Positive Thinking for Beginners

By Lisa Edwards

Positive thinking means changing the way you look at things and how you handle lifes many challenges. It will help you achieve any goal.

Conversely, a negative attitude will result in negative behavior, which affects your ability to even set goals. If you cant set goals, theres no way you can achieve them.

In this guide to thinking in a positive way, youll learn how to

avoid procrastinating for the wrong reasons;
recognize the importance of rewarding yourself with me time;
take baby steps toward living a more positive life; and
stop worrying about things you cant control.

As hard as it may seem, its possible to eliminate negative thinking from your life and replace it positive thoughts. Small changes in your daily life wont just improve your lifethey will also improve the lives of those around you.

Start reaping the rewards of tackling each day with a smile by following the guidance in Positive Thinking for Beginners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jun 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504301985

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 Lisa Edwards.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0197-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0198-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/22/2016

Contents

Preface

Introduction

What You See Depends on What You are Looking For

Putting Off the Inevitable

Rewarding Yourself

How Can We Think Positive and Talk Positive When We don’t Feel Positive?

Labels

Negative to Positive

Test It for Yourself

Worrying

Finding the Positive

Mind Your Language

Affirmations

Believing Affirmations

Gratitude

Start Your Day the Positive Way

My Daily Good Habits

Clutter: Physical and Mental and the Connection between the Two

How We Treat Ourselves

Taking Good Care of Ourselves

Now for the Physical Exercise

What on Earth are You Wearing?

Forgiveness

Finding out Who Your Friends Are

How We See and Treat Others

Reacting to Others

Meditations

Money, Money, Money …

Negative to Positive Ratio Revisited

Tools to Keep You Positive about Being Positive

Positive Daily Challenge

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

This book is

dedicated to my two amazing (now adult) babies.

You are my inspiration,

my strength,

my courage. X

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought again.

Peace Pilgrim

Preface

Eight years ago, on two separate occasions and by two almost strangers, it was recommended to me that I read The Secret, and I began my journey with positive thinking. This book inspired me to learn more; little did I know back then just where it would take me.

My life had been on a downward spiral for some time, and there I was one day in the bookshop, staring at all the titles in the self-help/spiritual section, and I saw a book with a familiar title. I leant over to pick up a copy. I wasn’t sure why it felt familiar, but I knew that I wanted to read it. I flicked through the book very quickly, stopping at a random page and reading the beginning of a paragraph before quickly flicking to the next random page to do the same again. Eventually I made my way to the checkout and bought the book. For the next couple of years, this book became my Bible. I can credit it with helping me turn my life around. This book is You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise L. Hay.

With the support of my children, and the lessons I had learnt from reading and working through this book and others like it, I gained the strength to take control of my life and end the toxic relationship I had been in for nearly all of my adult life. My life had gotten so bad and I had felt so desperate that I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say I owe my life to my two beautiful children and to Louise L. Hay.

During my recovery from my relationship, my collection of books on positive thinking grew larger and larger, week by week, month by month, sometimes even day by day. I had so many books on the subject that I never knew which one to read next. As I started to see results, I started to get even more excited. For the past eight years, I have not stopped reading, experimenting, researching, and implementing positive thinking.

Positive thinking has changed my life so much for the better that I wanted to find a way of helping others discover what a huge difference it can make. I wanted to spend even more time practising all this stuff I have learnt over the past eight years. Then I discovered Life Coaching, so I began training as a life coach. I am lucky enough to spend my days doing something I love, coaching others to live the lives they want to live and be the people they’ve always wanted to be. It all starts with believing in yourself and seeing the good in everything. In other words, Positive Thinking.

What you see depends on what you are looking for.

—John Lubbock

Introduction

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that positive thinking is going to cure all your problems overnight or even cure them all at all. You are not going to start thinking positively and then wake up the next day to find that everything is good in the world.

That’s wishful thinking, not positive thinking. There is a big difference.

Wishful thinking is that you will bump into Brad Pitt (or some other famous person) at your local shopping centre, and he will take one look at you, fall desperately in love, and you will both live happily ever after. Wishful thinking is that you will win twenty million dollars on the lottery, buy your dream house, and live happily ever after. Wishful thinking is when you imagine that one magical change in your life will solve all your problems. Wishful thinking is just daydreaming; it won’t achieve anything, but it can be fun.

Positive thinking is changing the way you think about things, changing the way you look at things, changing the way you react to things, changing how you handle things. Positive thinking will help you achieve anything you want to achieve (except marrying Brad Pitt and winning the lottery)

You can change your world if you can master the art of thinking positive.

Hopefully, by the end of this book you, too, will have mastered—or at least be on the way to mastering—the art of positive thinking. You will have seen what an impact it can have on your everyday life and seen, too, the impact it has on those around you: your family, your friends, and your colleagues. In fact, you will see it have a positive impact on everyone you come into contact with and some you don’t. Once you start to see results, it becomes easier to implement positive thinking in other aspects of your life, which then gives you more results. This includes seeing it rub off on those closest to you and watching how they become more positive just being around you.

Just remember that, no matter how much you may want to, you cannot change other people. You can change the way you react to them, but you can’t do the positive thinking for them. If they want to change, they will, but you cannot do it for them.

There are plenty of books about positive thinking and the law of attraction; they will all tell you how you can change your life by changing your thoughts and how you can manifest anything you want by believing in it. They are right, of course, but I know a lot of people find it hard to believe. I had one person tell me it’s too hard. So I wrote this book to show you how a little positivity in your life can make a big difference, and if you make the changes suggested in this book, the law of attraction will kick in to gear naturally.

So if you doubt the power of your thoughts, or you think the law of attraction is too far-fetched,

welcome to Positive Thinking for Beginners.

Why should we try to turn our thinking to the positive?

• Happiness is a state of mind, and that state of mind begins and ends with being positive.

• Positivity breeds positivity (just as negativity breeds negativity).

• Life should be, and can be, fun.

The Law of Attraction

Nearly all books regarding being positive will also tell you about the law of attraction. This is the wording that made a friend of mine tell me it was too hard. The law of attraction is working whether we want to believe it or not. It affects everything we have, everything we achieve, everything we are. This is why it is so important to live a positive life. Living, talking, behaving, being, and thinking positively is the only way to bring more positives into your life.

Positive attracts positive.

Negative attracts negative.

Which do you want more of in your life?

It all starts with our thoughts. Our thoughts determine our behaviour, the language we use, what we talk about, how we react, how we respond, what we do, where we go, what we see, what we enjoy, what and who we avoid, who we like, who we fall in love with, what we eat, what we drink, and what we value.

Positive thinking, or thinking positively, will change your life for the better.

The only difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.

Firstly