Herm Albright once quipped, ““A positive attitude may not solve all
your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the
effort.” Many thousands have praised the importance of possessing a
positive attitude, but can one truly be positive about anything without
first being positive about oneself? Any truly positive outlook on life
always begins first with a truly positive outlook on yourself. Any
truly positive outlook always begins with thinking positively rational.
Being Positive Does Not Mean Being Irrational!
I once used to think that being positive meant that I had to be
irrational. Let me explain. When I was younger, I had a skin problem
that caused me some measure of embarrassment in high school. For about
six years, the skin problem caused me to start thinking rather
negatively about myself. Every time I heard someone talk about being
positive, it would irritate me because I thought: How can I be positive
about myself when I have this skin problem! The answer lies in thinking
positively rational. Does my skin problem define everything about me?
Am I disqualifying everything else about me that is not problematic? Am I
thinking in all or nothing terms? You see, the answer to many people’s
life problems are simply irrational beliefs about themselves.
Rational is Positive (In the Right Context)
On the other side of the pendulum, if things are really bad in your life, thinking rationally about yourself may at first seem negative.
The fact is that if we are in a mess, it’s probably our fault.
Wouldn’t thinking rationally about yourself make you feel worse about
yourself? Well yes, it that’s where you left your thinking.
You do not
leave your thinking in your areas of defeat or the areas you do not like
about yourself. If you got yourself into a mess, isn’t rational to
believe that you can get yourself out? Isn’t it rational to believe that
you too can make right choices for a better future? Yes, you can! It
takes being rational to be truly positive.
Seeing Yourself Rationally and Positively Will Increase Self Image and Success
Most of the people I know who are not successful do not think
rationally about themselves or positive about their futures. Here’s a
story to help illustrate what I mean: The person who always seems to be
self-sabotaging themselves. This self-sabotaging person with a poor
self-image goes around all day wondering why everyone else is so much
happier and more successful than they are. They struggle daily with
feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and social anxiety. Why does that
person always seem to get all the breaks?
Why am I so stupid? Why does
no one like me? He asks these kinds of questions daily and feels hateful
towards other successful people. What’s his problem? His problem is
simple: He is thinking negatively irrational instead of positively
rational. Did you catch the irrationality of his questions?
Why does that person seem to get all the breaks? They get all the breaks? Does he even know what breaks this person got? What about all the hard work the successful person has done?
Why am I so stupid? Stupid is simply a label some people like to use to describe a person’s behavior. Though we may feel stupid sometimes, most of us are not stupid. We
may have made some bad choices, but we usually were operating from the
best information we had at the time or we knew the right choice and
failed to make the right choice. Either way, our IQ is not the question. Thus, stupid is not the issue.
Why does no one like me? No one likes you. Really? Not even
your mom? It’s true that sometimes people are liked more by others than
they like you or I. Most of the time, people simply like someone else
more because that person shows more interest in them. It has nothing
to do with likeability. Likeability comes from liking yourself, which
begins with thinking positively rational about yourself.
Conclusion
I hope that I have opened some of your eyes to the idea of thinking
positively rational about yourself and your life. If you will begin to
think more rationally and positively about yourself, your life will
dramatically change. You will feel happier, healthier, have more
friendships, do better at work and do amazing things you may not have
thought possible.
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