So far we have learned that there is an incredibly strong connection between our minds and our bodies. So strong in fact, that our thinking impacts our emotions.

Our body has strong physiological responses to whatever emotions we are experiencing. Negative emotions like fear and anger cause negative bodily actions like increased blood pressure. Positive emotions like peace and happiness cause positive bodily responses like increased oxygen flow to the brain!

What’s in store for Part 3? Here you will learn about how to control your thinking so that you can have those positive physiological responses in your body instead of negative ones. Not to mention all the other wonderful benefits of positive thinking.

How do you apply the power of positive thinking in your own life?

The answer is simple:

STOP THINKING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

Easier said than done - right?

Of course I’m not going to leave you hanging, we’ll learn about the importance of controlling your thinking and eliminating those negative thoughts.

One way to control your thinking is to turn from the negative subject and give attention to another. Change your thinking from the negative thoughts and think harmonious thoughts.

Amazingly, parents or caregivers of children, on a regular basis, apply this principle to stop negative thinking. DISTRACTION.

For example, when a child is upset because a toy has been taken from them by another child, the parent or caregiver will attempt to take the child’s focus off the negative situation.

If the child sits there and stares at the other child who took away the toy - the crying will continue. However, if that child is distracted to start thinking about something else, say the cute puppy playing in the yard, they have moved from negative thinking about the lost toy to positive thoughts about the cute puppy.

The requirement to drop your negative thoughts “to let go of it as one lets go of a rock in the hand” can be difficult. But, I want to point out that dropping the negative thought requires far less exertion in the long run than holding onto the negativity.

Controlling your thinking is one of the primary actions of your mind. Like all actions it can be difficult to describe. You can ask someone to hand you a book but it is impossible to instruct that person on how to move his or her hand.

There are three mental actions which are essential to the training of controlling your thoughts.

• How to think.
• How to stop thinking any particular thought which may be in the mind.
• How to change the thinking from one thought to another.

While you are reading this article, you may be thinking, it will just not be that easy to stop thinking my negative thoughts.

Well, the early scholars on the research of positive thinking disagreed.

Edward Carpenter, profoundly stated near the beginning of the 20th century:

“If a pebble in our boot torments us, we expel it. We take off the boot and shake it out. And once the matter is fairly understood, it is just as easy to expel an intruding and obnoxious thought from your mind, as it is to shake a stone out of your shoe; and till a man can do that, it is just nonsense to talk about his ascendancy over natures, and all the rest of it. He is a mere slave and a prey to the bat-winged phantoms that fit through the corridors of his own brain.”



When a negative thought creeps into your mind, you have the power to choose to banish the negative thought and call on a more uplifting one.

Try this mental exercise to help you STOP the negative thinking.

We all experience the frustrations of driving. In fact, driving is considered one of the most intense daily stressors we experience. If you find yourself reacting disapprovingly towards a fellow driver, and you feel those negative thoughts creeping in, try to change the image in your mind. Think of something that you find calming or uplifting. Maybe it’s your favourite vacation spot. Maybe it’s the smile on a small child’s face. Whatever it is, change your focus to that thought instead of the frustrating driver.

I hope that by doing this mental exercise, you will find that you allowed the fleeting frustration to pass and continued your drive with a much calmer and peaceful outlook.

If you truly want to experience the “power of positive thinking”, you need practice in earnest. You will need to persevere.

If you do your best to stop negative thinking, in ways that your own knowledge and experience suggest, you will learn the lessons of positive thinking.

You may learn more about yourself than you thought possible! The earnest practitioner of positive thinking will gain an understanding and power that will enable him or her to do what seemed impossible at the outset.

That wraps up our third session in the seven part series. In this session, we demonstrated a couple of tools to control our thinking. We will continue the journey in part four where we show that our reactions to unplanned external events will be vastly different when we practice the power of positive thinking.

I’m enjoying this journey with you and hope you are starting to see how positive thinking can apply in your own life.

PS. Did you know that the top performers in life can get themselves motivated and inspired exactly when they need to? Did you know they can go from feeling despondent to feeling unstoppable? Did you know they accomplish these feats through the practice of positive thinking?