Do you have the bad habit of selecting the negative over the positive? Do you tell yourself that nothing you ever do is good enough?

If you look on the dark side of life, you are closing yourself off to joy, beauty, and happiness.

The bad habit of choosing the negative over the positive leads us to believe that everything is negative. Defeated attitudes beget defeated lives. As long as we are stuck in defeat, we will experience defeat.

Give conscious thought to the voices you allow to play in your head. This is not something to do merely once and be done with it. In fact, you need to pay attention to your thoughts on a daily bases.

Ask yourself these six questions:

• Are you critical of others?
• Do you berate yourself?
• Do you see an enemy in everyone you meet?
• Do you complain, condemn and judge others?
• Do you moan about your misery and blame someone else for your despair?
• Are you more comfortable living the life of an underdog?

If your answer is yes to any of the above questions, then you are indulging in destructive behavior.

Our words are important.

The words we use with ourselves need to be carefully chosen. We are not always aware that we go about our days creating negative energy because of our negative thought patterns. We project our thoughts on the places we live, work and visit, and on the things we do and use. Our negative beliefs affect our behavior patterns with places and things.

If you’re used to using negative self-talk, now is your chance to find a new way to talk with yourself.

You can replace unhealthy thought patterns with healthy ones. When we rephrase negative thoughts into positive ones, we balance our lives with beauty, acceptance, peace, friendship, gratitude, responsibility and happiness.

We have a choice of where we want to put our thoughts. Ignoring problems won’t make them go away, but we can decide to give happiness equal time with despair.

Life is only as dreary as we let it become. When we choose light over darkness, we transform our lives.

Our thoughts produce energy. Haven’t you known someone that seems to have a dark cloud following them around? A friend of mine has such a negative mindset that she tries to prepare herself every morning for all the problems she’ll face that day. She wages war on herself and sees an enemy in everyone she meets.

Sure enough, her day is just what she expected it to be. No peace or happiness to be found anywhere. I’ve tried to help her to adopt a more positive outlook, but she refuses to change her thought patterns. Some people seem more comfortable living the life of an underdog than living on top.

Negative thinking is addictive, but addictions can be broken. You can turn off negative signals in your brain. It takes practice and the more you practice the more optimistic you become.

Optimistic people are healthier, happier and live a more balanced life.

In my next post I’ll discuss an exercise I use to rid myself of negative thoughts, feelings and behavior.