Is keeping a positive mental attitude at all times possible? Developing a positive attitude is very important. Knowing how to expect the best from yourself and from life is crucial for success. However, having the ability to be positive every second of the day can not be achieved. It is a myth, and trying to achieve it in many ways could be dangerous.
Have you ever asked the question why do we have negative thoughts? The answer is that none of your thoughts are negative, unless you decide to interpret them that way. What we all do have is ‘protective thoughts’, which many people say are negative.
Our brain is wired to always be on the lookout for danger above all else. That danger can be physical like watching out for snakes that like to bite, but it can also be psychological. A psychological threat may be a fear of failure, or embarrassment, or poor performance, or rejection, basically any possible experience that is going to lead you into feeling an emotion you generally don’t like.
So your brain is always trying to protect you from feeling more pain than you have to. But, your brain isn’t always right. Have you ever had to do a speech, and your brain started coming up with all sorts of catastrophic thoughts and images?
Things like ‘they will all laugh at me, I won’t know what I’m doing, I am going to get rejected and feel humiliated’. But when you actually look at all the times you presented before, none of these things even came close to happening. But that won’t stop your brain initially from trying to protect you from a possible danger.
Now, this is the important part, never try to eliminate, remove, suppress or in any way try to get rid of those thoughts and images. Why? Because it doesn’t work and it only makes them stronger.
Let’s try it now. Whatever you do, don’t think about chocolate cake. Don’t think about the way it looks, or smells, or tastes, whatever you do don’t think about it. Guess what, I am 100% confident that you failed miserably and the more you tried to not think about it, the more you did.
But, what if I told you to accept that you might think about chocolate cake and if you think about it, that’s fine just let the thought or image be there and then it will pass it its own time. Guess what happens, now because your allowing the thought or image to be there your brain has a chance to process it to see if it is dangerous or not. Because it realizes it is not, the thought will pass quicker.
So going back to public speaking, knowing that your brain has come up with all these catastrophic scenarios to try and protect you, rather then trying to make them go away, if you accept that it is just your brain trying to protect you and you know that they will pass in their own time, those fearful thoughts will pass much more quickly.
While this happens, you can also of course, train yourself to expect to do well, to visualise performing at your best and develop your positive self talk. That is fine, and focussing on doing your best is important. But, your brain may still try and ‘protect you’ every now and again with a ‘protective (negative) thought’. When that happens, understand it’s part of the process, accept it, let it be there and it will pass more quickly in its own time while you continue to focus on, visualize and expect to perform at your best.
To your Success and Fulfilling Happiness,
Aleks Srbinoski
