Positive Mental Attitude

It’s unfortunate that my introduction to the phrase “Positive Mental Attitude” was via a 1990’s washing powder advert, featuring a father telling his son that if he wanted to “win like Linford, then you have to be like Linford” and get a “Positive Mental Attitude”.    Apart from being thrilled that a black family was actually being used in an advert  (all those white faces didn’t really reflect the community I lived in at the time!), it made me think that a “Positive Mental Attitude” was something that was only applicable to athletes (the little boy in the advert went on to win the sack race!).  Bearing in mind that I was (and still am) about as athletic as your average house brick, it didn’t exactly stick in my mind as relevant to my life.

However, I’ve rediscovered the importance of a positive mental attitude recently when I started to investigate the concept of living deliberately and the Law of Attraction.

The Law of Attraction tends to evoke strong responses in people, and I’m not going to attempt to convince you that it’s right or wrong – if you are interested in a good general introduction to the concept, you could do worse than hiring or borrowing a copy of “The Secret”.

Whether you agree with it as a natural law or disagree with it as a pile of hokum,  I think that there are a few things that everyone can take away from it:

1. If you maintain a positive attitude, good things tend to happen to you more.  Bad things still happen occasionally, but hey!, that’s life.  If you concentrate on the good stuff, not only will nice things happen more, but people will want to be around you more (as my mother used to say: “you attract more flies with honey than vinegar”), and you will feel happier about your general standard of life.
2. By thinking about each aspect of your life and making the decision to live it deliberately and well, you will get more out of every experience.  Don’t just coast through life, but enjoy every little thing.  Going swimming?  Savour the feel of freedom, enjoy the contrast between cold air on wet skin and warm towels, listen to the laughter of children.  Doing the ironing?  Look at how crisp the creases on the trousers are,  feel the warmth on the ironing board under your hands, look at the pile of finished ironing and (as a friend of mine once said) the coveted shiny bottom of the laundry basket…  There is joy to be had in every tiny task.  Allow yourself to find it.
3. If you start every journey or section of your life which contains an element of risk with the deliberate intent that it will go well, then it really does tend to go better.  Parking spaces appear more often and in better positions,  trains come on time and the car runs better.  I don’t know why this works, but it really does.  When you leave the house every morning, tell yourself that your journey is going to be *great*!  It takes very little effort, and pays off hugely in terms of peace of mind and general happiness levels.
4. Be grateful.  It often feels difficult to be grateful when we’re having a bad day, but if you start off every day by thinking about all the great stuff that you have in your life (family, friends, possessions, music, books, pets – whatever) it almost always goes better.  I have a pendant which I habitually wear which I bought with the express intention of remembering everything I have to be happy for when I touched it. 

These four things are a great way to start off your positive mental attitude.   It seems so simple,  but when you expect good things to happen, they really do happen more.  When you have a positive mental attitude, it makes it much easier to focus on money (both generation and debt repayment) and it enables you to cope with any bumps in the debt repayment process much more easily.

Go on!  Be happy!