100 Positive-Thinking Exercises

By Christina Laun

There are days when it seems like everything is going wrong. You can’t seem to catch a break from work, home or personal responsibilities, and everything and everyone seems to be out to get you. It’s times like these when some positive thinking exercises can really come in handy. They’ll help you deal with and resolve the every day stresses and problems that affect your life. Here are 100 that we’ve compiled to help you change your thoughts from doom and gloom to a happier and more productive positive outlook.

General

Practice these simple exercises and suggestions to keep your thoughts on the positive side.

1. Only use positive words when talking. If you’re constantly telling yourself “I can’t” you may convince yourself that’s the truth. Replace these negative words with positive ones instead. Tell yourself you will do your best or that you will try your hardest instead.
2. Push out all feelings that aren’t positive. Don’t let negative thoughts and feelings overwhelm you when you’re feeling down. Even if it’s only for a few hours a day, push your negativity aside and only focus on the good things in your life.
3. Use words that evoke strength and success. Try filling your thoughts with words that make you feel strong, happy and in control of your life. Make a concentrated effort to focus on these words rather than those that make you feel like you are failing or incompetent.
4. Practice positive affirmation. One of the most popular positive thinking exercises is positive affirmation. This means you repeat a positive phrase to yourself on a regular basis like “I deserve to be happy” or “I am worthy of love”. Believing that these things are true, and reminding yourself of it can help give you a more positive outlook on life.
5. Direct your thoughts. This technique, used by psychotherapists, can help you to control your thoughts when you start to feel down or anxious. Create a happy thought, a positive image, or give yourself positive feedback to keep bad feelings in check.
6. Believe you will succeed. There is nothing like believing in yourself to create a successful reality. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and believe that you will succeed at fulfilling your goals.
7. Analyze what went wrong. Thinking positively doesn’t mean denying that there is anything wrong. Instead, give yourself some time to think about the things that led up to your current situation so you can avoid future mistakes and look toward a more positive tomorrow.
8. Give yourself credit. Often when we feel frustrated or upset we only concentrate on the bad things or the mistakes we’ve made instead of giving ourselves credit for what we do right. Allow yourself to feel confident about the things you have accomplished, even if you’ve messed up in other areas.
9. Forgive yourself. Constantly beating yourself up about things that have gone wrong won’t change them. Tell yourself that you’re forgiven for your mistakes and allow yourself to move on.
10. Learn from the past. The past is behind you and no matter how badly things went there is nothing you can do to change them. Whenever you feel negative thoughts about the past come up, replace them with positive thoughts about the future.
11. Remember things could be worse. No matter how bad things get remember that they could be worse and be grateful for all the good things that are in your life, even when it seems there’s more bad than good.
12. Think of it as an opportunity. Sometimes even the seemingly negative things in our lives present us with opportunities we wouldn’t have been strong enough to pursue otherwise. Maybe losing your job is just the chance you need to start your own business or go back to school.
13. Come up with ideas of how to turn negative thoughts into positive ones. If you find yourself thinking you should have done this or that differently, try changing your thoughts around. Instead give yourself credit for what you did do, remember that you are not perfect or that you can do better next time.
14. Work on visualization. Picturing what you want to accomplish or the person you’d like to be can be a great motivator to getting you there and helping you feel more positive about the distance you have to go yet.
15. Think of ways to turn visualization into action. The next natural step of this is to think of just how you’re going to get to where you see yourself. Just picturing it isn’t going to make it happen, so create a plan to take it one step at a time until you’ve made it. (more…)

How do you keep up with your goals?

I have tried lots of different approaches. I would love to have everything in a digital world but it never seems to work. If I keep my tasks in an application, Outlook, Project, PlanPlus, an Excel spreadsheet or a Google doc they get lost behind the other windows on the screen.

The one solution I always come back to is the whiteboard.
Every morning I write out all the tasks I need to complete that day on the whiteboard. It is then my mission to cross those tasks off and clear the whiteboard. Some days I get all the tasks done early and I will add some more to the whiteboard. On other days I don’t finish them all and they roll over to the next day.
The whiteboard is always there, staring at me, telling me what must get done. It helps me stay focused on the jobs for the day.

Another way is to keep up with my tasks is list my action points on the spot in one booklet and then keep it with me all the time to keep up with my priorities. Then once a task is completed I just cross it out. But then like in my case I have my personal life to do list and then office work. More over the office work is also divided into three major and different areas of work.

I tried using Outlook to-do list and am still trying to use it after realising that you can actually import all your conversations and calendar invites in your to-do list and then start updating it as things progress. I find it useful but once I am out of office like at the weekend I forget. I am going to try sync it with my mobile but am not sure how effective would that be.

Another approach I took a few months back was creating an excel sheet and actually having one sheet per project it went well for few weeks but then a few days I was out side the office and couldn’t access the damn thing and was stuck with my memory and it was painful as I had to deliver outside the office and had all my sources in my beautiful and colourful excel file. After that experience I thought I shall not use excel though the idea of using Google docs was there but I was again dragged to good old notebook. But the problem with notebook is that once you are on next pages things from previous pages if pending are not carried forward and there is a huge chance to miss them.

Mind mapping and mind maps technique I have heard is quite good but how to effectively use it is still not clear. Can you share your experience how you keep up with the time management side of your jobs and how you keep up with your goals,tasks and projects? Thanks

What do you use and how do you make sure you stay focused, keep priorities and acheive your goals? Share please…

How to improve your soft skills at work

In a previous article we listed 60 soft skills, which if practiced at the workplace, could boost your professional life.

Subjects like financial management, marketing management, HR management can be taught in the classroom and can be studied at home. But not soft skills. Soft skills are acquired and experienced on the spot and cannot be developed by merely reading textbooks.

The soft skills you gain will equip you to excel in your professional life and in your personal life. It is a continuous learning process.

The 60 soft skills mentioned can be classified into corporate skills, employability skills and life skills. In some parts of the world like in USA and Australia, soft skills ate also known as world skills.

Corporate skills

These are generally CEO level skills, but if you are familiar with them you will be in a position to guide your boss towards success ie working together for a common goal as a team. You can become a courageous follower as mentioned by Ira Chaleff in his award-winning book Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders.

These skills include:

~ Political sensitivity.
~ Business and commercial awareness.
~ Strategic awareness.
~ Understanding funding streams and mechanisms.
~ Information management.
~ Organisation and control.
~ Team building.
~ Communication and persuasion.
~ Networking and public relations.
~ Leading change.

Employability skills

These have to be mastered by employable graduates and freshers include communication, team working, leadership, initiative, problem solving, flexibility and enthusiasm.

Every skill helps us to learn one more as they overlap each other.

To quote an example, leadership encompasses a number of other skills including cooperating with others, planning and organising, making decisions and verbal communication. Verbal communication itself involves various means of communication, some of which you may find easier than others — talking over the phone, making a presentation to a group, explaining something to a person with a more limited understanding of the topic for example.

By improving one skill, you may also improve a number of others. In the context of your career planning and development, they are called career management skills

Life skills

These skills are related to the head, heart, hands and health ie highly personal and behavioural skills which reflects our personality and naturally helps in personality development.

Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/learningandliving/main/tlsmodel.html

We manage and think with our head. Resilience, keeping records, making wise use of resources, planning/organising and goal setting are ‘head’ related managerial functions. Service learning, Critical thinking, problem solving, decision making and learning to learn were related to our thinking processes, which we manage with our head.

Functions of the heart are relating to people and caring. How do we relate to people? We relate to people by accepting differences, conflict resolutions, social skills, cooperation and communication. The second function we do through our heart is caring. We care through nurturing relationships, sharing, empathy and concern for others.

We give and work through our hands. Community service, volunteering, leadership, responsible citizenship and contributions to group effort — are our way giving back to society. We work through our marketable skills, teamwork and self-motivation to get the things done.

Living and being comes under the functions of health. Healthy lifestyle choices, stress management, disease prevention and personal safety are our prime concerns for better living. Self-esteem, self-responsibility, character, managing feelings and self-discipline must be practiced without fail for our well-being. In a nutshell, the essence of life skills is share well, care well and fare well.

Things to do everyday

Follow these ten golden rules and enjoy every moment of living.

~ Greet your family members first thing in the morning. If you are not used to this, they will be surprised with your sudden and nice gesture.

~ Greet your peers, subordinates and boss once you enter the office. Smile at even the ’security’ personnel standing at the gate, who takes care of your safety.

~ Greet your friends along the way and do not ignore them.

~ Continously reciprocate to breed communication. If you do not reciprocate at least with a ‘thanks’ when you get information or a source on your online network or your offline network, you will not be remembered for a long time. If you are not remembered, you are out of your network.

~ Be a proactive listener and empathise with others to command respect.

~ While talking to others, your voice, tone and tenor must be audible and soothing. It should not be aggressive or in a shouting mode.

~ Dress well to suit your profession and to create positive vibes in your workplace. If you are a sales representative, do not go out with printed shirts and jeans, which may turn down your customer.

~ Political and religious comments must be avoided at all costs in the workplace, when you are in a group.

~ Your communication should not provoke others.

~ Do not speak ill of others if you can help it.

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The author is a certified trainer and facilitator (CAMI, USA) and is a career management consultant and corporate trainer by profession. The author can be reached at challaramaphani@rediffmail.com.

Soft Skills: 60 most required softskills

Every now and then we see people or also become a victim thinking that I had the skills the MBA the degree and everything but i couldn’t get through the job WHY??????

Reason: Blame it on his soft skills.

Soft skills play a vital role for professional success; they help one to excel in the workplace and their importance cannot be denied in this age of information and knowledge. Good soft skills — which are in fact scarce — in the highly competitive corporate world will help you stand out in a milieu of routine job seekers with mediocre skills and talent.

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