Positive Thinking

Why should we think positively? I was asked this question on Saturday at a seminar I did in Stafford, although the questioner accepted that thinking negatively all the time was not really a good thing, he wasn’t sure that thinking positive all the time was a good thing either.

We had got to the part in the day where I was talking about how our expectation dictated to a great degree what actually happened within our lives and of course we got on to the subject of  ‘things beyond our control’.

So let me clarify, expectation certainly effects us, even science is now coming to the conclusion that what we expect to happen exerts an influence on what does happen. We are not however talking about where you expect the rain to ruin your BBQ and it does indeed rain, because of course the focus and intention you would have to have to create that is well beyond the reach of the majority of us.

Expectation as I talk about it is where we expect other people to react to us in a certain way, depending on whether we expect a good or bad reaction, this expectation will dictate our behaviour.  So think about this, if you expect a bad outcome, you’ll probably behave defensively, which will effect how they react to you!

So the question I was asked was “wouldn’t it be better not to have any expectations?” He explained that he could see why it was a good idea not to have low expectations but he was concerned that one should perhaps aim for ‘neutral’ expectations, so that if as sometimes happens you don’t get exactly what you want, you also won’t be disappointed.

For me, the answer is ‘positive is best‘ because it ‘stacks the odds’ in favour of your desired outcome! No, it doesn’t guarantee the desired outcome but it does weight the scales in your favour and for me, that’s good enough!