A New Person Thanks To Positive Thoughts? A Psychologist Explains How

Positive thinking leads to a more fulfilled life. Or so the theory goes. But how is that supposed to work if someone clings only to negative events and loses sight of the potential good that can come out of it?

Social psychologist, Alison Ledgerwood also asked herself this question. During a self-observation, along with others, she noticed that she fell into this negative disposition. For example, when she published a paper and was criticized for it, the situation weighed so heavily on her that even several papers received with benevolence could not compensate for the “defeat.”

But why is that? How is it possible to train oneself to see the glass as half full and not half empty?

Ledgerwood believes that it is very possible. The catch: it takes a lot of training to break through the usual thought patterns and open up new paths.

One of her experiments proved how elaborate the whole thing was.

The social psychologist found that a group promised 70% success in a medical procedure was much more positive about the procedure than a second group who were confronted with a 30% failure rate.

Interestingly, even if the second group had a significantly higher success rate, the potential success was no longer valuable. The negative implication had become too deeply ingrained in people’s minds. An indication of how we are used to valuing the bad more decidedly than the good.

But the good news is, there is another way. Through conscious training in positive thinking. You look at the glass from a different point of view and consider whether some firm arguments are in favor of a half-full level rather than a half-empty one.

DThis takes some time and is not easy for us humans at the beginning. But the work is worth it! After all, an optimistic view of the world is associated with many new, and above all, positive possibilities and opportunities.