The Great Positive Thinking Quotes Collection

I revamped my positive thinking quotes collection on Sources of Insight to help you amp up your ability to generate more positive thoughts. 

It’s a powerful one.

Why positive thinking?

Maybe Zig Ziglar said it best:

“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”

Positive Thinking Can Help You Defeat Learned Helplessness

Actually, there’s a more important reason for positive thinking: 

It’s how you avoid learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is where you give up, because you don’t think you have any control over the situation, or what happens in your life.  You explain negative situations as permanent, personal, and pervasive, instead of temporary, situational, and specific.

That’s a big deal.

If you fall into the learned helplessness trap, you spiral down.  You stop taking action.  After all, why take action, if it won’t matter.  And, this can lead to depression.

But that’s a tale of woe for others, not you.   Because you know how to defeat learned helplessness and how to build the skill of learned optimism.

You can do it by reducing negative thinking, and by practicing positive thinking.   And what better way to improve your positive thinking, than through positive thinking quotes.

Keep a Few Favorite Positive Thinking Quotes Handy

Always keep a few positive thinking quotes at your fingertips so that they are there when you need them.

Here is a quick taste of a few of my favorites from the positive thinking quotes collection:

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” –  Herm Albright

"Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?" — Dennis and Wendy Mannering

"Be enthusiastic. Remember the placebo effect – 30% of medicine is showbiz." — Ronald Spark

"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet." — Mahatma Gandhi

"If the sky falls, hold up your hands." – Author Unknown

Think Deeper About Positivity By Using Categories for Positive Thinking

But this positive thinking quotes collection is so much more.  I’ve organized the positive thinking quotes into a set of categories to chunk it up, and to make it more insightful:

Actions
Adaptability and Flexibility
Anger and Frustration
Appreciation and Gratitude
Attitude, Disposition, and Character
Defeat, Setbacks, and Failures
Expectations
Focus and Perspective
Hope and Fear
Humor
Letting Things Go and Forgiveness
Love and Liking
Opportunity and Possibility
Positive Thinking (General)

The distinctions you can add to your mental repertoire, the more powerful of a positive thinker you will be.

You can think of each positive thinking quote as a distinction that can add more depth.

Draw from Wisdom of the Ages and Modern Sages on the Art and Science of Positive Thinking

I've included positive thinking quotes from a wide range of people including  Anne Frank, Epictetus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Napoleon, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Voltaire, Winston Churchill, and many, many more.

You might even find useful positive thinking mantras from the people that you work with, or the people right around you. 

For example, here are a few positive thinking thoughts from Satya Nadella:

“The future we're going to invent together, express ourselves in the most creative ways.”

“I want to work in a place where everybody gets more meaning out of their work on an everyday basis.

I want each of us to give ourselves permission to be able to move things forward. Each of us sometimes overestimate the power others have to do things vs. our own ability to make things happen.

Challenge Yourself to New Levels of Positive Thinking through Positive Quotes

As you explore the positive thinking quotes collection, try to find the quotes that challenge you the most, that really make you think, and give you a new way to generate more positive thoughts in your worst situations. 

In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

You can use your daily trials and tribulations in the workplace as your personal dojo to practice and build your positive thinking skills.

The more positivity you can bring to the table, the more you’ll empower yourself in ways you never thought possible.

As you get tested by your worst scenarios, it’s good to keep in mind, the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

I’ll also point out that as you grow your toolbox of positive thinking quotes and you build your positive thinking skills, you need to also focus on taking positive action.

Don’t just imagine a better garden, get out and actually weed it.

Don’t Just Imagine Everything Going Well – Imagine How You’ll Deal with the Challenges

Here’s another important tip about positivity and positive thinking …

If you use visualization as part of your approach to getting results, it’s important to include dealing with setbacks and challenges.   It’s actually more effective to imagine the most likely challenges coming up, and walking through how you’ll deal with them, if they occur.   This is way more effective than just picturing the perfect plan where everything goes without a hitch.

The reality is things happen, stuff comes up, and setbacks occur.

But your ability to mentally prepare for the setbacks, and have a plan of action, will make you much more effective in dealing with the challenge that actually do occur.  This will help you respond vs. react in more situations, and to stay in a better place mentally while you evaluate options, and decide a course of action.  (Winging it under stress doesn’t work very well because we shut down our prefrontal cortex – the smart part of our brain – when we go into flight-or-fight mode.)

If I missed any of your favorite positive thinking quotes in my positive thinking quotes collection, please let me know.

In closing, please keep handy one of the most powerful positive thinking quotes of all time:

“May the force be with you.”

Always.

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Comments

• Anonymous
  March 01, 2015
  Remember that we control our thoughts. If we're thinking negative, we can change it anytime by thinking about something positive.