William James said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can change their lives by changing their mental attitude.”
We have known since the dawn of time that those who think positive in life are more able to achieve their personal, sentimental, family and work goals. And it’s not a matter of luck, woe to trivialize the speech in this sense. Those who look positively (which does not mean with “naive illusion”) at life simply, and perhaps without even thinking about it too much, have only set the right mindset which allows them to always make the right decisions when faced with the crossroads of existence, i.e. those that at the end of the path they lead to the best choices and destinations.
Someone calls it “law of attraction”, or that principle, scientifically unproven but empirically clearly visible everywhere, according to which when we think positively we are able to attract towards us, in our circle of acquaintances, in the bed of what happens to us , only positive things.
And viceversa. Already vice versa, that of negative self-fulfilling prophecies: “I knew it would end (badly like this)”. “I expected it”… I often hear these phrases from people who have just slammed their noses against the wall of disappointment or bad news, and have within themselves the – sick – awareness of those who knew right away principle that it would go like this.
But how does a negative mindset end up attracting negative things? The speech is slightly different and complex. In fact, we shouldn’t talk about real attraction also because in this way we would do nothing but validate the distorted theses of those who are negative and think that it is already written that certain things must end badly. There is nothing written my dears.
There is that, in the case of pessimists, these people construct dramatic scenarios in their minds (I will fail, I will be left, I will get sick, etc.) and from that point on they do nothing but train their minds to achieve these goals, precisely because , in their hearts, they need to get to the point of being able to say: “it went as I feared”. No my dear, he should be told; she didn’t go as you feared but how, by self-boycotting yourself, you made it happen.
Let’s no longer call it prophecy, but mental training which, in turn, generates actions, choices and decisions that lead to failure; it is as if in these people who default to the negative, there is some sort of automatic pilot towards the abyss which in reality is just a useful idiot invented by our mind to not take responsibility for the fact that it was they who implemented, as mentioned first, wrong actions, choices and decisions.
There is much to be said and investigated about why this incrustation of a negative mindset exists in some people, many to tell the truth. Modern psychology traces the causes back to a family education devoid of positive examples, devoted to “tragedy”, or worse yet fraudulent, or that type of education in which not only the parent has “forgotten” to educate and love the child, but he even made fun of it. What positivity could men and women ever have towards life, who were previously boys and girls accustomed only to swallowing shit at the family level? Then there are those who, despite coming from decent family ecosystems, develop a negative mindset due to major life traumas or disappointments.
For everyone, the first step in trying to change this mindset is to first understand its causes. Psychotherapy can be useful in this thanks to its ability to unroll the parchment of our experience, uncovering manhole covers that we may have tried to close too hastily in the past but which, unfortunately, have not stopped puffing their stench on our lives.
Once we understand the causes of this negative autopilot that has guided our lives up to now, what is perhaps the most difficult part arrives, but certainly the most saving. In short, if you are on a road that is taking you towards a cliff, the best thing you can do at that moment, without knowing how to read or write, is to make a U-turn. And how do you make such a U-turn in a life that until yesterday was only the scenography of a negative prophecy that was coming true? It is clear that “oppositional thinking” is useless in these cases. Telling a person to stop thinking about that failure is just the first incipit for the person to get that thought back into his head.
The inversion arises when our mind manages to focus on a simple yet powerful illumination: instead of continuing to think about what you don’t want to happen to you, start thinking about what you want.
Simple but powerful: you don’t find.
Let me give you an example: suppose your negative self-fulfilling thought is that you are about to get sick. Well, in the face of this self-amplifying compulsive fear, it makes no sense for us or those around us to start saying: “but no, you don’t get sick”. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t change the direction of thoughts which still remains on the straight line between us and the disease, beyond the verse.
We have to change course completely. You don’t need to think about the disease but you don’t even need to think about healing (because it too has the same direction as the disease): you need to think about feeling good. Are you afraid of getting sick? Do something to feel good. The goal must no longer be “I don’t want to get sick” (based on a denial) but “I want to feel good” (based on an affirmation). Change the focus and with it the mental structure with which we produce our thoughts. In our example it means no longer thinking about discomfort but about well-being, perhaps starting to eat well, play sports, sleep properly.
In the end, if you think about it, the result will be the same, because it is clear that a healthy life leads us to move away from the disease, but we will have arrived at this result with a positive mindset, of things to do (sport, diet, etc.) and not of things not to do.
Well, this same paradigm could also be applied to work: don’t be afraid of not achieving that success, but use all your energy to think and reason about things that can generate success at work. It won’t be the fear of being left behind that will convince our partner not to leave us: it will be the fact of trying to be the best version of ourselves every day (by taking care of ourselves, keeping us in shape, nourishing the relationship with beautiful things and not fears) to make us more attractive every day. And so talking with all the examples you want.
Happiness is really one step away from each of us, and often we don’t realize how only small gestures are needed to get there. But they must be positive gestures or devoted to the achievement of a positive and tangible goal.
Also because, generalizing and transcending from the personal to the universal… In the end, if you think about it, it wasn’t thoughts that really changed the world but the actions that sometimes followed. Therefore, it will not be negative thoughts that give the trace of our life. While instead small daily actions in the direction of what we want with all of ourselves are able to revolutionize it. For the better… Ça va sans dire
