5 Reasons Why Having a Positive Mindset Is Vital

July 22, 2020

How do you see your glass every day? Half-empty, or half-full? Positive thinking is commonly mistaken for being untruthful and ignoring the reality of things. That is not the case. It’s about recognising the positive and the negative, but making the conscious choice to focus on the positive. Below are several key reasons why having a positive mindset is useful for daily living.

A group students with positive mindset
A group students with positive mindset

1. Good for Your Heart

Apart from feeling good, staying positive also brings physical health benefits. In a research study of cardiovascular diseases in families, Dr Lisa Yanek and her colleagues of John Hopkins Medicine have observed that people with a family history of heart disease, in addition to having a positive outlook, were one-third less likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular event within five to 25 years than those with a more negative outlook. The term “positive” here refers to a person’s cheerfulness, energy level, anxiety levels and satisfaction with health and overall life in the survey assessment tool. Seek the brighter side of things for mind and body wellness!

2. Prevents You From Negative Self-Talk

The way you talk to yourself matters. Talking down on your abilities, personality and physical appearance relentlessly will lead to depression, anxiety, stunted performance growth, and ruin your relationships. If you’re prone to negative self-talk, set aside some time to sit down and list out all the recurring negative thoughts that came to mind for the week. By writing these thoughts, it makes them explicitly clear and facilitates introspection into the root of the negativity. Another way to prevent from belittling yourself is to imagine someone you love and care about listening to all you said about yourself. What would their responses be? The irony of negative self-talk is that ample time is spent on your flaws, and not progressing into finding solutions ― which we will cover next.

3. Reshifts Your Focus on Finding the Solution

The power of positive thinking helps you escape the paralysed state of negativity, and interestingly, to change your focus towards finding a solution. Instead of stressing about a traffic jam in the car, how about singing along to your favourite songs? You’ll soon realise the traffic light has turned green and you’re on your merry way home. The bottom line is, make the best out of every situation. Accept things as they are. Reshifting your focus to positive thoughts like these will enhance your clarity of mind, allowing you to find solutions to the problem at hand quicker and more efficiently.

4. A Healthy Way to Cope With Stress

When preparing for an exam, one of the best ways to overcome stress is healthy mind preparation. The main positive mindset for students to have is the belief that they are capable of hard work, and to work intelligently based on the circumstances. Telling yourself you can’t do it without even trying can become a self-destructive habit. If you notice this is part of your emotion-focused coping mechanism, seek advice and share your problems with your university counsellor. You’re likely to gain new insights from the perspective of a professional. You don’t have to cope with stress alone.

5. Helps You to Build Mental Resilience

It takes a lot of mental strength to push negative thoughts out of our heads. However, it comes with practice and dedication to establish a positive mindset. Embracing positive thinking as part of your lifestyle doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes years of getting pushed down and the conscious choice to get back up on your feet. Being mentally resilient is very helpful when adapting to stressful, negative situations and losses. Maintaining good relationships with your family and friends will allow them to keep you accountable for your negative behaviour and thoughts. Learn to accept unexpected changes in life. Ideal expectations are made to be broken. And lastly, take action on the present problems, rather than hoping they would disappear.

Positivity is a valuable trait that is scarce in our society, especially among the student body. If left unattended, it may lead to a host of emotional and psychological problems. INTI International University & Colleges believes in a holistic education that not only focuses on academic skills, but also building resilience and fostering mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing through clubs, societies and other activities available on campus.

Interested in the science of behaviour and mind? INTI International University & Colleges offers Psychology course programmes with partner universities.

For more information, kindly visit https://newinti.edu.my/academic-programmes/.