Positive Psychology

Applied Positive Psychology: Positive Affirmations Manifest

by

Key Ways that Positive Affirmations Change Lives for the Better – Applied Positive Psychology

The way in which you think about yourself greatly influences how you live your own life. If you have constantly put yourself down, you negatively impact your own self-esteem and the way that you engage with others.

Alternatively, when you adopt positive thinking about who you are as a person, you pave the way for a new future and a new way of interacting with others. When you are serious about improving the way you live, act, and believe, you should learn the five key ways that positive affirmations can manifest themselves in your everyday life.

Applied Positive Psychology

Here are the 5 ways positive affirmations manifest in life – applied positive psychology:

1. Confidence

Positive affirmations help give you new confidence about yourself and your life. When you believe that you are a good person and worthy of respect and love, you feel more confident about not only yourself but also about the impact that you make every day.

You may be more upbeat when speaking to others and exhibit more genuine emotions toward friends, family members, and even strangers. You also may seek out interactions instead of hiding from them entirely. This newfound confidence may even allow you to make new friends or perhaps establish more meaningful and productive romantic relationships.

2. Better Decision Making

When you positively affirm what you believe about yourself and your everyday life, you will begin making better decisions. When you thought negatively, you may have had little regard for your own happiness and well-being.

However, when you welcome and accept positive affirmations, you may take the time to think things through and make choices that are in your own best interests. You may see the wisdom in advocating for yourself and what is best for your future. You also may do so without second guessing yourself or feeling guilty about putting yourself first for once.

3. New Friendships

Positive affirmations also manifest themselves in the forging of new friendships. When you think of yourself in a positive light, you realize that you are worthy of friends who have the highest level of affection and respect for you. You want to be around people who will treat you well and reaffirm the belief that you are a good and worthy person.

Forging new friendships can be vital to changing the manner in which you live your life. By getting rid of bad influences, you pave the way for making your own future better and avoiding thought processes that contributed to self-loathing and negative behavior in the past. Your new friends will become more valuable and positive assets to you and your life going forward.

4. Re-evaluation of Family Ties

The old adage says that you can pick your friends but not your family. In reality, you do have some power over to what degree you associate with family members who may be a bad influence on you.

If you have relatives that put you down or take advantage of you, it is not out of the question to reevaluate how much time you want to spend with them. The positive affirmations that you adopt for your life give you the power and the confidence to rethink those relationships and adjust them accordingly.

5. Mentoring Opportunities

Finally, positive affirmations can manifest themselves in your life by giving you the opportunity to become a mentor to someone else. Overcoming your own self-loathing, doubt, and negativity gives you the experience you need to understand where others in your former position are coming from and in what direction they need to go to change their own lives.

As with many people in your situation who have forged new paths for the future, you have valuable insight that even the most skilled and highly trained therapist or counselor does not possess. Who better to mentor someone down on his or her luck than you?

Seeing the positive impact you make on someone’s life likewise can be a manifestation of positive affirmations in your own. As you rebuild your own future, you should welcome the chance to pay forward what you have learned about why positive affirmations are vital to your everyday life.

Your point of view plays a key role in the way you act, believe, and live. Develop a routine that incorporates positive affirmations and you will begin to see these five benefits manifest themselves in your life.

Positive Thoughts

About the Author

Adam Gerbman

Adam Gerbman

Adam has worked with various mental health and addictive substances and alcohol treatment centers in the Los Angeles area as both a Recovery Empowerment Coach and Management Consultant. Adam is a regular practitioner of yoga, fitness and a vast array of spiritual practices. Adam’s current role is Chief Strategy Officer for Vantage Point Recovery.

Positive Words Research – Applied Positive Psychology 5 Ways Positive Affirmations Manifest In Life

4 Feelings Which Prevent You to Start a New Positive Life

by

All people in the world have one common goal in life – achieving true happiness. The main factor that holds us back from leaving a positive life and achieving cherished dreams is, simply and solely, our own selves.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, we allow feelings of regret, frustration, and shame to form our actions in the present and have a huge influence on our future. We put limitations on ourselves worrying about everything and holding stress in our minds. Trying not to give serious thought to our emotions, we replay past experiences and mistakes in the head over and over again. After a while, we begin to accept this state of permanent tensions as the norm. As a result, it leads to serious health problems and even panic attacks.

When your positive emotions are tied to all circumstances in your life, this is no way to live. In fact, there are so many ways we can alleviate negative feelings. Once you no longer let them guide you, you discover the flows of natural calmness inside. There is an unchangeable truth – life driven by feelings won’t make you happy. Let’s shine the spotlight on some feelings you need to let go of in order to start a completely new positive life and become a happier person.

4 Feelings Which Prevents You to Start a Completely New Positive Life

Anger and Bitterness

Did you know that these feelings can eat you from the inside? Making peace with someone who has hurt you is not only about forgiving the other person. First of all, it’s all about letting it go and relieving the pain in your heart.

If you hide your anger deep inside, sooner or later it will leak out and affect people around you (and not just an individual who offended you). Remember that the one who angers you controls you. If possible, express your pain to the cause of your upset. This may help you move on without holding onto bitterness.

Negativity

What you send to the universe comes back to you, right? So why don’t you change the way you think? Honestly speaking, we all have been there. Sometimes life knocks us down, and we begin to feel disappointment in everything.

Negative thoughts may cause overthinking which in its turn makes any problem bigger than it is. Thus, you center around a glass half empty then rather half full. You have to choose whether continue to feel bad about everything around you or take responsibility for your own happiness. Believe that there are so many things to be grateful for. Decide to appreciate them, around yourself with positive-minded people, and you’ll see there is nothing impossible for a positive thinker.

Insecurity

People full of happiness tend to accept who they are, radiate confidence, and don’t look back. Spending too much time in the past and reflecting upon old mistakes leads to new failures over and over again. On the other side, thinking too much about the future evokes monsters and worries in your mind.

There is no need to be insecure in life. If there is something that makes you feel concerned about, go out of your comfort zone and strive to change it. Focus on things that are going on around you at this moment, because only you have the power to create a better version of yourself.

Jealousy

People who show jealous of other’s success can’t live a happy positive life. True freedom comes when you appreciate what you have and feel no envy at others. Every person is unique. So if someone has something you want, don’t be jealous. Instead of getting offensive, set your own goals and do your best to achieve them.

Jealous can steal your happiness and bring negativity into your life. Don’t waste your precious time looking at others. Your days will be much better if you can overcome this creepy feeling.

Conclusion – Positive Life

Life will never be plain sailing without challenges. There will always be dark hours as well as times of joy and pure happiness. But what the most important thing to remember is that even in the pitch darkness you can always find sources of blessing. The only thing you have to do to live a full positive life is to stop being a slave to your feelings.

4 feelings to give up for a positive life

About the Author:

Veronica Hunt

Veronica Hunt is an edtech expert and an experienced content marketer from Philadelphia, PA. As a blogger, she sees her purpose in providing her readers with up-to-date info in the spheres of marketing, entrepreneurship, and psychology. Currently, works for Aplusonly as a content manager. Apart from work, she adores traveling and yoga. Follow @VeronicaHuntt on Twitter or find her on Facebook.

Positive Words Can Change Your Brain And Restructure It

by

The words you choose to use can literally transform your brain because positive words can change your brain.

While researching about positive words this article came up: “Speak with kindness: How your words literally restructure your brain“. From this article you can understand the followings:

Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, and Mark Robert Waldman, a communications expert, have written together the book, “Words Can Change Your Brain.” In this book, they write, “a single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.” When we use positive words like “love”, “peace” and “loving-kindness”, we can modify our brain functions by increasing cognitive reasoning and strengthening areas in our frontal lobes. Using positive words more often than negative words can activate the motivational centers of the brain, propelling them into action.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when we use negative words, we are preventing certain neurochemicals from being produced which contribute to stress management. So, when we allow negative words and concepts into our thoughts, we are increasing the activity in our brain’s fear center (the amygdala), and causing stress-producing hormones to flood our system. These hormones and neurotransmitters interrupt the logic and reasoning processes in the brain and inhibit normal functionality. Newberg and Waldman write, “Angry words send alarm messages through the brain, and they partially shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers located in the frontal lobes.”

An excerpt from their book tells us how using the positive words can literally change our reality:

“By holding a positive and optimistic [word] in your mind, you stimulate frontal lobe activity. This area includes specific language centers that connect directly to the motor cortex responsible for moving you into action. And as our research has shown, the longer you concentrate on positive words, the more you begin to affect other areas of the brain.

Functions in the parietal lobe start to change, which changes your perception of yourself and the people you interact with. A positive view of yourself will bias you toward seeing the good in others, whereas a negative self-image will include you toward suspicion and doubt. Over time the structure of your thalamus will also change in response to your conscious words, thoughts, and feelings, and we believe that the thalamic changes affect the way in which you perceive reality.”

A study done by Positive Psychology further elaborates on the effects of using positive words. A large group of adults aged 35-54 were asked to write down three things that went well for them that day, including an explanation of why. This exercise is also called “the gratitude and appreciation journal”. Over the next three months, their degrees of happiness continued to increase, and their feelings of depression continued to decrease, even though they had discontinued the writing experiment. By focusing and reflecting on positive language, thoughts, feelings, and emotions, we can improve our overall well-being and increase the functionality of our brain.

What words do you choose to focus your energy on? If you notice your life isn’t exactly “happy,” try carrying a journal with you, for a week, to keep track of how often you use positive words. Then insert your written thoughts in our online free application Positive Words Researcher and check the words you have used in your thinking in the last week. The online tool also gives you a list of positive words not thought of you, so you can learn new ones and improve your positive thinking.

Researching more about positive words the next article came up: Words Can Change Your Brain.

The author of this article start with a funny affirmation: “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can change your brain. That’s right.”.

From this article, you can understand that positive words can “alter the expression of the genes”, “propel the motivational centers of the brain into action” and “build resiliency”.

In comparison with good words, “angry words send alarm messages through the brain, and they partially shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers located in the frontal lobes,” write Newberg and Waldman in the book “Words Can Change Your Brain”.

Researching, even more, another article came up: How Do Words, such as Yes and No, Change Our Brains and Lives?

This author of this article writes about the neuroscience of language, consciousness, and communication. One of the conclusions written in the article is ” to modify Compassionate Communication in a fundamental way: when conversing with others, we should limit ourselves, whenever possible, to speaking for 20 or 30 seconds, for even a single sentence can contain more than 4 chunks of information. When we limit ourselves to this 30-second “rule,” the brain quickly adapts by filtering out irrelevant information. There’s another advantage to speaking briefly: it interrupts our ability to express negative emotions.”

More article to sustain the fact that positive words can change your brain:

Molecular Thoughts