This document discusses the health benefits of positive thinking such as increased lifespan and better psychological and physical well-being. It emphasizes identifying and replacing negative self-talk with positive self-talk to reduce stress and improve outlook. Specific negative thinking patterns like personalizing and catastrophizing are identified. The document provides examples of negative versus positive self-talk and recommends practicing positive thinking daily to develop more optimistic thinking over time.

1. POSITIVE THINKING
An attempt to make your outlook
brighter…

2. You get 74.9%
attendance for the
month.

3. THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF 
• Increased life span
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress
• Greater resistance to the common cold
• Better psychological and physical well-being
• Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

4. You miss the 1st lecture
because you woke up late.

5. UNDERSTANDING THE POSITIVE
THINKING & SELF-TALK
• Ignore life's less pleasant situations – X
• Approach the unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way - √
• Starts with self-talk
• Endless stream of unspoken thoughts
• Can be positive or negative
• Comes from logic-reason-misconceptions
• Positive thoughts = Optimist outlook
• Negative thoughts = Pessimistic outlook

6. The start of your day
was bad. Does that make
you believe your entire
day will be bad?

7. REDUCE STRESS BY ELIMINATING
NEGATIVE SELF-TALK
• Nothing is pure black
• Nothing is pure white
• Everything is bits of grey!

8. Your group presentation
did not go well. Do you
blame yourself for that?

9. IDENTIFYING NEGATIVE THINKING
• Personalizing
• Filtering
• Catastrophizing
• Polarizing

10. You realise you have an
assignment to submit the
next day & you haven’t
even started.

11. FOCUSING ON POSITIVE THINKING
• Identify areas to change
• Check yourself
• Be open to humour
• Follow a healthy lifestyle
• Surround yourself with positive
people
• Practice positive self-talk

12. NEGATIVE SELF-TALK POSITIVE THINKING
I've never done it before. It's an opportunity to learn something new.
It's too complicated. I'll tackle it from a different angle.
I don't have the resources. Necessity is the mother of invention.
I'm too lazy to get this done. I wasn't able to fit it into my schedule but can re-
examine some priorities.
There's no way it will work. I can try to make it work.
It's too radical a change. Let's take a chance.
No one bothers to communicate with me. I'll see if I can open the channels of communication.
I'm not going to get any better at this. I'll give it another try.

13. PRACTICING POSITIVE THINKING –
EVERYDAY!
• Becoming optimist overnight – Difficult
• Practice - self-talk less self-criticism and more self-
acceptance
• Less critical
• Share your positive mood and positive experience
• Improve your outlook
• Optimistic - handle everyday stress - constructive way