Thoughts

There is power in using positive thoughts throughout the day. Research has proven that there are both mental and physical benefits of an optimistic mindset. People who tend to keep on the sunny side have better self-esteem, more confidence, and they are usually motivated and in a good mood.

Did you know that having at least one positive thought each day can dramatically impact you? You care about your health. What if your ideas could affect your heart, blood pressure, and other conditions caused by stress? It sounds too good to be true, but it’s factual.

You can help keep conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes at bay by merely altering your mindset. Some folks think that you must get rid of your problem or have a perfect life to find an inner smile. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

You can learn to find joy and peace, no matter what’s going on outside. When you tend to be positive, then you see things in life to keep you focused on the good things around you.

Sure, it’s easy for you to focus on your problems, negative experiences, or wrong things. However, when you switch to positive thinking, you commit to using your challenges as fuel to drive you to be a better person.

You will notice that it is hard because when you are trying to have positive thoughts, there will always be someone around you trying to be negative. It’s easy to have setbacks and try to switch back to the old mindset. Thankfully, here are some tips that you help you to start having positive thoughts every day.

1. Always Make Time for Humor

There are plenty of funny things that happen around you each day, but you might miss them if you’re caught up in a negative mindset. Try to see the humorous side in things even when they look bad.

Remind yourself that even though it was so embarrassing that you fell down the stairs today and could have got hurt, it made for a great story around the dinner table as you can look at the event and laugh rather than cry.

2. Control Your Mornings

Are your mornings chaotic and a jumbled mess? Did you know if you start your day in chaos, then it’s likely to continue that way? It would help if you had plenty of time to prepare and be up early enough to make sure it’s a good day.

It’s hard for some people to have positive thoughts when they would rather sleep a couple more hours. Start by using positive affirmations and say things like, “Today, I will have a good day.” You will be amazed at how different your life will be when you start each day on the right foot.

3. Don’t Judge

It’s easy to fall into a pattern of judging other people. However, you can’t let yourself get sucked into this malicious trap. It would be best if you learned that everyone is human and infallible.

Don’t be so eager to point fingers at others because it not only is a negative mindset, but it also sets yourself up as superior, which you are not. Remember that everyone is fallible, and you just saw a moment of weakness from someone else.

4. Never Compare Yourself to Others

It’s easy to look at your neighbor’s new car and be a bit jealous because it’s better than yours. You’re human, and you can’t help but be a bit envious. You work just as hard as her, and why shouldn’t you have a vehicle like that?

However, when you compare yourself to others, you are setting yourself up for failure. Be thankful for the blessings you have and have a grateful heart. Gratitude will go a long way in life and keep your positive thoughts on track.

5. Tune Out the Haters

There are always going to be grumbling people in your path. They are mad when it’s too hot, mad when it’s too cold, and they never seem to have anything nice to say. You don’t have to feed into this negativity. You have the power to tune them out and never join in on the conversation.

6. Take Chances in Life

Carpe Diem! If you don’t take chances in life, then you will live with regrets. The “what if” questions can drive your mind crazy. Don’t be afraid to try that new job or go on a date with a new love interest.

You are holding yourself back for fear of failure. You may ask yourself if you will stumble and fall. However, what if you fly? Sometimes you must take the chance and jump.

7. Know that All Things End

Just as all good things come to an end, so will the storms you face in your life. There are a starting and ending point for everything. You may be in a season of financial demise, but remember that this too shall pass.

While there are rainy days with plenty of thunder and lightning, there are always those sunny days that make everything seem better.

8. Don’t Do Things to Satisfy Others

Are you a people pleaser and go out of your way to make others happy? Well, stop it right now! You will get nowhere in life by putting yourself out in the hope of pleasing someone else.

You are feeding negativity into your spirit when you take on more than what you can handle. How can you have positive thoughts when you’re doing something you hate. Learn how to say “no” and take control of your life.

9. Get Rid of Things That Bring You Down

If you don’t like your job, then you should quit. Other jobs will be more exciting, pay better, and bring you some sense of happiness. Life is too short to be caught up in things that make you miserable.

Does your marriage uplift you or bring you down? It would help if you were with a partner who makes you happy, not sad. True love should awaken the soul and set afire down inside. It doesn’t make you see red with anger and feel horrible bout yourself. Fix the things that bring you down, and it will change your whole outlook.

10. Stay Focused on the Good

You will have many things that will come against you during the day to tear you down. There are always obstacles and roadblocks that you must endure. No matter how hard life tries to get at you, keep, those positive thoughts coming.

When you stay focused and make a commitment to remain optimistic, then you won’t let the pessimistic things that come along detour you.

11. Count Your Blessings

Maybe you feel down on yourself because you haven’t counted your blessings. It’s easy to get in the mindset of failure when you are constantly comparing your wealth with someone else. Stop ruminating about all the wrong things and the material possessions that you don’t have in life.

Instead, it would help if you focused on the things that you do have. When you are grateful, the universe will entrust you with more. Count your blessings, no matter how small, and you will see how it will change your entire day.

12. Help Others

To keep those positive thoughts flowing, look around every day, and find someone to help or bless that day. Maybe you buy coffee for the people in line at the donut shop, or perhaps you let someone go ahead of you in line at the BMV.

These little acts of kindness put positive things out into the universe. Karma will come back to you, though that shouldn’t be the motivation for doing good. You have an opportunity every day to make an impact on yourself and others, so you need to utilize the chances you’ve been given.

Final Thoughts on Keeping the Positive Thoughts Going

Listen, there are plenty of things that go wrong in a day or your life that you can ruminate about. If you start making lists of all the wrong things in your life, you won’t even think about all the right things.

When you have thoughts that try to tear you down and make you feel less than others, you need to counteract that negativity with positive thoughts. Sure, you may not have the perfect body, the most excellent car, or the most prominent home. Thankfully, you have a healthy body, a nice vehicle to drive, and a place to lay your head at night.

By merely altering your mindset a bit, you can help keep your heart healthy, your blood pressure in check, and ensure you stay mentally strong. What can you do to make a difference in your life and those around you? Grasp that philosophy, and it will change your life.

A child’s mind is highly impressionable. A lot of the things that you might think kids won’t notice, can ignore, or won’t remember may wind up influencing the people they become as adults. It can be quite the scary and overwhelming thought, especially for parents to many children!

As a parent, you need to be aware of the thoughts your child is exposed to and experiences. Unbeknownst to you, they could be very much affected by these factors, so keep an eye out! Here are five thoughts that can negatively impact a child’s mind.

1.    Negative Comparisons Harm a Child’s Mind

Even if the family environment is one that is loving and supporting, research shows that children as young as six will notice the difference. As you can imagine, this can affect a child negatively. This is then further worsened by our result-oriented society, which cares not for the effort put into a task.

After such comparisons, a child will find themselves wondering if there was a point in any of their efforts. When such thoughts are left to go unchecked, it can cause:

·         Damaged Relationships

It should come as no enormous surprise that children are emotionally vulnerable, and therefore will take your words to heart. Repeated comparison between them and their peers may make them not only despise their peers. They may also despise you for not being on their side. This result will likely damage any positive relationships they have with you and those around them.

·         Jealousy

Constant comparison between their betters will make a child naturally jealous. This only gets worse if they really cannot match up to said better, due to their better’s virtues are always being exaggerated or improved. Such emotions can easily torment a child and transform into hatred and even aggression with enough time and animosity.

·         Negativity

For a child to be measured against others and found repeatedly wanting, it can be hard for them to see themselves in any positive light. As a result, they will likely develop a defeated spirit that struggles with any sort of positive thinking. They will also likely infect others with their negative assumptions, and assume the worst of themselves and of any outcomes that will occur.

·         Nervous Upbringings

A child that is on the regular end of belittling and comparisons will naturally become nervous and jittery, and create in them a tendency to overly focus on pleasing those around them. This habit is because they will develop feelings of inadequacies as they continue to fail meeting expectations. Additionally, these doubts will make them lose any sense of autonomy, natural confidence, and knowledge of boundaries.

·         Self-Doubt

Being repeatedly told that they’re not good enough and that there’s always someone out there that’s better than them will only plant and encourage the seed of self-doubt. This leaves a child discouraged continuously as they double-think their capabilities and skills at every step of the way. They’ll often feel that they aren’t good enough as well.

2.    Jumping To Conclusions

To jump to conclusions is something that children do very often, for better or worse. This is primarily due to their struggles with developing IQ and emotional biases. Further, research reveals to us a significant impact on reasoning errors. If they are already used to negativity and comparisons, they are going to naturally gravitate to assuming the worst.

This behavior can result in them feeling hurt and accused, and be inclined to lash out and blame others when things go wrong. To avoid this, you’ll want to teach your children that:

·         Explain That Others Can Make Mistakes

Not all hurtful actions are intentional or mean-spirited. It is only natural for people to blunder, and those mistakes will often affect those around them – including your child. Despite the harm caused, it is best to teach your child that it’s likely the perpetrator had meant well and accidentally made an honest mistake. As such, they shouldn’t jump to conclusions, and instead, focus on positive thinking and offer the courtesy of forgiveness.

·         Teach Them About The Importance Of Evidence

Children are not rational and logical, and as such, are likely to accuse or suspect people based on gut feelings or baseless reasons. While gut feelings are useful and can be the first sign that something is wrong, your children should learn that it is best to look for real, proper evidence to back up such thoughts and feelings. This can help prevent hurt in the long-run, as looking for information to explain their reasoning may make them realize that they had no real cause at all.

·         Role-Play To Practice

Role-playing can help a child to learn how to empathize with others and understand. This activity encourages them to step into the shoes of others and see how the other person may have felt, and from there, have your child understand how they should, in turn, treat others. For example, you can ask a child about the last time they had accused someone. Then prompt their imagination as you ask your child how they would feel if they were in such a situation – and in turn, how it must’ve made the other person feel.

3.    Catastrophizing

To catastrophize is to magnify or minimize a situation or an outcome for the worst. In a parent, this form of catastrophizing stems from anxiety over a distressing situation – which, as research shows, is a behavior that can pass down to one’s child. This is because:

·         They Will Notice

Despite a parent’s active efforts to conceal their worries from their child, they will unintentionally show those anxieties via their behavior, such as overinvolvement. Children will then learn from such action subconsciously, and internalize that same sort of tension that their parents suffer from.

·         They Become Worried Too

As parent’s overinvolvement may result in them taking away any sense of agency from the child. In the process, this creates a sense of inadequacy, as children don’t successfully learn from their mistakes and situations. This outcome then gets worse in the future, as the child’s worries grow in proportion to increasingly difficult situations that they never learn how to handle.

·         They Struggle To Be Independent

Research tells us that a parent catastrophizing can result in them being more controlling, which takes away a child’s autonomy. Anxious parents are also slower and more reluctant to pull back on parental control, which results in a child struggling to understand how to care for themselves as they grow older.

4.    All-Or-Nothing Thoughts

Studies prove that children naturally struggle with nuance and accuracy. Instead, they’ll lean towards thinking in hyperboles, and gravitate towards the extreme as it is simply easier to understand. This, however, can result in all-or-nothing thinking, which can hurt a child’s self-esteem. It can also make it even more challenging for you as a parent to obtain an accurate picture of the situation when your child tries to tell you about it.

If you notice this happening on the regular, you ought to take this as a red flag that your child may be dealing with more cognitive distortion that is healthy. To break this habit, try:

·         Be A Good Example

Take a look at your behavior. Children tend to copy what they see precisely, so it’s likely that you might be unintentionally teaching them by action. Pay attention to your language, and hold yourself accountable for being accurate when you are communicating yourself.

·         Show Them That False Accusations Are Lies

It’s essential for your children to understand that extreme statements are often similar to lies, as they can be misleading and unfair. This still applies even if your child hadn’t thought of it as a lie, or intended to mislead someone – so long as it’s an untrue statement, it is not okay.

·         Provide Alternatives To This Pattern

Completely stopping a habit is not realistically possible. It’s much more useful for anyone – both child and adult – to instead swap the unwanted behavior with something more positive. For a child who’s still developing their vocabulary, you can try suggesting alternative terms that are more accurate. From there, teach them to practice it and remind them on the regular until it’s replaced their more extreme statements instead.

5.    Negative Labels

While labels are a quick and easy way to identify people, research suggests that they can also be harmful when it is negative and unfair – especially when it is an adult saddling a child with such labels.

When a child is labeled, it affects a child in the following ways:

·         The Labels Become Ingrained

Labels can be difficult to shake off. Doubly so with impressionable children, who are likely to take any negative feelings and words directed their way at face value. Once a child internalizes a label, it also solidifies any negative behavior as something they believe is part of themselves.

·         It Harms Self-Esteem

Negative labels will plant in your child’s mind the consistent negative qualities, even if said quality isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At such a young age, children will see these limiting beliefs as the truth that will shape their thoughts into adulthood permanently. This thinking pattern consequently can affect their sense of self-esteem as well.

·         You Feel Less Empathy

Placing a negative label on a child can make them appear that they are unchanging. It can also create a sense of distance between yourself and your child’s thoughts and emotions, which consequently makes it difficult for you to connect to them and see from their point of view. Instead, you’re more inclined to not look any deeper as you rely on the label to tell you all you need about the child – usually at the child’s expense.

Final Thoughts On Some Things That Can Negatively Impact A Child’s Mind

You don’t have to coddle a child to keep their mind safe. You can be a strict disciplinarian with a fair but firm parenting style. On the other hand, you can be the total opposite and be especially outwardly empathic in your parenting style. Or, you can be somewhere in between. These are all valid and workable parenting choices.

But the fact remains that, no matter what you choose, you still need to be a good parent and learn how what a child experiences can impact their mind. Learn to take note of thoughts that can harm a child and the way they develop and mature, then work to prevent or change them. You’ll be glad when your child doesn’t have to deal with these thoughts years down the line!