Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How you view the world can have a profound effect on your health and longevity. If you tend to see the glass half empty, learning how to put a positive spin on things can drastically reduce stress and improve your quality of life. Studies have proved that positive thinking impacts your health in a number of ways including:

• decreased negative stress
• improved ability to cope with problems
• greater resistance to the common cold
• reduced risk of coronary artery disease

There are several ways that individuals misinterpret and perceive situations as negative.  Negative thinking people often get “tunnel vision” and can see only the bad aspects, while blocking the good. They also have a tendency to blame themselves for problems instead of objectively seeing the cause.  Catastrophizing and immediately anticipating the worst is another way individuals can harm their outlook. Negative thinkers also polarize, or see things as either good or bad, black or white. When you lose the ability to see and accept a middle ground, you can severely harm your reasoning faculties.

All of these habits can overwhelm you and hinder your ability to logically assess a situation. However, there are planty of ways to turn negative thoughts into positive thinking. Negative thinking after all is a habit, and habits can be unlearned! Here are a few examples of negative thoughts tat can be given a positive spin:

“I’ve never done this before” becomes “This is an opportunity to learn something new”

“There’s not enough time” becomes “Let’s re-evaluate some priorities and make time”

“No one communicates with me” becomes “I will try to open the lines of communication”

Any new skill takes practice, so while learning to think positively will significantly improve the quality of ones life, it will not happen overnight. Fortunately, the outcome is well worth the effort. So begin thinking positively, and start managing your stress and your health i a constructive way. Your life will change for the better!