Positive thinking

Dear friends,

A very big hi from the desert dunes of Dubai. Through this blog, I would like to share my thoughts and interests with you. My first post is about Positive thinking. I had given a speech in toast master international recently on this subject and would like to share it with others.



Last week, my cousin was working on her science project, getting a light bulb to glow in response to sound. When she couldn't get it right, I was asked to help. When I inter-changed the negative terminal with the positive terminal, the bulb glowed... More often than not, when you replace negatives with positives, there is bound to be light.

Most of you would have seen the movie Independence day, where an alien ship invades the earth. All the initial attempts at shooting it down fails because of the magnetic shield surrounding it. When the shield is penetrated later, the missiles reach their targets. Most of us are like the alien ship, surrounded by a circle of negativity. Unless we use positive thinking to penetrate this circle, seldom can we achieve greatness.

So how exactly can we get rid of this circle of negativity ?.

The first and foremost step is to differentiate between the negative and positive thoughts and to keep the negative thoughts away. When we go on a food diet, we tend to differentiate between the healthy food and the not so healthy ones. Along the same lines, we can differentiate between a positive thought and a negative one. During this process, there will be occasions where the negative thought creeps onto your mind. However, the challenge lies in not dwelling on the thought.

The second step in this direction is to take responsibility for our actions. When we achieve success in our lives, all of us are very happy to take credit for it, crediting it to our intelligence and hard work. However, when there is a failure, we very quickly identify external factors that caused the failure. Taking the Dubai driving test as a example, most of the students who fail the test give the following reasons for failure

1) Drove very well, yet I failed.
2) Was never taken to a round-about, yet was failed citing the inability to negotiate one.
3) Drove better than the other guy in the car, yet he passed and I failed


Very few students will actually step forward and say, " I drove badly and hence I failed"..... On the contrary, almost 100% of the students who succeed in the test will attribute their success to good driving !. The key to developing positive thinking is to respect our failures and learn from them. The more we learn from them, the lesser are the chances of repeating those mistakes.

The third step step towards developing positive thinking is to become the change that we like to see in the society. All of us want this world to become a better place and we continue to express our dissatisfaction with things that are not upto the mark. A peek into the letters to the editor of any newspaper will reveal a host of complaints on the different subjects, ranging from the bad driving habits in Dubai, the disparity between public and private sectors, etc. When it comes to evaluating others, we set very high standards. When we see a mediocre movie, we are very quick to criticize the director and actors. When it comes to a cricket match, we throw mud on players who do not give their 100%.

However, when it comes to own personal self, we settle for mediocre standards. Unless every individual tries to become the change that he likes to see in others, very things will change in the society.


To summarise, we can remove the circle of negativity by differentiating between positive and negative thoughts, taking responsibility for our actions and trying to become the change that we like to see in others. Remember, if we replace the negatives with the positives, there is bound to be light