Having a positive mental attitude can make a huge difference to your present situation (and future one).

I have found from personal experience that developing a positive mental attitude is actually not that hard. It is hard only if you don’t have access to the proper tools and techniques.

I am here to share two tools/exercises with you to help you build a positive mental attitude.

1. Positive and Negative Mental Attitudes

In order for us to better understand how to develop a positive mental attitude, it’s important to first understand negative thinking – including the role it plays in our psychology.

Negative thinking, or to go with more scientific name; Repetitive negative thinking (RNT), is a topic that continues to get attention from researchers, psychologists, philosophers and practitioners. But despite their different approaches and methodologies, they all agree on one simple thing: having a negative mindset is bad for you.

Saying “I can’t,” or “I am not good enough” or “I know I am going to fail” over and over again can set you back in serious and detrimental ways. It can prevent you from pursuing value in your life: whether in the form of enjoying the present moment or in trying out new and meaningful activities.

But you don’t have to give in to negative thoughts.

The first step we need to take to develop a positive mindset is to try to neutralize negative thoughts. And to neutralize negative thoughts, we have to see these thoughts for what they are: they are mental constructs. And just as we’ve managed to create those constructs, we can also dismantle them and replace them with a positive mental attitude.

2. The Structure of Negative Thoughts

The scientific literature defines negative thinking as an evaluative view of the world that is characterized by negative expectations, negative perceptions and negative emotions.

We all experience negativity from time to time. That’s just life. We don’t get everything we want and we don’t succeed at everything we do.

That’s okay.

But when we start engaging in negative self-talk on a persistent basis, negative thinking can become an ingrained pattern. It starts to be internalized by our subconscious mind; not simply as thoughts but as beliefs.

When our negative thoughts turn into negative beliefs, they become the lens through which we interpret events around us. We start seeing the world differently. We start worrying excessively and we focus on what could go wrong instead of what could go right. We lose sight of positivity.

And once we focus on what could go wrong, we stop ourselves from taking the necessary action. We start getting in our own way.

For example, if you think you’re never going to get in shape, then you will dissuade yourself from going to the gym to get in shape. And when you don’t go to the gym to get in shape, you will become even more out of shape: you end up putting yourself inside a vicious that keeps you from doing what you need to do.

2.1 Three Negative Thinking Examples

• Catastrophizing: This is when the person believes that any personal, financial, or professional initiative will inevitably come not only to a disappointing conclusion, but to a catastrophic one. For example, “If I ask for a promotion, my boss will fire me!”

• Overgeneralization: This is when the person makes a general assessment of himself/herself on the basis of one or two past experiences. For example, “My first business failed. I will never be a successful entrepreneur.”

• Mind-reading: This is when the person thinks he/she knows what others are thinking of them. For example, “I didn’t go to the meeting this morning. They all think I am a slacker.”

3.  How to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude & Get Rid of Negativity

Most people try to rid themselves of negative thoughts by attempting to eliminate them.

They’re under the false impression that negative beliefs can be manually removed; sort of like plucking a hair out. However, if you’ve ever tried to “catch” your thoughts and “remove” them from your thinking or even “stop” them from recurring, then you’re aware that doing so only makes your negative thoughts stronger and louder.

But why does that happen?

Think of negative thinking as a coil spring. The harder you compress the spring, the greater its stored energy and, in turn, the greater its resistance.

Negative thinking functions in a similar way.

When you try to suppress your negative thoughts, you end up generating a larger counter force, and the harder you try to stop them from recurring, the more intense they are going to get.

Try not to think of a pink elephant. Try really hard.

You get the point.

3.1 Positive Thinking Exercise to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)

One extremely effective tool that I have used to replace my negative thinking with a positive mental attitude is called Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an approach developed by Steven Hayes, a leading professor and researcher in behavioral psychology. This approach combines acceptance with mindfulness with the purpose of increasing psychological flexibility and creating positive change.

I have summarized the main ideas from his books and articles and I added my personal insights and clarifications.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Acceptance

The first step to changing your negative thinking is to first clam your mind.

You don’t want to engage with your negative thoughts or resist them.

Hayes recommends beginning by accepting that your mind contains negative thoughts. And to further accept and recognize that it will entertain, replay, and shout negative thoughts without your permission. Once you recognize that this is how your mind works, take the stance of an observer:

• Don’t pass judgements on your thoughts.

• Don’t approve or disapprove of them.

• Don’t react to them.

You only want to watch your negative thoughts enter and leave on their own – without trying to dictate when they should enter and when they should leave.

It helped me to think of each negative thought as an arrow. On release, the arrow accelerates at maximum speed but this acceleration eventually decreases until it falls, by itself, flat on the ground. The same goes for negative thoughts. Personally, I let my negative thoughts pass without resistance until they’re stripped of their strength and come to a stop.

Step 2: Cognitive Diffusion Method

In this second step, Steven Hayes and Spencer Smith recommend that you use a method called cognitive diffusion.

In this method, they advise the practitioner to articulate negative thoughts or beliefs as events that are completely separate from himself/herself – i.e. as separate from the person articulating the negative thoughts.

In other words, they recommend that you see negative thoughts not as a reflection of who you are, but as thoughts who have an independent existence; one that is not contingent on you.

For example, if one is sad, overwhelmed, or anxious, one can say:

“I am having the thought that I am sad, overwhelmed, or anxious.”

Or “My mind is telling me that I am, sad, overwhelmed, or anxious.”

By making this mental shift and dis-identifying yourself from your thoughts, you give yourself the power to do something about them: It allows you to choose how to experience the negative thought and influence how proactive you want to be about it.

Step 3: The Rational Coping Method

Hayes and Smith further recommend using Rational Coping Statements.

These are statements that reflect how you plan to deal with negative thoughts and feelings when they arise.

How do you do that?

This is what they recommend practitioners do: to write down their negative thought using their method, and to do so in the following way:

“I am having the negative thought that I should skip working on my business goals. My mind is telling me that I need to postpone making phone calls to potential customers because I usually get a lot of rejections, and getting a lot of rejections is a painful thing for me to go through. But if I am honest with myself, I know that if I don’t make these phone calls and let these thoughts control my decisions, then I have zero chance to help my business grow. I know that reaching enthusiastic customers is not an easy thing to do, but when I do, I feel very proud of myself and it makes calling them all worth the effort. I realize I have an option in making these phone calls and if I look honestly at my schedule, I know I can find 20 – 30 minutes a day to make these phone calls.”

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I have a lot of experience using ACT. In fact, I have used it for pretty much all the goals that I wanted to pursue (and still pursue) whether it’s going to the gym, writing an article, eating healthy food, painting and more.

It has done wonders for me.

3.2 Positive Thinking Exercise to Develop a Positive Mental Attitude: Mindful Transformation Questions (MTQ)

I also found that these techniques work best when I combine them with what I call Mindful Transformation Questions (MTQ). I discovered this method after lapsing into my old thinking patterns.

MTQ is a set of technical questions that allows you to take an objective view of your situation and help you see how effectively you’re dealing with your thoughts.

The great thing about my approach is that it is action-oriented.

This is what I do.

I ask myself two questions:

Two Questions:

• First: “How soon/quickly is my situation changing based on what I have been doing?

Here, I write down what results I got from acting on my old thinking patterns. I honestly write why my negative thinking patterns did not help achieve my goals.

• Second; “what are the exact steps that I am going to follow to see the change I want?”

Here, I write down how I plan to execute my new strategy. I list the steps that I am going to take and I try to foresee (as far as I can see into the future) what events or mental attitudes might set me back. And I try to devise a future plan to manage negative thoughts.

4. Conclusion: Maintain a Positive Mindset

Developing and maintaining a positive mindset using those two positive thinking exercises has been an important practice in my life. It helps me stay focused on my goals. It was not always easy, but it becomes easier with practice. It’s now second nature to me.

As a last tip, let me say that, in my personal experience, I found that writing negative thoughts on a word document and using coping statements right before working on my goals made a dramatic difference to my thinking. It further allowed me to take massive action on my goals. In fact, I couldn’t believe how well it worked, and the better I got at it, the faster I was able to move on and achieve my goals.