No matter how positive your life is, you can ruin it with negative thinking.  When I sailed across the Pacific Ocean on my catamaran, I had the joy of sailing in the trade winds with my family.  After leaving Panama, we had 5000 miles of Pacific Ocean to cross before arriving in New Zealand.  Those five thousand miles would be an unforgettable adventure unless we spoiled it with negative thinking. 

Negative thinking puts fear in your heart when you sail through the massive thunderstorms of the doldrums.  Negative thinking makes you worry about your boat being attacked by killer whales on the transpacific journey.  Negative thinking makes you worry about your boat capsizing.  Negative thinking makes you worry about hitting reefs and encountering tropical cyclones.  Negative thinking makes you worry about your children’s education as they work their way through their correspondence courses at a snail’s pace.  Negative thinking makes you worry about dragging anchor and hitting a reef at night while you sleep in a tropical anchorage.  Negative thinking makes you worry about piracy.  Negative thinking steals your dreams.

Positive thinking makes every aspect of life better.  There is no limit to how good life can become when your mind is full of positive thoughts.  When I sailed across the Pacific Ocean, positive thinking made trade wind sailing into an exhilarating adventure.  Our catamaran sailed before the same warm trade winds that pushed Magellan and Captain Cook across the Pacific Ocean hundreds of years before.  We rediscovered the islands of the South Pacific.  The voice of fear and negativity was absent as we sailed among the coral atolls and the high tropical islands.  Seeing the mysterious volcanic pinnacles of the Marquesas Islands rising out of the sea after sailing non-stop for three thousand miles is an unforgettable positive memory.  My children matured as they stood their night watches.  They were responsible for the lives of four people as they checked the horizon for squalls and ships, and ran the boat at night.  They learned the lesson that a positive mind can make dreams come true. 

Positive thinking got us through the doldrums in spite of the thunderstorms.  The killer whales of the Pacific never attacked our positive minds.  Positive action kept our yacht away from reefs and tropical cyclones.  Positive thinking and positive action kept us safe and secure in dozens of tropical anchorages in the South Pacific and made our transpacific sail into an unforgettable adventure.

Thinking positive is more than worth the effort.  It takes both the good times and the bad times and makes them better.  Don’t allow negative thinking to steal your dreams.  There is no limit to how good your life can become if you think positive.

Excerpt from :

Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking : Good-by Depression - Hello Positive Mind

David J Abbott M.D.