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USE THE FOLLOWING VIDEOS ON CHROME-FOR SOME REASON WIGGING OUT WITH SAFARI

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USE THE FOLLOWING VIDEOS ON CHROME-FOR SOME REASON WIGGING OUT WITH SAFARI

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Positive thinking sounds useful on the surface. (Most of us would prefer to be positive rather than negative.) But, "positive thinking" is also a soft and fluffy term that is easy to dismiss. In the real world, it rarely carries the same weight as words like "work ethic" or "persistence."

But those views may be changing.

Research is beginning to reveal that positive thinking is about much more than just being happy or displaying an upbeat attitude. Positive thoughts can actually create real value in your life and help you build skills that last much longer than a smile.

The impact of positive thinking on your work, your health, and your life is being studied by people who are much smarter than me. One of these people is Barbara Fredrickson.

Fredrickson is a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina and she published a landmark paper that provides surprising insights about positive thinking and its impact on your skills. Her work is among the most referenced and cited in her field and it is surprisingly useful in everyday life.

Let's talk about Fredrickson's discovery and what it means for you...

What Negative Thoughts Do to Your Brain

Play along with me for a moment.

Let's say that you're walking through the forest and suddenly a tiger steps onto the path ahead of you. When this happens, your brain registers a negative emotion - in this case, fear.

Researchers have long known that negative emotions program your brain to do a specific action. When that tiger crosses your path, for example, you run. The rest of the world doesn't matter. You are focused entirely on the tiger, the fear it creates, and how you can get away from it.

In other words, negative emotions narrow your mind and focus your thoughts. At that same moment, you might have the option to climb a tree, pick up a leaf, or grab a stick - but your brain ignores all of those options because they seem irrelevant when a tiger is standing in front of you.

This is a useful instinct if you're trying to save life and limb, but in our modern society we don't have to worry about stumbling across tigers in the wilderness. The problem is that your brain is still programmed to respond to negative emotions in the same way - by shutting off the outside world and limiting the options you see around you.

For example, when you're in a fight with someone, your anger and emotion might consume you to the point where you can't think about anything else. Or, when you are stressed out about everything you have to get done today, you may find it hard to actually start anything because you're paralyzed by how long your to-do list has become. Or, if you feel bad about not exercising or not eating healthy, all you think about is how little willpower you have, how you're lazy, and how you don't have any motivation.

In each case, your brain closes off from the outside world and focuses on the negative emotions of fear, anger, and stress - just like it did with the tiger. Negative emotions prevent your brain from seeing the other options and choices that surround you. It's your survival instinct.

Now, let's compare this to what positive emotions do to your brain. This is where Barbara Fredrickson returns to the story.

What Positive Thoughts Do to Your Brain

Fredrickson tested the impact of positive emotions on the brain by setting up a little experiment. During this experiment, she divided her research subjects into 5 groups and showed each group different film clips.

The first two groups were shown clips that created positive emotions. Group 1 saw images that created feelings of joy. Group 2 saw images that created feelings of contentment.

Group 3 was the control group. They saw images that were neutral and produced no significant emotion.

The last two groups were shown clips that created negative emotions. Group 4 saw images that created feelings of fear. Group 5 saw images that created feelings of anger.

Afterward, each participant was asked to imagine themselves in a situation where similar feelings would arise and to write down what they would do. Each participant was handed a piece of paper with 20 blank lines that started with the phrase, "I would like to..."

Participants who saw images of fear and anger wrote down the fewest responses. Meanwhile, the participants who saw images of joy and contentment, wrote down a significantly higher number of actions that they would take, even when compared to the neutral group.

In other words, when you are experiencing positive emotions like joy, contentment, and love, you will see more possibilities in your life. These findings were among the first that proved that positive emotions broaden your sense of possibility and open your mind up to more options.

But that was just the beginning. The really interesting impact of positive thinking happens later...

How Positive Thinking Builds Your Skill Set

The benefits of positive thoughts don't stop after a few minutes of good feelings subside. In fact, the biggest benefit that positive thoughts provide is an enhanced ability to build skills and develop resources for use later in life.

Let's consider a real-world example.

A child who runs around outside, swinging on branches and playing with friends, develops the ability to move athletically (physical skills), the ability to play with others and communicate with a team (social skills), and the ability to explore and examine the world around them (creative skills). In this way, the positive emotions of play and joy prompt the child to build skills that are useful and valuable in everyday life.

These skills last much longer than the emotions that initiated them. Years later, that foundation of athletic movement might develop into a scholarship as a college athlete or the communication skills may blossom into a job offer as a business manager. The happiness that promoted the exploration and creation of new skills has long since ended, but the skills themselves live on.

Fredrickson refers to this as the "broaden and build" theory because positive emotions broaden your sense of possibilities and open your mind, which in turn allows you to build new skills and resources that can provide value in other areas of your life.

As we discussed earlier, negative emotions do the opposite. Why? Because building skills for future use is irrelevant when there is immediate threat or danger (like the tiger on the path).

All of this research begs the most important question of all: if positive thinking is so useful for developing valuable skills and appreciating the Big Picture of life, how do you actually get yourself to be positive?

How to Increase Positive Thinking in Your Life

What can you do to increase positive thoughts and take advantage of the "broaden and build" theory in your life?

Well, anything that sparks feelings of joy, contentment, and love will do the trick. You probably know what things work well for you. Maybe it's playing the guitar. Maybe it's spending time with a certain person. Maybe it's carving tiny wooden lawn gnomes.

That said, here are three ideas for you to consider...

1. Meditation - Recent research by Fredrickson and her colleagues has revealed that people who meditate daily display more positive emotions than those who do not. As expected, people who meditated also built valuable long-term skills. For example, three months after the experiment was over, the people who meditated daily continued to display increased mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, and decreased illness symptoms.

Note: If you're looking for an easy way to start meditation, here is a 10-minute guided meditation that was recently sent to me. Just close your eyes, breathe, and follow along.

2. Writing - this study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, examined a group of 90 undergraduate students who were split into two groups. The first group wrote about an intensely positive experience each day for three consecutive days. The second group wrote about a control topic.

Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences had better mood levels, fewer visits to the health center, and experienced fewer illnesses. (This blew me away. Better health after just three days of writing about positive things!)

Note: I used to be very erratic with my writing, but now I publish a new article every Monday and Thursday. I've written about my writing process and how you can stick to any goal in a more consistent manner in the articles here, here and here.

3. Play - schedule time to play into your life. We schedule meetings, conference calls, weekly events, and other responsibilities into our daily calendars ... why not schedule time to play?

When was the last time you blocked out an hour on your calendar just to explore and experiment? When was the last time you intentionally carved out time to have fun? You can't tell me that being happy is less important than your Wednesday meeting, and yet, we act like it is because we never give it a time and space to live on our calendars.

Give yourself permission to smile and enjoy the benefits of positive emotion. Schedule time for play and adventure so that you can experience contentment and joy, and explore and build new skills.

Note: for more ideas on the importance of play, read this article on how one man cured his anxiety.

Happiness vs. Success (Which Comes First?)

There's no doubt that happiness is the result of achievement. Winning a championship, landing a better job, finding someone you love - these things will bring joy and contentment to your life. But so often, we wrongly assume that this means happiness always follows success.

How often have you thought, "If I just get ___, then I'll be set."

Or, "Once I achieve ___, I'll be satisfied."

I know I'm guilty of putting off happiness until I achieve some arbitrary goal. But as Fredrickson's "broaden and build" theory proves, happiness is essential to building the skills that allow for success.

In other words, happiness is both the precursor to success and the result of it.

In fact, researchers have often noticed a compounding effect or an "upward spiral" that occurs with happy people. They are happy, so they develop new skills, those skills lead to new success, which results in more happiness, and the process repeats itself.

Where to Go From Here

Positive thinking isn't just a soft and fluffy feel-good term. Yes, it's great to simply "be happy," but those moments of happiness are also critical for opening your mind to explore and build the skills that become so valuable in other areas of your life.

Finding ways to build happiness and positive emotions into your life - whether it is through meditation, writing, playing a pickup basketball game, or anything else - provides more than just a momentary decrease in stress and a few smiles.

Periods of positive emotion and unhindered exploration are when you see the possibilities for how your past experiences fit into your future life, when you begin to develop skills that blossom into useful talents later on, and when you spark the urge for further exploration and adventure.

To put it simply: seek joy, play often, and pursue adventure. Your brain will do the rest.

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How Positive Thinking Builds Your Skills, Boosts Your Health, and Improves Your Work

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Positive thinking sounds useful on the surface. (Most of us would prefer to be positive rather than negative.) But, "positive thinking" is also a soft and fluffy term that is easy to dismiss. In the real world, it rarely carries the same weight as words like "work ethic" or "persistence."

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Molly Lou

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Dr. Fredrickson explains that positive thinking can stem from recognizing and appreciating small moments of happiness and beauty. These simple moments can include laughter, a hug, a beautiful sunset, or the sound of birds singing. One practical way to work on this skill is to start an Awe Journal. In the Awe Journal, kids record sights or moments from their daily lives that they find beautiful or extraordinary: a rainbow, a kind act, or even the smell of freshly baked cookies. They can can record these moments with drawings, descriptions, poems, etc.

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Setting REALISTIC and positive goals with WOOP

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Setting REALISTIC and positive goals with WOOP

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To help your child achieve goals and develop more long-term positive thinking, try using Dr. Oettiengen’s WOOP strategy:

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Positive & Negative thinking    Great Lesson

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'Koo Koo Kanga Roo - Positivity (Dance-A-Long)' on ViewPure

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Subscribe to our YouTube channel please: http://bit.ly/1COOtII \nKoo Koo Kanga Roo\'s Positivity (Dance-A-Long)\nGet the music: http://kookookangaroo.com\nFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/KooKooKangaRoo\nTwitter: https://twitter.com/KooKooKangaRoo\nInstagram: http://instagram.com/kookookangaroo\nhttp://kookookangaroo.com/\n\nVideo Edited and created by David Pint\nFilmed by Jules Ameel\nSong mastered and produced by Neil Zumwalde\nPositivity by Koo Koo Kanga Roo (C) 2018\n\nGotta dream youll do anything to make it happen\nI believe

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'33 POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR KIDS SELF ESTEEM - (WATCH AT LEAST ONCE A DAY!)' on ViewPure

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Repeat these affirmations daily to boost and strengthen self-esteem! Save this video in a playlist for easy day-to-day access!\n\nAffirmations are things we say to ourselves that shape our beliefs. When your child speaks the affirmations in this video over and over, he or she will begin to believe them.

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'Positive Affirmations for Kids' on ViewPure

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Positive affirmations for kids to listen to and repeat. Enjoy! \nFor a printout of these affirmations visit MindscapesRecords.com/positive-affirmations-kids.\nRead by Steph Janzen. Copyright Mindscapes Records.

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FREE! Nice Notes! Positive Notes for Students!

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UPDATED! I created these nice notes to send home with students that can be used to celebrate any success - spelling test score, helping out a friend, having good behavior, etc.! There are 7 different themes and 28 different notes in all! Themes are: super kids, groovy peace kids, frogs, bees, cheer...

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It's always my intention to praise students, however, we teachers get busy and tend to forget! These already made notes will help you remember and will take no time at all! In the beginning of the year, I'll print several copies and have them cut and ready to go!

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Use these 101 free positive thinking affirmations to help kids and young adults with anxiety, depression, anger, dealing with stress, and more. This resource includes a 2-page printable list of positive affirmations and a student worksheet to record individual positive affirmations. Special educatio...

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Self Esteem: Positive Thinking Worksheets

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Are you trying to help your students build their self esteem or to take pride in themselves? These 2 worksheets are ideal for doing just that. Students will write about positive events, positive comments from others, and positive self talk in order to show them how wonderful they are.

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'The Power of Positivity | Brain Games' on ViewPure

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See firsthand how positive and negative reinforcement can affect a player's game on the court.\n➡ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe\n\n#NationalGeographic #Positivity #BrainGames\n\nAbout Brain Games:\nUsing a series of experiments, illusions and man-on-the-street demonstrations, host Jason Silva and guest experts unlock the science behind the mysteries of why we say, eat, feel and act as we do with episodes on topics ranging from memory and common sense, to morality and the paranormal.

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'The power of positive thinking' on ViewPure

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The secret to success might not be so complicated after all, just believe in yourself!

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Too Much of a Good Thing? Negative emotions are ok too!

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Too Much of a Good Thing? Negative emotions are ok too!

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More times than I can count, I've seen bumper stickers with cute sayings like "Good Vibes Only" and "Keep Calm and fill-in-the-blank On" plastered across minivans and stuck to the side of refrigerators everywhere. While I can appreciate the positive message these sayings imply, our society has recently been inundated with positivity to the point where it often seems like choosing any other emotion is wrong. Living in a society where happiness is the only emotional choice can be hard for adults, but how does toxic positivity affect your kids?

The term toxic positivity is seen in a multitude of articles by mental health professionals warning about the potential harmful effects that a society oversaturated with positivity can have as people neglect acknowledging negative emotions. Newsweek reported that people with mental health conditions like depression and anxiety can feel shamed by this constant message of positive thinking because they are often consumed with negative emotions they cannot control. Unfortunately, this shame doesn't end with adults and can also spread into the lives of your kids.

Maureen Healy, author of The Emotionally Healthy Child and parenting coach at Growing Happy Kids, explains what toxic positivity might look like for parents. "From my perspective, I would term it as 'blind positivity' where a parent is constantly praising a child for everything, being overly positive and inauthentic about his or her feelings," she says to Romper.

Healy gives the perfect example of how this type of positivity can be dangerous for children. "So if a parent had a hard day, she smiled and said, 'Everything is great' to her daughter when it wasn't true - the truth is she got a flat tire, and lost her keys. The problem with not sharing in age-appropriate ways your real feelings is that it sends children the wrong message that they need to pretend everything is OK, and they can't handle the truth of life's challenges or problematic days," she says.

The act of making sure that your kids are growing up with a healthy balance of positive encouragement and the space to experience the negativity that life experiences naturally bring can be exhausting. Dr. Sarah Hornack, a pediatric psychologist at Children's National Health System, explains that regardless of the difficulty level, this balance does matter when parenting children. " Encouraging children to be positive in the face of difficulties can send the inappropriate message that feeling down or anxious is abnormal when, in fact, these are within the range of typical human emotion," she tells Romper. "There is research to suggest that individuals who overemphasize the importance of happiness end up associating their negative feelings with failure, and spend more time focusing on these negative emotional experiences."

Dr. Hornack also describes what it might look like when toxic positivity interferes with the parent-child relationship. "Responding to children's negative emotions or difficult situations with glib phrases like, 'Look on the bright side!' can feel dismissive or lacking empathy. It can discourage children from bringing concerns to their parents in the first place, making future interactions less open," she says. From personal experience, I can say that is the last thing I need as a parent.

In addition to being dismissive of emotions and harming open lines of communication, Dr. Kathryn Smerling, a family therapist practicing in New York, explains how toxic positivity could be setting children up for disappointment later on in life. "The impact is that it's a Pollyanna experience. It's a setup for a rude awakening for a child when they do experience setbacks and no one is there to tell them to be good all of the time," she tells Romper. "If someone tells you that you're supposed to feel good all of the time but you really don't, you just wind up feeling worse. You're creating a false sense of self." Essentially, it can't always be sunshine and rainbows all day, every day.

Experts agree that there is a difference in communicating with a child in a positive way and being overly positive all of the time, especially in the face of failure or other difficulties that will happen throughout a child's life. Dr. Smerling explains what it might look like for parents to model healthy failure for their children. "Failure is a teaching opportunity. We often learn more from failure than success, and there is nothing wrong with failing. Understanding what went wrong is more valuable than a barrage of praise. Also, as the parent, it's important to show yourself as less than perfect. We aren't perfect parents, we're good enough parents," she says.

So, how can you make sure that your parenting doesn't fall into the toxic positivity camp? "Parents who are the most successful are honest, authentic, and compassionate with their children. They don't simply say, 'Today is a great day' when their child is sad, but help a child identify his emotions and then do something to feel better," Healy explains. "Being blindly positive toward a child doesn't set him or her up for life success. Eventually, your son or daughter is going to be in a challenging situation and needs to overcome that situation. Developing resilience comes from feeling all of your feelings, and learning to access your inner strength when challenges come up."

Resilience seems to be a common theme among the professionals I spoke to. According to them, resilience is one of the top benefits of expressing a range of emotions in a healthy way versus being overly positive all of the time. Dr. Smerling suggests parents keep the following in mind when struggling to avoid toxic positivity: "Resilience is the most important thing that you can teach your children. That it's OK to have a failure, but to learn from it and bounce back. It's OK to be less than perfect and there's time to learn - and when you fall you get yourself back up again."

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In Case You Need A Reminder, It's More Than OK To Let Your Kid Feel Negative Emotions

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More times than I can count, I've seen bumper stickers with cute sayings like "Good Vibes Only" and "Keep Calm and fill-in-the-blank On" plastered across minivans and stuck to the side of refrigerators everywhere. While I can appreciate the positive...

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Toxic Positivity: The Dark Side of Positive Vibes

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By: Samara Quintero, LMFT, CHT and Jamie Long, PsyD We're not negative Nancies. In fact, as the authors of this post, we strongly believe in the undeniable power of positivity. While there is certainly something to be said for having a sunny disposition on life, it's also possible to overdose on the sickeningly sweet nectar of platitudes such as "everything is awesome!"