Published on JustPlainCooking July 28, 2019
Positive thinking is not about sticking your head in the sand and ignoring bad circumstances. In fact, positive thinking can improve quality of life in several ways.
Those of you who visit my Facebook page and interact with me personally know that I am very committed to positive thinking and a positive mindset.
But I’ve heard it dismissed more than once as immature and irresponsible. I’m told that I am keeping my head in the sand (like ostriches don’t actually do!) and ignoring the less fortunate parts of life.
Face reality, they say.
In response, I put my fingers in my ears and tell them that I reject their reality and substitute my own.
Jokes aside, any reality in which I must be unhappy and miserable just because bad things happen – that’s not a reality I choose.
OH, but the bad things?
Yup, they still happen.
I read the same news reports that you do.
My kids get sick and hurt.
Money problems strike at the Beausoleil house, too.
Sometimes I even ignore the fact that I’m gluten-intolerant and make myself a big sandwich on homemade wheat bread … oh, anyone of you who are off gluten know exactly how awful that was.
At any rate, positive thinking doesn’t mean I’m whistling and pretending my guts not tied up in nasty knots. It means that I approach unpleasant situations in a more productive way.
It means that I focus on how our food stores let us weather employment woes – instead of moaning and fretting because money is tight.
Or it means that I remind myself why I don’t eat wheat and go to bed early so that I can sleep off the gut pain. (After a cup of ginger and honey tea, of course).
So instead of thinking that no one is communicating with you and therefore they must not like you, positive thinking means you remind yourself that your friends are as busy as you are – so you pick up the phone or start a video call.
So let’s look at five ways that positive thinking can help improve quality of life.
Positive Thinkers Are Healthier
It’s not that they feel healthier – research shows that positive thinkers really are healthier.
A study done at Harvard School of Public Health shows that positive thinking – like self-acceptance and positive relationships with others – is linked to improved health.
Another study had also shown that when a first-year law student was more optimistic, they could fight off infection more efficiently and could take fewer sick days as a result.
Positive Thinkers See Failures As A New Start
A positive thinker knows that a failure is not the end, but rather the beginning of something great.
When we are stuck in a negative thinking cycle, we are going to fixate on negative possibilities and be trapped by the fear of failure. On the other hand, a positive thinker is going to be willing to consider the future and be open to new ideas, new experiences, and new possibilities, and is also going to be prepared to move toward those ideas expecting to experience great things.
Positive Thinkers Don’t Freak Out Over The Small Stuff
According to a study that was conducted at Quebec’s Concordia University, those who think positively produce less cortisol. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone, and when you produce less of the hormone, your body doesn’t react as strongly to stressful situations, by nature, being able to think positively means that you are less likely to be stressed out over things that would stress a negative thinker out.
Positive Thinkers Get More Job Offers
A study conducted by Duke University examined a group of MBA graduates entering the workforce, half of the subjects had a positive outlook and believed that their success was inevitable, and the rest of the subjects were much less hopeful and optimistic.
Researchers concluded that the positive group not only were hired more often, but also enjoyed more job satisfaction, had higher salaries and were also promoted more frequently than the more negative thinking subjects were.
Positive Thinkers Are Better Athletes
There is no proof that a positive thinker has more muscle mass or a greater athletic ability than a pessimist does, however having a more optimistic outlook and using negative criticism to motivate action seems to help athletes excel.
A study out of Penn Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania examined the effect of optimism and pessimism on swimmers. The study gave swimmers a false time when they had been instructed to swim their hardest, adding several seconds onto their time.
Those who were positive thinkers used the negative feedback as motivation to get an even faster time on their next swim, while those who thought negatively performed more poorly than their original time.
No amount of positive thinking will make you a world-class athlete without exercise and commitment, unfortunately.
If you aren’t an optimist, this doesn’t mean that you are sentenced to a life riddled with poor health, no promotions, and an unhappy relationship.
Optimism is a skill that can be learned, which means that you too can reap the benefits of positive thinking, all you must do is put forth a little bit of effort.