Positivity mind challenge

[Brian]

So until NYE, I made a pact with myself that for every negative thought, it must be balance out with 3 positive thoughts. A lot of people tries to suppress the negative thoughts, and i think it's a futile thing to do. Negative thoughts will come, it's part of our habits. The thing is, not to let your mind completely take over and indulge in it, but rather acknowledge it then immediately flooded your mind with more positive thoughts. First, you dont reward your mind for negative thoughts, and second, you build a habit of creating more positive thoughts, two birds with one stone.

To me, this is like body building for the mind. Over the years, after hanging out with tons of friends who are super negative, not to mention myself who are super negative, i have come to the conclusion that nothing good can come from being super negative. It kills two things about you; motivation and happiness.

Without motivation, you cannot accomplish anything in life, and that include picking up women. Happiness is self explanatory, the bottom line in life is to feel happy. Every moment of your life should be filled with joy.

So this exercise is to increase both my motivation and more importantly, my happiness.

You guys are welcome to join in.

[Guyintheback]

Sounds like I could benefit a lot from that. I'm in.

In the last two weeks I was twice told something a long the lines of "You seem to be the glass-is-half-empty type of person".

[Edmond Dantès]

Hey Brian, I went from a negative, depressed guy to a positive-thinking, life-embracing guy, though I have to say that I'm not all the time happy, but nobody can be happy for 24/7.

But what I want to tell you is that everyone can change his mind-patterns. It's a bit like "mind-aikido" as you try to reframe your thoughts. At first it might be quite hard, because you're not used to see the positive meaning of an action that happened, because the negative meaning is far more obvious. But everytime when some kind of event like that happens, ask yourself this question: "What other meaning can this have?"
It forces you to search for another meaning that could be more helpful for you than the old meaning, because you can't change the event nor the past (as long as you're not the Prince of Persia ), but you can choose your reaction towards that event. Every event has actually no meaning, we just give it a meaning. And as we give it a meaning, we can actually change that meaning as well. It's not set in stone.

In my experience are there a few things that really trigger your happiness, for example:

-doing sport
-being outside
-having a vivid social circle & hobbies
-making progress
-gratitude
-living purposely

I guess you figured out most of them, but another exercise I really recommend for you is the "Gratitude Exercise" from Anthony Robbins (One of the few things that he really got right)
The Goal of this exercise is that you become more aware of the things that you can be grateful for as this triggers your happiness. So you should take a walk and be grateful for everything that comes to your mind for about 10-15 minutes. Be grateful for everything that comes to your mind. Just don't stop till the time is over and you get an extra cookie, if you actually really say these things loud. Give it a try

Believe me, if you're able to turn your thoughts in the right direction, this will have an massive effect on your happiness, attitude towards life and charisma. You'll become magnetic, because who doesn't want to be around a happy person?

[Mark]

When I saw the thread title, I immediately got weary. But I think this is pretty solid. Best of luck. I'm going to hold you to this in your forum posts.

[BudCrow]

I'm in.

[Nez]

I dig it. I do believe that it is helpful, important even to work off of a base of being positive. Being positive is a choice, just as being negative is a choice. Though once you achieve that base, treat it like meditation, as a boat. When you get to the other side of the river, you no longer need that boat.

For me I moved from trying to be positive to acceptance. I do my best to accept things, to observe them and to enjoy the experiences they provide, positive or negative. And with that habit of positive thought, you will be more open to it. It's all emotion and it's all something that will help you grow, so long as you don't let it consume you. (little personal blurb coming)

I'm Bipolar, which means a few things. For one, no matter how much control I practice, there are going to be periods of time where I get thrown into a place that I'd rather not be. It also means that no matter what life is doing, nothing that I feel is going to be constant. I can be depressed to the point of suicidal or manic to the point of scribbling on the wall (thank the powers that meditation, healthy living and positive thinking prevent it from getting that bad most of the time), but it's only going to last so long. In a few weeks it'll even out and then evolve into something new. I take comfort in this, and it helps me to really feel out the experience and (in a strange way) enjoy it. It might take me, but it does not consume me. In this way, negative experiences which could create a negative view point are instead quite rich -in a listening to Radio Head and pouring your soul onto a canvas sort of way.

I like to relate it to the experience of being infatuated for the first time. Not being able to eat or sleep, close to obsessive thoughts. It's a very intense emotional experience, and one I've heard that some people miss at times when they move to a more confident place in life.