How Positive Thinking Reduces Anxiety
Does Positive Thinking Increase Joy and Reduces Anxiety?
“If you pay heed to the darkness, you will never find the light.” This statement by Thomas Richards, a psychologist for The Anxiety Network, explains the effects of negativity on our lives.
Negativity can pull us down and keep us from reaching our full potential.
It can also hide “the light” from us and keep us focused on things we cannot change. Positive thinking, however, can reverse this cycle. This type of thinking is proven to reduce our anxiety and stress, improve our overall health and even gives us coping mechanisms for the future.
How To Think Positive
Thinking positive is sometimes simple and sometimes not; it is easy to think positive after receiving good news or during life’s good times. However, how about in those less than perfect times? It is important to understand how to think positive and to learn to train your brain this way. Positive thinking isn’t just ignoring every single bad experience.
It is meeting that bad experience head on and seeing the light inside of it. You can think positive by making a decision to. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Positive thinking centers significantly around self-talk, which equates to a constant stream of unspoken thoughts running through a person’s head. ” Is you self talk coming from a monkey mind full of regret, judgments and remorse?
Make this self-talk positive. Remind yourself that these things come and go but there is always something good to come from it. “If you live long enough you will find that everything is a blessing! And you are enough!” says Taylore Vance
The Mental Effects
It is scientifically proven that living a positive lifestyle reduces anxiety and stress.
The Mayo Clinic discusses these effects and states that being positive is linked to lower rates of depression. They said, “If you have less distress, then you will have better emotional and physical well-being, although scholars have not yet determined why this is so.” Don’t worry they will eventually figure it out!
Could it be that stress is a low vibration, while less stress accounts for a little higher vibration? We feel better when we have high vibrations. When you are low – you feel low.
The main principle behind this phenomenon is that positive thinking and a positive attitude enables people to cope better with stress, which helps to reduce its harmful health effects on your body. Your mind and your body are one together. Coming from the heart is much better than always being in the mind and the brain. Coming from the heart (your Soul) is very healing and you will always do the correct actions.
When you are feeling ill or in bad repair, your mind also tends to feel inadequate and may lean towards the negative. Anxiety is a product of negative thinking. By thinking positive, even when you are down, you can change these effects on your brain and thereby reduce anxiety.
The Physical Effects
As stated before, negative thinking can reflect on your body in an unhealthy way. The Mayo Clinic states that positive thinking can also lead to increased life span, greater resistance to the common cold and reduced the chance of death from cardiovascular disease.
It is also believed that optimistic people tend to live healthier lives, they exercise more, follow a healthy diet, and take better care of themselves.
Remember that your thoughts can reflect on the body, just like your body condition can effect your mind. By thinking positive and reducing your anxiety, you may stop health risks in their tracks. You can think healthier and therefore become healthier.
For The Future
You can see that thinking positive has major life altering effects. Although it is crucial to think positive in the present, it can also give you coping mechanisms for future stressors and anxieties.
By using your positivity to combat your anxieties now, you will learn what works for you and what doesn’t. Self-talk and positive affirmations may work for some while writing down positive quotes or listening to upbeat music may work for others. Your mission is to take your life conditions in you hand and find what works for you.
The coping mechanisms that you discover now can be used to reduce your anxiety in the future, or, help lower it altogether.
Positivity thinking does reduce anxiety.
Positive thinking can do a whole lot more. It can help deflect the common cold, aid you in creating a healthier lifestyle, and even keep you grounded in stressful situations. By using self-talk, or creating a coping mechanism all your own, you can train your brain to be a positive thought-making factory.
You can change your life on your own by beginning at the root: your own thoughts. What were you thinking to bring your life to this point? Simple changes mean the world to you and your health, wealth and longevity.