2 Great Exercises For Positive Thinking

We all wish we could be happy and smiling all the time, loving our work and waking up looking forward to a day filled with happiness. The truth is all that just isn't happening is it? We are even at the stage where we are annoyed with those who smile too much and always seem to look on the bright side of life! Amazing really, when you think of how useful positive thinking is. It allows you to get more done as well as make everyone around you happy, which is a nice bonus, I'm sure you'll agree. I'm afraid the scales are tipping in the favor of negativity and have been for a while, which is why the only way to get back on the happiness track is for us to practice exercises for positive thinking each day.

Water and Thoughts

Before I get to the exercises for positive thinking though, let me just give you some proof of what being predominantly negative does to us.

Perhaps you have heard of Dr. Masaru Emoto and his famous water experiments? Well, I won't go into detail, I'll just give you the quick version to get my point across. Using highly sophisticated techniques, he discovered that thoughts when directed at water consistently, on a daily basis actually have an effect on the water. Water taken from polluted sources or subjected to daily negative verbal thoughts produced warped, dull colored crystal forms. Whereas water taken from clean sources like springs or subjected to positive thoughts produced beautiful, symmetrical crystals! I guess now that makes those positive thinking affirmations easier to repeat daily, considering we know we are made up of I think it's 98% water.

"Half of the earth is water; our body is three-quarters water. Water represents the interface between the 4th dimension in which we live and the 5th dimensional sphere of our soul. Many studies have shown subtle effects of healers upon hydrogen bonding and infrared absorption of water. None of these scientific studies can compare with the beauty and clear messages shown by Dr. Emoto's elegant work. The impact of thought and beauty has never before been demonstrated so well."- Norman Shealy, M.D, Ph.D

The first positive thinking exercise I'm going to share with you is something I've been doing for only 1 week now. However, I mean it when I say it "works" because I'm smiling more than ever these past few days and negative thinking has hardly gotten a look in.

Collect Smiles

Yes, you read that right, collect smiles!

I must admit, I love my little notebooks which is why my techniques always involve them, however, they do work!

1. Buy a notebook, pocket-sized.

2. Label it my "Smile Collection Book."

3. On the first page, write: Smile Quota___ plus the following day's date. Next to smile quota, write the amount of smiles you are challenging yourself to receive. I started at 5, nice and easy and I attained that amount within 2 hours! Not easy these days!!

4. This is the most fun part of this particular positive thinking exercise. The next day, go out and search for those smiles. Do whatever you can to get the smiles, and either as you get them or later, jot them down. Write, where, who and how nice the smile was, rate it too if you want!

5. You won't believe how much pleasure you get from sitting there before bed, recalling the smiles you got. That's why I love this exercise for positive thinking. Imagine 1 year down the road, reading through your smile book, recalling all those small moments of happiness that we normally overlook.

Challenge yourself by raising the quota by one each day. Wow, you will end up with a lot of smiles! Where's the bad in that? Exactly!

It's time to start seeing these things again, and enjoying them as they happen.

The Happiness Hunt!

This exercise for positive thinking involves purposely seeking out and recording the positive aspects of your day.

1. Again, you'll need a small pocket-sized notebook (Yes, I do have about 20!) and in this one write: "The good things that happened to me today."

2. Each day, go out and seek out the positive things you see around you. If someone holds a door open for you, mentally make a note of it, so you can record it later. We do the opposite so easily don't we? Can't we seek out the positive instead?

3. You can challenge yourself each day by beating the previous day's amount of happy events, or you can just record as many as you want.

These 2 exercises for positive thinking are wonderful because when I sit down at the end of my day and recall both the smiles and the positive events, I feel great! The images of the smiles and the happy times flood my mind leaving no room for anything else. Needless to say, I sleep like a log.

However, if you don't do these positive thinking exercises daily then be assured that you are either going to just stop after a few days, perhaps a week or the effect is not going to be significant enough for you to become full-time positive. Tip those scales back in favor of positivity, happiness, joy, any of those are better than a mind constantly switching back and forth between negativity and positivity.

Don't think about it, just do it. Your mind will try to dissuade you from doing these exercises for positive thinking and that would be your habitual mind, the one that is used to being mediocre or negative. Therefore, just go out and buy the books, and do it. Then after 2 days you'll notice that you wake up feeling great and looking forward to the challenge of beating yesterday's positivity quota!