Positive Psychology: It’s All in your Head

You see a child struggling to keep his balance on his bike. His wobbly on his wheels, and he seems really uncertain. Eventually he just topples over, and he looks disappointed. You help him up and encourage him; “Just keep trying and you’ll eventually get it.”

You know that with kids we need to continually encourage them to keep trying so they don’t get discouraged. You want them to keep striving for their goals.

Yet, for most people when it comes to themselves they do anything but encourage themselves to keep trying. When times get tough what do most do? Pack it in and call it a day. Whatever happened to the “just keep trying and you’ll eventually get it?”

If you are striving to achieve anything, you need to continually encourage yourself to keep going, and to never give up. A positive psychology starts with the way you talk to yourself. Here are some ways you can do this:

Don’t criticise yourself:

We all make mistakes; in fact, mistakes contain valuable lessons that we all need to learn in order to achieve our objectives. To develop a positive psychology don’t call yourself names, or beat yourself up by saying things like “You can’t do anything right!” Would you do this to the child who fell off his bike?

Tell yourself that you made a good effort, and that next time you will try harder. Learn from the mistake and try to implement it into your next effort.

Don’t overgeneralise:

If you make a mistake on a test, or in a specific situation, this doesn’t mean you are a failure and you are no good at anything! It just means that what you tried during this situation wasn’t appropriate for what you wanted to achieve.

Try something different next time and improve your effort with the knowledge that with each try you are getting closer to achieving your goals.

Understand that difficulties are temporary:

If you don’t achieve something when you try, don’t think that because you didn’t succeed this one time that you will not succeed again. Difficulty is only temporary. It arises to let us know that what we’re trying right now isn’t really working, and we need to try something different to succeed. People who give up never understand this, because when they face difficult times they never try something different.

Accept the lessons that adversity has to offer and change your direction if need be. Difficulties are only temporary, but positive psychology is enduring.

Some things you just cannot control:

There things in life that you can control, and there are other things you cannot control. You can control your thoughts, your actions, and the way you react to certain situations, but you cannot control how other people think, how they behave, and the weather. Do you sometimes get upset because of the weather? Furthermore, do you allow the weather to dictate your mood? You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you react to it.

Do not get worked up over things that are out of your control. Focus solely on the things you can control and take responsibility for your actions. Only you can dictate what you do and how much you accomplish. Do not allow external forces to influence your thought and actions.

Developing a positive psychology starts with how you perceive mistakes. By seeking the opportunity rather than the difficulty in mistakes, you will be setting yourself up for success.