When you say the way you think will inevitably yield you certain results you reinforce the idea that different thinking will yield different results. People in sales will often tell their sales force to think positive. But that only works for those who are feeling positive already. If you tell a person who is experiencing negative feelings to think positive you can immerse them deeper. When you feel better you evoke better feeling thoughts. Your thinking is pointed in a more lofty direction and that’s what you want for success, a greater sense of self esteem. Your coaching would be more effective if you could raise the level of their feelings to be better place than where they might be.

The only people you would say ‘think positive’ to, are people you feel are not thinking that way. You don’t tell everyone who doesn’t think negative to think differently. And what they hear when you keep reminding them to think positive is that they think negatively. So at a deeper level they are being reminded that they must be negative thinkers. It’s worse than that, every time you harp on the idea they try harder but every effort makes real what they are resisting.

If you think healthy thinking is indeed healthy for you, you do affirm one thing that is very important, that what you think matters. No doubt about it. However, that is all you are doing, you are making it real that what you think influences the outcomes in life, negative or not. A more dominant negative person, who may for the moment feel good about himself, can be pushed into re-igniting the negative beliefs about himself when he is reminded to think positive. And if he tries hard to think that way he further stirs his negative beliefs. In that state any bit of negative evidence life brings forth may continue to flame those emotions.

It’s just not as simple as telling someone to think differently. I have coached many young athletes and students and what is important for them is to have an understanding of both where thoughts come, and what causes them to come forth. When you are deeply worried the thoughts that come to you are not happy thoughts and when you have a feeling of happiness and joy the thoughts that come to you are a match. One needs to know his or her thinking is always preceded by the emotions and feelings which give rise to them. Always, always, and did I say, always.

You alter the conversation from negative to positive or from the undesired to the desired by deliberately choosing better feelings, to have better feeling thoughts. It’s quite true that you can not be experiencing deep worry and in a moment cause yourself to experience jubilation. But you can however, with the willingness to seek out a better feeling thought, a very small happier feeling thought; you can cause yourself to get there. Reach for a better feeling thought no matter how small and then reach further and then further. You will notice changes in the physical reality as you begin to build an ability to do this. You will be thinking ‘positive thoughts’. Moreover your ability to attract what you desire in your present activity is enhanced.

By intending to move from whatever the emotions you are experiencing to even a small improvement in your feeling about whatever your immediate concern is, will cause you to point yourself in a direction of no resistance and freedom. My youngest daughter is a waitress and she realizes that the happier she can be she seems to receive far better tips. You do better in school, at work, in your studies, in all areas of your life when you can live your life always choosing to be happy. You are recognized as a ‘positive person’.

When you catch yourself speaking something or thinking something you feel negative about, never add to it by making yourself wrong. Use it to make yourself stronger by quickly looking for something that feels better. Dom DeLuise recently passed away and Burt Reynolds said that Dom never had an unkind word to say about anyone. How wonderful an example is that? In my next article on this subject I will be suggest some things you could do when you are in a ‘negative’ mood and wish to get yourself out.