97: Positive Thinking

Dear friends, 

In our next conversation class, we will share our information and experiences with regard to positive thinking. This topic is somehow psychological and if taken seriously can help you tremendously to make positive changes to your life. The main area of focus in our upcoming discussion is all about the techniques that can help us to learn and practice positive thinking as a learnable skill.

So please positively think about this useful assignment before the class.

Thank you.

Please watch this video clip on Positive Thinking and try to answer the following questions:

1.  Discuss some techniques that can help you to become more positive thinkers. 
2.  What do healthy and successful people think about most of the time? 
3.  How can you think that you are in control of your life? 
4.  What is the function of the hormone of endorphin in your body? 
5.  Try to define the word ‘attitude’. 
6.  How can the law of cause-and-effect’ help you to practice positive thinking? 
7.  Discuss some of the major characteristics of optimists. 
8.  How do optimistic people react to adverse circumstances? 
9.  How are positive thinking and optimism interrelated? 
10.  When you see a glass of water that is half-full and half-empty, which half grabs your attention more?

Topic of the Session: Positive Thinking

Idioms, Proverbs and Expressions:

• Feel like a million dollars: to feel healthy and happy
  
  • After finishing that difficult project, Jane felt like a million dollars.
• Keep up appearance: to keep calm and happy in the face of problems
  
  • You need to control your thoughts and keep up appearance in critical conditions. 
• Be in a fool’s paradise: to be happy without a real basis:
  
  • Logical people cannot be in a fool’s paradise.
• Be flying high: to be truly successful:
  
  • The construction project was flying high from the very beginning.

Questions:

1. Do you think positive thinking can help you to overcome all of your problems in life?
2. Some scholars, including Dr. Martin Seligman, believe that sometimes you need to be rather pessimistic to become more action-oriented. How do you respond to this idea?
3. Do you think that some people are more genetically positive than others? Let’s argue for and against this question.

Quotations:

1. Positive thinking is a lifestyle. You are not born with that.
2. Positive Thinking: People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves, they have the first secret of success. (Norman Vincent Peale)
3. Optimists have three special behaviors, all learned through practice and repetition: (1) They look for the good in every situation, (2) they always seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty, and (3) they always look for the solution to every problem. (Brian Tracy)
4. Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage. (Napoleon Hill)
5. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. (Dr. Martin Seligman)

Tasks:

1. To get more familiar with the concept of Positive Thinking, you can watch the film, The Secret (2006) and discuss its main message with us in the next class.
2. We also recommend that you do some research on The Law of Attraction, if your time permits, to cast more light on Positive Thinking.
3. Video File:

Words and Phrases:

1. An upbeat message: giving you hope about the future
2. Expectant: Excitedly aware that something (usually positive) is about to happen
3. Optimism
4. Sanguine about: happy and hopeful about the future
5. Wry humor: a situation when you know that your conditions are not welcoming, but you don’t lose your mind and consider it amusing