Positive Thinking, Emotions, Behavior and Health

Thinking is free, it doesn't cost money, we do it and we can all do it, so let's use our thinking to get the most out of our emotions. Negative thoughts generate a lot of anxiety, a lot of emotional discomfort and considerably alter people's behavior in such a way that They disturb their experiences, rob us of well-being and harmony with ourselves and with others, can even cause serious psychosomatic disorders, but the worst consequence is that They cause such a state of dissatisfaction, sadness, insecurity, anxiety and such a lack of vitality and a physical and mental discomfort so great that life goes consuming little by little, causing impotence, helplessness, irritability against everything, displeasure and inability to survive and maintain the illusion for life and therefore that surrounds us.

In this PsychologyOnline article, we will talk about positive thinking, emotions, behavior and health.

Index

1. Positive thinking
2. Health
3. Relationship between positive thinking and health
4. How to think positive
5. Benefits of positive thinking
6. Negative and positive emotions
7. Learning by repetition
8. Detect errors
9. Avoid worrying about what hasn't happened
10. Psychotherapies
11. Resume

The positive thoughts Conversely enhance positive emotions (joy, longing, happiness, illusion, physical well-being ...), but also many behaviors aimed at gratification and problem solving. Those who enjoy these emotions have been shown to increase their health. There is even talk of up to 10 years apart.

When the mood is dark, life in general is depressing, but if the mood improves, the social relationships, hopes for the future, the illusion for everything is much more active, rewarding and positive.

We live in a society that increasingly asks us for more, that demands a titanic effort to increase assets materials, social prestige and everything that is presented as desirable but that ends with the health of the person. There is always someone to compare ourselves to and we will always find someone who is above us and who has more than us.

We are in a society where happiness is sought above all and that is what is sold to us: beaches, trips, cars, hotels, parties, drugs, sales, contests, expensive and cheap clothes, glamor... Many people think so they had a lot of money they would be immensely happy because they could buy happiness, but that is not the case since we find ourselves with high rates of depression, anxiety or other pathologies.

The Health is the result of balance between body and mind. For this reason, more and more importance is given to psychological aspects, both in health and, above all, in disease. People who feel happy and content are, for example, less vulnerable to the development of heart disease, among others, compared to those who tend to pessimism, sadness or feel unfortunate. In addition, having a positive attitude towards life lengthens it and, in case of illness, helps to strengthen the immune system. It is even an important factor in the recovery process from certain serious pathologies such as cancer.

The optimism is essential for health, pessimism as an attitude to life causes a much more fragile physical health, greater depression, greater anxiety, greater physical and mental tension and consequently a higher mortality rate. Numerous investigations demonstrate this.

The distress, that feeling of permanent overwhelm, of ongoing emotional distress, produces very surprising changes in the functioning of the brain, our internal organs and in the hormonal constellation. Through various studies it has been found that a minute dedicated to a negative thought leaves the immune system, for a few hours, in a delicate situation due to the physical and emotional stress that provokes.

If we stop for a bit to think about what kind of changes can occur with excess worry and anxiety, we see, for example, that it has the ability to damage memory and learning neurons located in the hippocampus. It also affects our intellectual capacity because it leaves those areas of the brain most necessary to make adequate decisions without blood supply.

Now, do we have the resources to combat that inner enemy or is that just a wise thing to do? A valuable resource against worry is to focus attention on practicing eg. the abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing, which alone has the ability to produce changes in the brain. It favors the secretion of hormones such as serotonin and endorphin, in addition to improving the tuning of the cerebral rhythms between the two cerebral hemispheres.

Recent research has shown the correlation between positive thinking and physical and mental health. Thought clearly influences our physical and mental state. A person with negative thoughts will feel depressed, anxious, with low motivation and with low self-esteem, they will be more prone to present lumbar and cervical disorders, gastric discomfort, cardiology... A more positive attitude towards life improves the system cardiovascular and blood circulation, improves good mood in addition to functional and cognitive capacity but above all improves considerably health.

Positive emotions play a very important role "not only in the prevention of diseases but also in their prognosis because a faster recovery is achieved". "People who promote positive emotions will have better prognoses, in the face of the same disease, than those who do not."

A common answer, as is the anxiety in certain situations, it is not only seen in the expression of the face, but it also generates internal physiological changes, such as tachycardia, sweating, tremors, dry mouth, increased muscle tension, tension pain... The disease will be reduced or increased depending on how we tell the things and how we interpret the events and stressful circumstances of everyday life while playing a very important role the own style of lifetime.

If the anxiety or stress response causes frequent, long-lasting, or intense physiological activation, the organs may affected cannot recover and as a consequence a physiological disorder may occur in several or in a single organ. The nervous, endocrine and immune systems are closely related due to the multitude of anatomical and physiological pathways that interact with each other. For this reason, psychological factors can affect the prognosis of many diseases, through their influence on the immune system (psychoneuroimmunology). How a person copes and reacts to different anxiety or stressful situations can be as important in establishing the prognosis of a disease as many of the parameters doctors.

A positive thinking, is incompatible with a negative emotion or with an unpleasant mood, sometimes even though the situations are negative we can find healthier and more adaptive thoughts than They can help us to consider other alternatives, to see the solutions more effectively, to feel a little better and with more strength. inside.

It is not the first time that we have heard the following message from seriously ill patients: “Now is when I am really happy, before I only thought about working, earning money, promoting, succeed. However, now, with all my fears, I consider myself happy, it is now when I enjoy things that before I did not value or take into account, I live what I am having to live, I do not deny my illness, nor do I try to ignore it, this illness has made me understand unsuspected things about myself, now I am moved by life around me, my family, my partner, my children, my friends, those who come to see me, those who greet me, those who ask about me and spend time with me, all accept me as I am, not for my money, or for what I have achieved in the life, but for me as a person, for my values, for my sensitivity, for my affection and affection towards them, for my gratitude, things that cost very little but that used to happen to me unnoticed. Now despite my illness is when I am really happy because I enjoy things that do not require any effort but are nonetheless so important to me.

Thinking is free Let's learn to think! A positive thought has to deny the negative, continually confront it and look for other alternatives that deny it, that contrast it but above all that allow us to see reality from another point of view in order to verify the results produced by the consequences generated by the choice of other more rational, more adaptive and more rewarding alternatives.

The Positive thinking is something that can be learned. How many times do we visualize the same negative scenes over and over again, how many times do we repeat them to ourselves, tell ourselves in a thousand ways and all the worse, how many times do we anticipate it? negative and we recreate in pain, worry, fear, anguish, despair, helplessness... Have you ever wondered what would happen if we did the opposite? What if we told each other the same stories over and over but from a positive point of view and we would recreate it? There are two words that are magic: MAY L! Y I WANT! I can do it, I want to do it, I just have to try.

There is no age for changeScience has already proven it. Our brain has great plasticity, so if we think and feel that our age of maximum production and capacity has no limits and we act accordingly, our brain will grow because we will put in place all the necessary mechanisms for this and we will activate new neural circuits and with them we will increase our possibilities.

Before every problem, let's relax, let's think that we are able to solve it, let's remove inhibition and blockage and act accordingly. Let's repeat over and over again that we are going to do everything possible to solve it, which we are going to take into account other alternatives, that our effort will not be in vain, that we will try..., and the solution reach. Let's not waste time or energy in lamentations or in unproductive and ineffective things that are useless, let's use that energy in providing solutions, in mobilizing to solve, using all the resources at our disposal and the solution will come.

A positive thought always provokes positive, extremely pleasant emotions and enormous physical and psychological benefit. A positive thought brings out the best of ourselves. A positive thought power relaxation, self-esteem and security, helps to value and love ourselves, to feel proud of ourselves and to recognize our worth, to increase motivation to fight, to live and to enjoy life. Our physical and mental reactions, our behaviors and feelings depend on how we tell our own stories and how much credibility we give them.

Learning to generate positive thoughts is learning to enhance skills and resources towards a better resolution of any problem, is learning to stimulate and enhance hope, optimism, facing adversity, motivation towards the achievement of objectives, emotional strengths, quality of life and ultimately increase our physical and mental health in such a way that allows us acquire a greater perception of cognitive, emotional, social, behavioral and physiological control, which will put us in the best position to transform and generalize some much more appropriate reactions to any situation that requires greater adaptation and coping while stimulating personal transformation and better social adaptation.

The benefits of positive thinking, in physical and psychological health, are incalculable because they provide:

• More relaxation (a relaxed organism is an organism that physically and psychologically works much better).
• More peace, serenity, balance, harmony in our relationships with others and with ourselves.
• More positive dreams and more optimism.
• Greater action and greater mobilization when it comes to solving any problem, no matter how difficult it may seem.
• Greater creativity and dynamism.
• Greater clarity and efficiency.
• Greater concentration.
• More respect for ourselves and for others.
• More illusions, more desire to enjoy, more desire to live, more desire to share the best moments of our life ...

We all know what we do not want, what we do not like, but when they ask us about our qualities and virtues we doubt, if they ask us about our defects or due to negative aspects of our life we ​​quickly answer, maybe not in the presence of other people but we tell ourselves continuously. It is evident that we pay much more attention and much more time and energy to negative aspects of life, than to the positives. Let's change that attitude and turn around! Like any learning, it is a matter of effort, practice and time dedicated to achieving it.

If one has a negative attitude towards life, when real problems and difficulties appear, the person will not be in a position to assume them, let us say that pessimism will act as a factor of vulnerability.

The negative emotions They lead to depression, anxiety, insecurity and general malaise. Extensive research shows how positive emotions make it much easier to start thinking patterns. more receptive, flexible, creative and decisive, in addition to favoring the issuance of novel and highly rewarding.

The optimism can also act as wellness and health enhancer in those people who, without presenting disorders, want to improve their quality of life. Humor "serves as an internal safety valve that allows us to release tension, dispel worries, relax and forget about everything that can make us unhappy."

We have the key to positive emotions, it is essential to look for situations that make us feel well-being, such as: dancing, walking, laughing, talk with friends, love, and above all use the most important key despite the situations "THINK WELL, OR THE BEST YOU CAN, THAT EVERYTHING IS LEARNED", get rid of negative thoughts that only lead to harmful and damaging responses and emotions, all those emotions become encyst and cause a lot of damage emotional.

When we use negative words continuously "this is terrible" "this is horrible" "I can't take it anymore" "I'm not worth it" "it sure will happen to me again" "why me"... from repeating them so much we end up believing them and turning them into truths absolute, feeling impotence and a great emotional discomfort that generates extremely harmful and unpleasant emotions due to all these negative expressions that so many times we tell ourselves, allowing with this narrative that our brain works and responds, based on all this, as if it were really certain.

The brain works by repetition. Repeat things over and over. When something is of special importance to him, our brain responds and produces an emotional, alert and arousal response. Good or bad, the brain repeats that same response over and over to the same stimulus. For example, what goes through our head when we hear that special song or that memory so important and wonderful to us? The song or the memory makes us come to mind, not only the memory of what happened, but also all the sensations that our brain has related to that situation so special.

Also the negative we learn by repetition. If our brain learns to function through negative thoughts, that is what it will do again and again. Anxiety, for example, works the same way, it gets "hooked" and kicks in whenever something reminds the brain. When we always go the same way, we always arrive at the same place. Let's teach the brain to think differently and take different paths, just to see what happens!

It is important to realize that among the many thoughts and attitudes that we have there are many things wrong and we are not aware of it. Learn to observe and detect thoughts, attitudes and beliefs that harm us and have strategies, resources and skills to combat them and face the situations of our life is something that is learned and is fundamental. We can learn to live and enjoy.

Yes we convince ourselves that we are capable of doing something concrete, however difficult it may be, we will end up getting it. But if, on the contrary, we continually repeat ourselves that we are incapable, that we cannot, that we are not worth it, we will end turning a grain of sand into an impossible mountain to climb because our starting point will be of total blockage and inhibition.

Living in the past and in sad memories only brings sadness, reluctance, helplessness, blockage, bitterness, depression and in general all kinds of negative and harmful emotions. What happened happened! We can't change the past but the present is. Let's look ahead and build our future by working our present, day by day, minute by minute, second by second.

Nor is it about others changing so that we can feel better. Is about learn to change ourselves to be responsible for our own consequences. If we cannot change the situation, let's change ourselves! And to achieve this change, thought plays a fundamental role.

The important is learn to detect mistakes to learn from them. You have to live day by day, minute by minute, second by second, you have to learn from the past so as not to make the same mistakes. Mistakes should not be seen as failures but as mechanisms to learn and be able, through them, to emerge stronger. The more errors, the more attempts, and the more attempts, the better learning.

The important thing is not what happens to us, but how we tell it to ourselves, how we perceive it, how we face it, how we solve it. The words we verbalize or think They have great power to modify our mood or our behavior. For example, expressions of complaint make us victims; the criticisms in arrogant judges; self-disqualifications block us (poor me, I do everything wrong, I am useless ...) and defeat us beforehand, if we tell ourselves that we are sick we will feel sick and act like one. If we learn to be aware of this, we will use them very carefully, because every time we use them we will be creating something, both good and bad.

When we think intensely about something, that idea gains strength and it is much easier for it to happen. If we think that we are going to make a mistake, that we are going to do it wrong, that we are not capable... we will increase our chances of failing. This is because negative thoughts produce negative emotions, if I think: I will do it wrong, my emotion will be the insecurity and therefore I will have a good chance that my behavior in this regard will be more ineffective and inhibit or lock. Instead of thinking of a negative result, it is much better focus on what to do or how to resolve the situation in the best possible way and this will predispose us to face any situation much better.

Rummaging non-stop what worries us is not only useless, but is very harmful as well as causing great emotional fatigue. It is always better act and analyze consequences than to inhibit us or to tell us about films whose narrative is disastrous, harmful and loaded with cognitive errors.

When the thoughts are charged with anger, resentment, discouragement, worry or any other negative emotion, it causes automatically make inappropriate and very different decisions than we would in other more optimistic emotional conditions and positive.

Let's not make negative anticipations because almost always they will be based on erroneous beliefs that we end up believing them and turning them into absolute truths from which we mount all our behavior. Generally when they are not positive they are usually guided by our fears and insecurities. For ex. “If someone doesn't call me on the phone. (when I expect him to) or he passes by me and does not greet me... my mind quickly organizes a whole reality around it and I deduce that he is angry with me, that he does not want to say hello, that he has something against me, that if he does not call me about something it will be... " realities based on individual elements or on speculations and films that we edit but without a solid and real basis that justify. It is always better to ask and wait than to jump to the wrong conclusions.

With The diseases let us act in the same way. Let's not anticipate worries or disasters that we do not know if they will really happen or not, because we will be suffering uselessly for something that most of the time never happens. Problems or diseases must be faced and solved when they really arise and do it in the best way possible and with the best expectations on our part but not when they have not yet been presented and may never be present.

We spend too much effort and too much time worrying about things that never happen, the learn to control our thoughts can we save a lot of suffering and a lot of anxiety. Any thought that comes to our mind we take as true and mount a whole series of emotions based on it. Big mistake!, because many times we are unable to filter what is real from what is an erroneous belief. The same situation can be interpreted in many different ways and everything will depend on our thoughts, so we learn to control thoughts and empower those that help solve and do not waste time or energy in maintaining those that cause damage unnecessary.

If we are sad because of painful memories or specific circumstances, we usually think of everything with a tinge of sadness, discouragement and melancholy, this greatly conditions our possibilities of feeling good, happy, optimistic... We can come to think that nobody loves us, that they forget us, that nothing will work out, that we are worthless, that few things are worthwhile... We are free to think, to make decisions, therefore Let's learn to think but without hurting ourselves.

Psychotherapies seek that the person has as much information as possible about the role that thoughts, emotions and behaviors can play both in their well-being as well as your health, how to control what may be ineffective and negative, what cognitive or behavioral errors are preventing the development of adaptive learning, what to do and how to do it to promote more positive attitudes that help both to recover and to mitigate the unpleasant consequences and harmful.

Definitely what can be done in each particular case to solve situations that prevent you from leading a life with the highest possible quality.

If we think we can, we can! If we think we are defeated we will be! If we think that we do not dare we will not do it! If we think we are sick we will behave and feel like one! Everything is in our mind. We get ahead when we think we can. Attitude is much more important than the past, we cannot modify the past, nor can we change the inevitable, which we can we can change is the present through it to improve our future but above all our attitude to problems and to life in general. Let's not become victims of our own thoughts, let's learn to modify them to use them for our own benefit and to be able to face adversity in the best possible way.

We are always looking for the reason for our discomfort and we forget what is most important and what really causes this discomfort, and it is nothing other than our own attitude, our own negative thoughts designed to increase the damage both real and created by our own imagination. Surely if we think about it carefully we feel identified with it. Let us set ourselves the task of beginning to undo this negative way of facing the world. At the beginning, like all learning, it will cost us but later it will have been worth it!

A person whose thoughts about life are negative is a person who is in a continuous state of anxiety and there is nothing that causes greater damage physical and mental than letting anxiety take over our lives, accompany us and gain strength, because the tension that we generate with it will take care of the rest.

Always remember that there is no age to learn to promote positive thoughts and rewarding, we can always learn no matter how old we are. The more time we dedicate to their learning, the greater benefit we will contribute to our health. Positive thoughts will always be accompanied by positive emotions and therefore rewarding. Positive thoughts are totally incompatible with negative, harmful and harmful emotions. Therefore all the time and energy that we invest in it will have been worth it because our physical and mental well-being will depend on it.

Remember also that we learn by repetition, let's repeat everything that is effective for us and gives us security, physical and mental well-being and let's eliminate what brings us discomfort and suffering. Suffering is useless and highly harmful to health, so we do not invest time in learning to develop it. Let's do just the opposite and we will have won the battle against negative thinking and the physical and mental discomfort that this type of thinking entails. Learning to develop positive thinking will contribute to improving our physical and mental health and with it our quality of life will be highly benefited.

Finally, remember that:

• If we can't change the situation, let's change ourselves! And to achieve this change, thought plays a fundamental role!
• Thinking is free, it does not cost money but it brings so much benefit that not all the gold in the world could be used to buy it!

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Positive Thinking, Emotions, Behavior and Health, we recommend that you enter our category of Emotions.

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