By-Esha Vinod
Did you know that 36 per cent of professionals polled on LinkedIn agree that a positive attitude is an essential quality that employers look for in candidates and team members? Maintaining a positive attitude at work will benefit your career and steer you towards a promotion. The central conflict that arises is that maintaining a positive perspective daily in a workplace is demanding. Hence this article aims to provide you with information on the psychology of positive thinking in team members and ways to implement it in your day to day life.
“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008). This area of psychology focuses on how to help human beings prosper and lead healthy, happy lives. Positive psychology includes positive thinking. Positive thinking is the practice of focusing on the better side in a given situation. Some examples of positive thinking during work are using positive language, celebrating small successes, recognising and acknowledging hard work, etc., which will be explained further on.
Positive psychology aims at positivity and on positive events and influences. These include favourable situations, for example, joy, love, happiness, gratitude etc. In the field of positive psychology, the different topics focused on are Hope, Optimism, Self-esteem, well-being, Strengths etc. Studying these topics helps us have a clear idea about how we can adjust our day-to-day life to develop our best selves. In addition, these topics have also can help us identify practices that can benefit us. For example, expressing our appreciation for our loved ones, developing personal strengths etc.
There are many benefits of feeling good. These include thinking good helps to decrease stress a lot. Feeling good helps us increase our morale and motivation and helps us feel like we are progressing more and more each day. It helps to promote our mental wealth and helps prevent depression. Overall you feel more pleased and at peace when you focus on feeling good and taking care of your mental health in a workspace. Positive thinking has a solid connection to protecting your health. When a person is thinking positively, they are better protected against inflammatory damage of stress. It helps make people make better health and life decisions, enabling you to focus on your long-term goals. Additional studies have also found that thinking positively helps prevent strokes, brain tumours etc. It helps improve outcomes and life satisfaction.
It is essential to identify if you are a negative person or not. You can determine if you are a negative person because you constantly worry about things. You may tend to get stressed over the number of deadlines and work you get during your working time. Next is if you are on the pessimist side. You may find it difficult to see the brighter side of the situation and the benefits of the work you get. Next is if you complain a lot. It is a big sign that you might be a negative person when you keep complaining and are not satisfied or at peace in your work environment. Lastly but not least is when you are an underachiever. You don’t feel motivated or have high morale in performing the best you can. Hence if you can relate to any of these points, you mostly think negative during your work time.
Now the main question is, how do exactly start thinking positively? Well, I have some clear points that can help you start thinking positively. The first and most crucial point is to focus on the good things. There will always be many challenges and obstacles in your life, but when faced with one, we need to focus on the good stuff, no matter how small it is. If you feel you are assigned challenging work for you, focus on the positive side of learning new things and making progress in your career. Next is to spend time with positive people. Surround yourself in work with people who think positive and are excited about their work. This helps to change your perspective and helps keep your morale high. Next is to practice positive self-talk. We mostly tend to be our most demanding critics and don’t cut us some
slack. Hence it is essential to say kind things to yourself and appreciate all the hard work in your career. Last but not least, practice gratitude. It is essential to express gratitude, and it can help improve your self-esteem and reduce your stress. Think of any fond memory, person, or thing that brings you joy and comfort and express gratitude every day. Hence these are some fundamental ways to develop positive thinking in your life.
In addition to the previous question, there are different kinds of positive thinking. Some include using the power of your smile to make a negative situation positive. Smiles show that we are positive people. Hence, smiling a lot helps make anyone around us be a lot more positive. Next is to be happy for someone else success. We should be bitter or jealous if someone else is rewarded. We instead should feel happy for them and not let it affect our morale and motivation as we should not compare ourselves to other co-workers. Next is not to complain when small things do not go your way. It tends to be a waste of time; instead, you should learn to adapt and see the good side of the change in some situations. Next, we should have a positive future vision, even if things in the present may be harmful. We should be hopeful and put in hard work to have a positive future. Hence these are some of the kinds of positive thinking out of many.
Therefore to conclude this research on this subject, Positive thinking is the practice of focusing on the better side in a given situation. It aims to help human beings prosper and lead healthy, happy lives. There are many benefits of feeling good which include thinking good helps to decrease stress a lot, increasing our morale and motivation, promoting our mental wealth and helping prevent depression, feeling more pleased and at peace etc. It is essential to identify if you are a negative person or not. The ways to identify you are a negative person are you may tend to get stressed over the number of deadlines and work, find it difficult to see the brighter side of the situation if you complain a lot if you are an underachiever etc. And lastly, the different ways you can develop positive thinking in your life is to focus on the good things, spend time with positive people, practice positive self-talk, practice gratitude etc. I would like to end this article by reminding you that as long as you are positive, you are being productive.
REFERENCES:
The Power of Positive Thinking. (n.d.). Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-power-of-positive-thinking
MIRELE MANN, EDITOR & WRITERMirele writes about everything related to doing good, with a particular interest in volunteering and social entrepreneurship, informed by her background in eco-tourism. (2017, January 26). 7 Scientific Facts about the Benefit of Doing Good. Goodnet.
Sahu, D. (2015, October 20). 7 signs to recognize negative people in your life – Times of India. The Times of India.
Bennett, T. (n.d.). What is positive psychology? How can this movement benefit me? Thriveworks.
Positive Thinking: What It Is, What it’s not, and How to Do It. (2018, January 26). WebMD.
