyful thoughts, I will have lost little or nothing in the attempt, and may improve my well-being regardless. Definitely a no-lose proposition.

Soon, I will look at the differences between wishes, LOA, prayer and positive thinking. For now, I am (and have been for a couple of weeks now) beginning by practicing a very basic LOA exercise: I find a happy thought, something that fills me with joy - or at the very least, improves my mood to think about. Once I've held that state for a while (almost a minute), I add a focus on something I specifically want. Very often they are the same things, as things which bring me joy are pretty much what I'm after. It seems reasonable to mainly think on only 2 of my several goals, the better to advance the attempt. Both of them are things over which I have very little control, otherwise this would be a Positive Thinking experiment, and I need no convincing on that concept.