Jack Canfield shares five ways to shift toward positive thinking: notice your thoughts every 20 minutes, reframe negatives, visualize good outcomes, practice daily gratitude, and check the news just once a week for an hour.
Questions this video answers
Every 20 minutes.
About once a week for an hour or so.
jackcampfield.com (as spoken in the video).
Chapters
Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield. And today I'd like to share some tips on how to retrain your brain to focus on the positive. No matter what is happening in your life or in the world around you, No matter who you are or what your life is like, there are probably going to be times when it feels like everything is going wrong. Now, maybe you lose your job, or your romantic partner leaves you, or you, you injure yourself, or a family member falls ill. Maybe someone breaks into your car or your new boss turns out to be a total jerk. And when you turn on the TV to escape from it all, the news is full of horrible and disturbing stories about a world in seemingly never ending crisis. But it's important to remember that you have the power to change your experience at any moment. And that's because it's your thoughts that create your own reality. And I mean that very literally. The things you choose to focus on determines how you perceive the world and the experiences you have as a result. Now, if you only focus on the negative things in your world, the world can seem like a terrible place. But when you focus on the positive things in your world, you see that the world is actually full of love and kindness and beauty and inspiring people doing incredible things. So today I'd like to give you five powerful tips on how to retrain your brain for positivity so you can maintain an optimistic, inspired, motivated outlook no matter what's happening in your life or the world around you. Now, my first tip is to become more aware of your thoughts. Simply take the time to pay attention to what you spend most of your time imagining and thinking about. Start paying more attention to the things you tell yourself. And always remember that you have the power to change them. Now this is called mindfulness. A technique I teach my students is to set the alarm on your cell phone to go off every 20 minutes and as soon as you hear it, stop and take a moment to reflect on what thoughts you were thinking at that moment. Were they positive or were they negative? Were they fear based or were they optimistic? Were they judgmental? Or unconditionally loving and accepting of what you were perceiving and experiencing at that moment? Now my next tip is to start consciously reframing your negative thoughts into more positive and helpful thoughts. And whenever you find yourself thinking something like people are horrible or I'm so stupid and careless or there's no point in trying because I'll probably fail anyway, catch yourself and take the time to transform that thought into a positive one. For example, tell yourself. Most people are actually pretty awesome. Or I'm actually really clever and do great work when I apply myself. Or of course I should try. It's the only way I'll ever succeed. And even if I do fail, at least I will have learned something and I can try again with this new information Now. Another good idea is to spend more time visualizing the positive outcomes you want in life. No matter what you're about to do. Whether it's go to a party, take on a new challenge at work, enter into a new relationship, make a new sales call, or move to a new town, clearly visualize the outcome you want to experience. Imagine what that positive outcome will look like and feel like. And the more clearly you can see it in your mind, the easier you'll find it to make that vision a reality now, I also strongly encourage you to develop a daily gratitude practice. So every day spend some time to think about everything that is good in your life. The friends and family you have in your life. Your home, your your job, your pet, clean water, electricity, the beauty of the natural world around you now. The fact that you have clothes to wear and good food to eat. When you take the time to acknowledge everything that's good in your life, you will start to realize that your life is full of wonderful things to be thankful for. So make it a daily practice. For a few minutes every single day, a daily gratitude practice. Either writing in a journal or just speaking it out loud will make it so much easier for you to maintain a positive mindset. Now finally, my last tip is to stop reading or watching the news incessantly. I see so many people constantly checking their phones to catch up on the latest updates, but how does that really help you? Now think about this first, most news is generally negative news about storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, accidents, robberies, murders, mass shootings, wars, political corruption, jobs have been lost, congressional gridlock, and on and on it goes, and almost all of which you can't do anything about except get upset. Furthermore, so much of what is called the news these days is mere conjecture and opinion pieces written to provoke fear and outrage in you. Now all it does is make us feel angry and helpless. You'd be doing yourself a huge favor if you took all the time and energy you normally spend on reading or or watching the news and devote it to your own self improvement and the achievement of your goals instead. Now I'm not saying never read the news. It's good to be aware of current events, but if you only tune in once a week to spend an hour or so catching up on the latest stories. I guarantee you won't miss out on anything important and you will be able to focus so much more of your time and energy on what really matters in your life. Think about this. If you were to spend one hour a day watching the news and you stopped watching the news, that'd be 365 extra hours a year divided by 48 hour work week would give you about about two and a half months of extra time to focus on sales, exercise, reading, meditation. All the things would take you to a higher level. All right. Now those are some of my tips on how to begin retraining your brain for more positivity. Now my challenge for you is it's now for you to choose one thing you're going to do today. I said today, not tomorrow to focus more on the positive. Because if you want results, action is required and the best time to start anything is right now. Now I'd love to hear your thoughts after watching this video. Are you going to focus on being more mindful of your thoughts? Are you going to start a daily gratitude or visualization practice? Are you going to turn off the news and work out or go for a walk instead? And if you feel so inspired, please leave a comment below with your answer or with your story. And I'd love to read what you have to say. Now remember, your thoughts create your reality and you have the power to choose to focus your thoughts on anything you wish. Now if you found this video helpful, please make sure to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one. And for some additional resources on how to retrain your brain, make sure to visit my website@jackcampfield.com thanks again for watching.
