Is positive thinking a habit?

If you consistently think positive thoughts, then you will start to create habits around thinking positive. If you are regularly pessimistic, then you will start to create habits around negative thinking.

More importantly, if you keep doing what you are currently doing, you are reinforcing those habits. Every time you follow the same path, you make it more likely to follow that path in the future.

This is great news for some and horrible news for others. For those on the right track, it means that if they keep doing what they are doing, they will continue to get ahead.

For those that are struggling it means that the future is likely going to include more struggle. If you can’t break those habits, then you will be controlled by them.

Some argue that the key to change from struggling to succeeding is to think positive thoughts. It seems logical. If successful people are optimistic, then we should think happy thoughts and we will be successful, right?

Unfortunately, it is much more complicated than that. If we want to change our ways of thinking over a long period of time, we have to find a way to make positive thinking a habit. Doing it once or twice is meaningless. We have to learn how to think that way over and over again.

In The Disordered Mind – What Unusual Brains Tell us About Ourselves, author Eric R. Kandel states, “A good habit, one that is adaptive, helps us survive by enabling us to perform many important behaviors automatically, without thinking about them. Adaptive habits are promoted by the release of dopamine into the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, the areas of the brain involved with control and with reward and motivation. The release of dopamine not only creates a feeling of pleasure, it also conditions us. Conditioning, as we know, creates a long-term memory that enables us to recognize a stimulus the next time we see it and to respond accordingly. If the stimulus is positive, as in the case of adaptive habits, conditioning motivates us to pursue it.”

This conditioning element if very important. Conditioning helps reinforce behaviors. So, if we want to change our behavior, we have to learn how to re-condition our brain.

We have to learn how to rewire our brain. To do this, we have to learn how to make change consistent and repetitive. We have to do it over and over and over again.

This will allow us to start a new pathway. We form a new routine. This new routine could be to challenge negative thoughts when they surface. It could be to start each day on a positive note. It could be to learn how to relax when stress sets in.

If you are pessimistic that negative frame of mind is causing you to always see the worst. Instead, learn how to recondition your brain to see the opportunity. Learn how to incorporate positive thoughts. Learn how to challenge your negative analysis. Learn how to spot opportunity. Doing so can adjust your thinking patterns and create a whole new set of habits.