Is your glass half-empty or half-full? – the way we look at life, whether in a positive way or a negative way may impact our health, especially our mental health.
Positive thinking means that you approach unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. You think the best is going to happen, not the worst. It is actually hard work to have a positive mindset and often the human brain reverts to the negative without much effort. But this doesn’t mean we can’t change.
Of course, there are going to be challenging times where a positive outlook isn’t necessarily possible, but those that frequently think positive thoughts are more likely to be resilient in these moments than those that are often in a negative headspace.
Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information or expectations due to preconceived ideas of what may happen.
It has been shown that people that use positive self-talk are happier, more successful, more determined and have greater social skills and experiences. For mental health and wellbeing, changing the way we think and the way we motivate ourselves to a more positive outlook improves our mental function, improving the ability to learn and grow and therefore our overall health.
For teenagers, it is common for some of their self-talk to be negative, unrealistic, and self-defeating. One of the best tools we can use to help teens fight negative self-talk is to show them that it’s possible to test, challenge, and change their self-talk. By challenging irrational thoughts and replacing them with more reasonable ones, they can change how they feel about things.
We can challenge negative self-talk by checking it against reality, looking for alternative explanations, putting it in perspective against other experiences and directing their thinking towards opportunities of learning and growing to achieve goals.
It is possible to change our patterns on negative thinking to positive self-talk so that our mental health and wellbeing is being cared for and fostered for success.
Claire Jarrett
School Counsellor