Accentuate the Positive for Success

In today’s fast-paced society, we have taught ourselves to “expect the worst and hope for the best” to prepare us for anything. There was a time that might have worked, but now our brains are trained to believe in the worst and ignore the best. This creates a myriad of negative issues and very rarely has a positive response. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can retrain our brains as simply as we trained them in the first place!

When we focus on the worst possible outcome, we tell our brains that nothing good can come from whatever we face. This focus affects us negatively. Here are a couple of examples: You have to meet the new boss, and you’re worried he won’t like you. You go into his office with a negative expression, and it influences his view of you. Your imagination has affected you in an internal, mental way that impacts you outwardly. This happens because the imagination recognizes the picture you’re painting and the raw emotions behind it. But it works on a different part of the brain than your logic circuits, so it doesn’t recognize that you are visualizing what you DON’T want to happen!

This fear can affect you physically just as deeply as it does you mentally. A great example of this is the common fear of going to the doctor. Believing in the worst outcome will actually raise your blood pressure to alarming levels – before you’ve even seen the doctor! The elevation is a short-term effect, but enough stress can affect us physically, long-term, or even permanently, as well.

However, if you work at retraining your brain to focus on positive outcomes, the exact opposite can happen. If we can turn away from telling our imagination all the things we’re afraid of happening (or worse, believing that if we DON’T worry about it, the worst WILL happen) and instead direct the imagination’s attention to the positive things we want to occur, that stress and worry will wash away. 

It will also make your subconscious work for you instead of against you. Imagine going into that executive office believing that you will hit it out of the ballpark. Your confidence might make you the most impressive employee he sees. This applies to every situation your subconscious tells you to worry about.

Refocusing the tendency to pre-worry will also lower your stress level. When your stress level drops, you function more clearly – not just mentally but also physically. You’re less prone to stumble or hit your finger with a hammer. Also, no stress over the doctor means no falsely elevated blood pressure and a significantly reduced chance of stress-related illness!

So retrain your imagination to focus on the positive. Try thinking of what you want to happen each night before you go to sleep. This will help you forge a new path for your thought processes, eliminate those unfounded worries, and go from stress to success!