Would you like students to have a positive attitude more often? We will recognize the importance of accentuating the positive, understand attitude formation, and become aware of positive and negative responses. This will be accomplished by learning to: Speak more positively. Visualize the beginning and end of projects List goals with target date Identify skills that increase self esteem. Assume responsibility Accomplish more
BECOME A MORE POSITIVE PERSON
Three Practical Skills to improve Your SELF CONFIDENCEBy Shirley Brackett MatheyAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Shirley Brackett Mathey
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4685-7560-6Contents
Foreword.......................................................xiiiIntroduction...................................................1START THINKING POSITIVELY......................................3The Candlestick................................................5The Power Of Choice............................................5Double Lady....................................................7Letting Go.....................................................7Continuum......................................................9Reality........................................................9Positive Mental Attitude.......................................11Negative Mental Attitude.......................................13Emotions Must Flow.............................................1380% Negative Training..........................................15Power Versus Peace.............................................15Traffic Signals................................................17Develop The Appreciation Habit.................................17Appreciation...................................................19Count Your Blessings...........................................19Being Successful...............................................21To Be or Not To Be.............................................21Comparison.....................................................23Equality.......................................................23SKILL ONE: SPEAKING POSITIVELY.................................25Speaking.......................................................27Benefits.......................................................27Steps to Pma...................................................29"I Can," "I Will," "I Did!"....................................29Catch And Correct..............................................31All Motivation is Self Motivation..............................33SKILL TWO: START VISUALIZING...................................35Start Visualizing..............................................37The Reasoning Mind.............................................37The Creative Mind..............................................39Working Power..................................................39Beginning and Finishing........................................41The Determined Mind............................................41The Productive Process.........................................43Visualize ... Vitalize ... Varro o o m ........................43SKILL THREE: START ACTION......................................45Successful Goal Setting........................................47Planning Time..................................................47How To Change Habits...........................................47The Target Date................................................49Power And Fun..................................................49Destinations...................................................49The Written Plan...............................................51Clarify Your Thinking..........................................51The $25,000 Plan...............................................53Writing Daily Goals............................................53Benjamin Franklin System.......................................55Goal Pyramid...................................................55Purpose........................................................57Find Your Heroes...............................................57What Kind of Goals Do You Need?................................59When is a Goal a Goal?.........................................59I Have a Goal When:............................................59Set Your Goals.................................................59Glossary of Goal Terms.........................................61Goal Concepts..................................................61Discover Your Purpose..........................................61Blessing Inventory.............................................62My Purpose.....................................................63I Dare You.....................................................63GROUP ACTIVITIES...............................................67Become a More Positive Person..................................69Blessing Inventory.............................................70Personal Values Evaluation.....................................71Values.........................................................73
Chapter One
START THINKING POSITIVELY
The Candlestick The Power of Choice The Double Lady Letting Go Continuum Reality Positive Mental Attitudes Negative Mental Attitudes 80% Negative Training Power Vs. Peace Traffic Signals Develop The Appreciation Habit Appreciations Counting Your Blessings Being Successful To Be or Not To be Comparison Equality
THE CANDLESTICK
What do you see here? When you are looking at the black object you can see a candleholder, a table leg, a plunger, a vase or whatever you choose to call the object. When changing your focus to the white background you can see the white profile of two people facing each other. What you see depends upon your focus.
Your imagination tells you this is a vase or two people. It is important to realize that you see what you want to see. The reality is these images are simply black and white paper. What's real is not as important as your perception. You see according to your focus. When you see the profiles, it is because you are focusing on that part of the picture. When you see the candlestick, you are looking for it. When your focus changes you see those changes. It is important to recognize you can change your focus to your advantage.
The candlestick profile is a tool to creatively focus on the attitudes of positive and negative thinking. Without realizing it, people are patterned in attitude formation. Regardless of the results, you will continue to use negative thinking and speaking habits unless you learn to apply positive ones.
THE POWER OF CHOICE
People use either positive or negative habits to solve problems with family, friends or money. Most of us drift into negative habits without realizing it creates frustration, fretfulness and fear. The choice of being positive and happy in all situations seems ridiculous, yet this is the most powerful life changing force within you. Your life will not change until you change. This choice will force you to correct the culturally acquired habits of negativity in your speech and behavior.
*See the Become a More Positive Person reference in the Group Activities of this book.
DOUBLE LADY
What do you see? There are actually two ladies in this picture. A young women and a older woman. Do you see a pretty young face? Do you see the young women's eyelash, nose and eyes? She is looking at the lower right corner. Do you see the older woman? She has her chin buried in the fur collar. The old woman's mouth is the young woman's necklace. See the bump on her big nose? She is looking down with her eyes. Sometimes it takes a little while to see each of the two women. Let your mind see one of the women and then shift your focus to see the other.
Used as a visual tool, the double women emphasize the mind playing hopscotch. Do you understand that in order to see the opposite woman, we have to give up one in order to see the other? The key is to "let go." Since the mind holds only one idea at a time, you can see why "letting go" is needed in problem solving. Problems are solvable when you have flexibility.
As the mind absorbs a new idea, it gives up the other one.
LETTING GO
The process of letting go reveals one of the real secrets of a happy life. "Letting go" involves seeing something else you would rather have. This process encourages acceptance, forgiveness, and generosity. When I was widowed after 25 years of a happy marriage, I had difficulty moving on due to residual anger in being forced to give up my married identity. Finally I purposely decided to enjoy being single again. I went dancing and there met a fellow who later became my husband.
The double ladies provide a visual understanding of how we can forgive, accept or tolerate a new condition, hence a new direction for our lives. You must move toward a new vision before your mind will cease retaining an old concept. We must retrain our minds in a different direction for progress to take place-much like moving a waste basket to a new place in the home or office, it will take approximately 28 or more days to remember where the basket is now placed, depending on how stubbornly you hang on to old ideas.
CONTINUUM
Since the mind holds only one idea at a time, you are either positive or negative, but not both. These two viewpoints are on a continuum, with positive on one end and negative on the other. No one is always positive or continuously negative: you see-saw back and forth.
However, people develop patterns or habit choices. Most people are not aware of their own habit choice but can easily spot negativity in others. Remember, a positive change must first take place within yourself before you can experience it with others.
REALITY
Many people insist you must recognize the negativity of situations. Reality, however, depends upon your perception of it. This changes from hour to hour and day to day. Learn to tilt reality in your favor by flexing your attitudes of being positive, negative or at times, neutral. Don't you love your car, your mother, your work or school sometimes and then at other times you don't? The only difference is your attitude. When you believe reality is not as important as your attitude toward it, you will be ready to apply the skills suggested here.
A positive attitude represents a creative loving response to life experiences while a negative approach is a destructive, fearful response. Being positive is offering love for all the participants involved, including ourselves. Becoming more positive increases your ability to grow and change, and to support other people with their decision making. As a direct result of working with your talents, strengths and confidence (rather than weaknesses and faults) your inner joy, achievement and finances can increase. You will become your own best friend.
Being negative is the antithesis of looking for the good in life. In our cultural upbringing, we are immersed in negativity from our parents, friends and family. We give attention to wrongs rather than to emphasize what is right. Some teachers mark tests with incorrect responses rather than emphasizing right answers. When we absorb our negative environment we become critical, faultfinding and fearful of failure. Negative people become their own worst enemy.
PMA POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
JOY BEAUTY HONESTY HOPE LOVE PERSISTENCE
POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
From his marvelous book THINK AND GROW RICH, written in depression times of the 1930's, Napoleon Hill called the following attributes a POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE: joy, beauty, laughter, honesty, hope, love, and persistence. Being positive is an attitude of looking at life with positive expectations. When we look at life with positiveness, we feel good. To be without all these attributes doesn't necessarily make life bad, it would be dull, ordinary, and average.
* JOY: Think of how laughter and being with people who have a joyful upbeat attitude add zest to your life.
* BEAUTY: Beauty and order give comfort to our senses and serenity to our lives.
* HONESTY: It is a mark of character to be honest in all our dealings with people.
* HOPE: Knowing things can be better is signpost of a positive nature.
* LOVE: Being positive is projecting love from our inner world to the outer world.
* PERSISTENCE: Know the value of never giving up on the things that matter to you.
Winston Churchill, in a speech at the boys school he had attended, said, "Never give up. Never ever give up. Then he sat down.
Have you heard the statement, "You only get out of life what you expect? When you use positiveness, others will question the phoniness of always assuming everything will be fine. But it is true sometimes "you fake it until you make it." It is also phony to assume everything will turn out bad.
As you become more experienced with attitude formation you will learn to take bad situations and turn them around. You will practice "turning lemons into lemonade." Find the positives of people in your daily life. Look for ways to identify with them and make positive connections.
NMA NEGATIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
CRITICAL RESENTFUL SCARED JEALOUS GREEDY DEPRESSED
NEGATIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
We all know how it feels to be around people who are gloomy, cynical or fault-finding. NEGATIVE MENTAL ATTITUDES are created by being critical, resentful, scared, jealous, greedy or depressed. We develop these negative attitudes through all kinds of experiences. It is important to recognize they are habit forming. Our friends quickly notice when we are continuously negative. In fact, one of the most observable traits about people is their attitude; however, like the back of our head, it is seen by others and not by ourselves.
When you are negative you become scared and lose a sense of security. Negative experiences can quickly turn to negative feelings. Those feelings actually are very short-lived, but then they get translated into behavior.
Have you had the experience of being hurt by someone? Did you then decide to act mad for three days or three years? Being angry (translated from hurt to mad) normally lasts about 45 seconds. After the pain of being hurt or confused, it becomes a drama. You have to remember to be mad and to puff up like an old toad whenever the enemy is present. Above all you must show unhappiness.
EMOTIONS MUST FLOW
All of us go through various negative emotional experiences at different times in our lives. It isn't wrong to have negative attitudes, it just isn't healthy to keep them. There are times when you can and should allow yourself to be sad, angry, or melancholy, but moving out of depression requires a positive decision.
We all have the inner resources to change our attitudes and move forward. No one enjoys being depressed, and each of us needs to find our own way to recover more quickly. That's smart! When negative people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired, they move out of their rut and blossom.
Emotions, like a river, need to flow. Holding on to one negative thought eventually creates a log-jam of our positive responses. Keep your positive emotions flowing. Decide to keep recovery time limited when unhappy changes of your life occur.
80% NEGATIVE TRAINING
Napoleon Hill writes 80% of our thoughts are negative! Most people are taught to be negative. You have been trained to look for weaknesses, to see the worst, to determine the cost. When fed a constant diet of "No," "Quit," "Don't do that!" "Who do you think you are?" "Do you think money grows on trees?" We learn the limitations of life. Defining your behavior as a ratio, would you want to be known as 80% negative and 20% positive or the reverse?
Resolving to be positive can be liberating, it will free you from the shackles of painful remarks of others. My high school English teacher reprimanded me, "Shirley, you are a dud in English." That one remark paralyzed my writing for the next twenty years. My friend, Carol Sue Butrum challenged me by saying, "Write that book! I will help you." I was changed.
Remember 20% of the time you probably do look for the positives. This means you instinctively know how to look for the good in the world around you and in yourself. You just haven't been convinced it is the proper way to view life all the time.
POWER VERSUS PEACE
All negative responses create a change in power. When we lose control we become scared. Have you ever lost a $20 bill or a possession where you felt the pain? It separates us from whatever we lost. The better way of looking at the world is through counting our connections rather than at the separations.
Being positive improves the relationship you have with your inner self. Improving that relationship becomes the goal. Some years ago after my car was stolen, I forced myself to attend a seminar on money attitudes. It took some balancing to see good rather than blaming. The car was later returned. With new equipment I decided to keep the car and rediscovered "bad could be a pathway for my good." Peace of mind gives the ultimate satisfaction in life. How difficult to learn this lesson, because we make choices rather than giving up the battles and relaxing. Focusing on today and "letting go of yesterday centers us into the supreme attitude adjustment of peace of mind." We live best in the present of day-tight compartments.
TRAFFIC SIGNALS
Traffic signals control the ebb and flow of cars. Interestingly, we don't refer to them as traffic signals, we call them "stop lights." Since they give an opportunity to go as well as stop we could call them "go lights." Instead, we do not emphasize going, we only notice them when they interrupt our journey.
Compare that with being positive. When we go, we take it for granted. In fact, one of the most obvious reasons people use negative attitudes is created by taking good things for granted and complaining when things aren't going our way. Haven't you heard people complain about a toenail when the rest of their body is working fine? They have a habit of pointing out deficiencies. Instead, they take life for granted, the irritations and interruptions that daily life brings us.
The message given earlier with the double ladies, since your mind holds only one thought at a time, impels us to ask "which thought?" Is it a positive thought or a negative one? You only have so much energy to use in one day. When you allow yourself to become angry and disturbed you create stress. That same energy could be excitement and joy for good things that come into your life on a daily basis.
DEVELOP THE APPRECIATION HABIT
The yellow light represents caution. Practice going into emotional neutral gear when things go wrong. You can't recognize the positives when dwelling on the negatives. You will find you can't stay negative when you are listing good things.
Start a "Blessings Inventory" and maintain your bank account by daily recounting your thankfulness. For instance, I stay positive because I am aware of all the good that enters my life throughout the day. As my feet hit the floor, I am grateful to be alive. I appreciate hot water, clean clothes, morning coffee, the paper, breakfast, my car (even with problems), my family, things I have to do, etc. In other words, I recognize the good as it happens. The essence of appreciation is looking for the good as soon as it happens and making a habit of appreciating that good. I even count green lights as I go!
APPRECIATION
When you appreciate the many good things going your way, you make deposits into your bank account of blessings. When negative things happen (and they will) you will not be as burdened. There will be bad days. Instead, they love to feel sorry for themselves. "Pity Poor Me," and they whine. Blaming when things are going wrong rather than appreciating things going well reduces your ability to be responsible.
For some, real tragedy brings blessings into focus. Floods, tornadoes and earthquakes create a perspective of the important values of life. When you have a bed, clothes, food in the refrigerator, your health and earning capacity, you are okay. If you have listed 100 blessings today and have four bad things happen, you have a net inventory of 96 blessings. Those people who have four adversities in one day and aren't aware of their blessings may experience a loss of control and become depressed.
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
FAMILY: What is good about the love in your family? Are you thankful for parents, brothers and sisters who have shared good times with you? When have you shown your appreciation?
HOME: What do you enjoy about your home? Think of the luxury items, a room, ac, or a special chair to watch TV.
COUNTRY: People condemn our country but we are still the richest and the freest country in the world. Many people complain, but in America, we enjoy more of the wealth of the world than any other nation. We have more cars, bathtubs, electricity and TV's. Our freedoms are the envy of every nation.
POSSESSIONS: What would you do without your combs, toothbrushes, deodorant, hair spray, makeup or eyeglasses? Do you have a favorite cup, picture, book or musical selection? Isn't life better because of these small creature comforts?
TALENTS: Everyone is talented, original and has something important to say. Think about the talents and skills you have developed. Do you enjoy gardening, reading, cooking, sports, sewing, singing or a hobby?
BEING SUCCESSFUL
Do you want to be more successful? I challenge you to look up the word "success" in the dictionary. I like the definition that states, "to accomplish what is attempted or desired." Some people think when they are a certain age, have a certain amount of money, lifestyle or fame, they are successful.
If your definition of success is money, then the only time you will feel happy is payday. Actually, success is a daily operation, available to everyone. It is something you should feel every time you lay your head on your pillow at night. Be thankful for the small everyday accomplishments that your life has brought. Make it a goal to be successful everyday.
Big success is the process of knowing how to create a number of small successes. Anticipation of accomplishment is one of the joys of success.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BECOME A MORE POSITIVE PERSONby Shirley Brackett Mathey Copyright © 2012 by Shirley Brackett Mathey. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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