POSITIVE THINKING | Benefits of Having a Positive Attitude

The topic for this video is the benefits of having a positive attitude. Be harshly analytical, be self-aware, be aware of your own subjectiveness – and at the same time be smiling, be kind, be loving, be helpful, and be uplifting.

I think I’ve always been quite happy and positive person, but when I was a child and attended school – we were all in Swedish schools in the seventies and eighties – we were all told and taught to be strong critical thinkers. And sometimes that can come through as a negative attitude.

Although it’s good to be analytical it’s also helpful for the people around you if you have a positive attitude. So when I was a student in school and in my first years at university I enjoyed being an analytical person, I enjoyed showing off my analytical skills, and I enjoyed finding the weaknesses in ideas and thoughts – and I even enjoyed pointing at them. But when I grew older in my late teenage years and further on I let my positivity shine through and I started to hold back my criticism – and since then I’ve become a very positive person because I realized the benefits of being positive –  not only for yourself – but even more so for the people around you. If you have a positive attitude you will encourage the people around you to improve – so well, yes you can point out the weaknesses in people’s ideas but you must do so in a way which encourages the person to improve his or her ideas and to get better and still enjoy what she or he is doing.

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So when someone comes up with an idea or a thought or when you’re reading a text then when you’re going to give feedback try to find everything which is really really good and point at that – and if you see weaknesses in the text or in the idea then consider if it is something within you not something universal which makes you dislike it, to find it weak – and if it is something which might be a general weakness which all people may consider a weakness then you can suggest an improvement but do so in a positive atmosphere and say something like this: “this is good, this is really good but maybe this … maybe is just me but maybe … ask more people … and maybe this little thing could be changed to make the whole even better”.

What’s more beneficial in having a positive attitude? Yea, expect other people to succeed. It’s so important for us to feel appreciated, to feel that we are seen and appreciated – and when we feel appreciated we’ll perform much better. We get a stronger intellect and we come up with better ideas. So have a positive attitude to the people around you, and make them feel inspired. If you believe in the people around you they will start believing in themselves and they will not waste time – they will get strength to improve what they are doing. So see the people around you and encourage what they do well – and help them improve where they may need to improve. But do so in a positive atmosphere.

What I’ve said till now is that you should have a positive attitude to people around you but this applies also to yourself: you must love yourself and have a positive attitude to yourself the same way. So don’t be overly critical to yourself and your own ideas – uplift yourself the way you uplift people around you ­­– like I just said. So when you have written something ­– when you are reading your own text – or when you have come up with an idea and you find some minor weaknesses in it – first of all thank yourself for what you have done, for all the good qualities in the text or in the idea you have come up with. And then spend time improving the weaknesses, but you should have a good attitude to your idea or text to be able to spend time improving the weaknesses.

And if you have written a text or come up with an idea which you don’t feel good about, then just throw it away and start something new. That happens often. People often come up with  bad ideas, even the best writers they often write bad texts, and they just throw them away –  and they start over again. And saying that – this applies also to giving feedback to others.

I remember when I was a kid I was drawing a boat in school, a Viking ship, and I went to my teacher and I showed my teacher this Viking ship and she just threw it in the trash bin and gave me a new sheet of paper and told me to start again and I felt such a relief because I didn’t really like that drawing and she gave me the opportunity to start over on a new canvas. So sometimes that’s the right thing to do – to your students or to your workmates –  if something really is trash just tell them and give them an opportunity to start over again. But to do this you must know the person well. You must know that the person will appreciate this feedback and that this feedback will make the person trust even more in you, of course.

Yeah, so I was talking about the benefits of having a good, a positive attitude, to yourself. Yeah, if you respect yourself you will get more respect from the people around you, and if you have a positive attitude to yourself you will smile more and people will smile back to you. A positive attitude will give you more energy and more strength to perform better and it will reinforce itself so that you become more successful. Having a positive attitude will make you more happy and helpful, it will make the people in your family, your workmates, and the people you meet in the street more happy, and you will be able to perform better, and you will be able to succeed more.

So in conclusion I want to say that I want you to combine the two skills I’ve talked about: It’s really good it’s necessary to have a harsh analytical intellect – that’s something you should always keep strongly awake. So be strongly analytical be strongly critical to yourself – to your own ideas and to others’ ideas – and at the same time keep a positive, smiling, helpful, uplifting, loving attitude. Being really loving and helpful is not the opposite to being analytical and critical. No, the only way to be really helpful is to be analytical and critical, and use as much as you can of your strong intellect. So in conclusion be analytical, be critical, be self-aware, be aware of your own subjectiveness – and at the same time be smiling, be kind, be loving, be helpful, and be uplifting.  

Thank you for watching, and see you in the next video!

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Cecilia