Every person has two sides to their personality, a positive and a negative one, just like a coin with two different sides. Whichever side is dominant will determine the kind of attitude that person will have. Research by the National Science Foundation, US, shows that 80 percent of people tend to have a negative attitude.

I would like to quote a great motivational writer and the author of Attitude is Everything, Jeff Killer. He says, “A positive attitude is a person’s passport to a better tomorrow.”

So definitely, behaviours, attitudes and etiquettes make up a person’s personality, and I am going to discuss the ways of shifting the negativity in one’s personality to positivity. But first, let’s look at some signs of negative and positive attitudes.

In his book Who will cry when you die? Robin Sharma writes, “Words are like arrows, once released, they are impossible to retrieve, so choose yours with care.”

Exactly, the way you talk, deal, behave and respond is the key to knowing how you have been brought up and what kind of attitude you have. In our daily life, we converse, respond and question countless times a day. What we say during these interactions tell a lot about us and our general attitude towards others and life.

There are three categories of responses reflecting three different attitudes generally observed.

Negative response: The first is the ‘negative response’. To the simple question of “How are you?” a negative response could be any of these: “Terrible”, “I’m tired”, “It’s not my day,” or “Don’t ask”.

A mediocre response: Those in the mediocre group are a step up from the negative bunch — but they still have plenty of room for the improvement.

Here are some of the things that we hear from them: “I’m okay”, “Not too bad”, “Same old…” or “Fine”.

Positive response: Then there’s the positive approach. These are from enthusiastic people who say: “Terrific”, “Fantastic”, “Great”, “Very well, thank you!” or “I am good”.

In a nutshell, we can say that these three kinds of responses are useful sources to recognise and classify ourselves and others during a conversation. Try conducting this experiment in a large gathering and you will soon realise that it is not difficult to have an idea of people’s attitude and mindset through their answers to this simple question.

If a person is honest in self-analysis, they can understand their own personality easily and then try to shift whatever negativity there is to develop a positive mindset. This can be done by some conscious effort to pick up some positive habits that improve our attitude.

Stop complaining

We are social animals, we often complain about various things and situations. Some complain about their aches and physical discomfort the whole day, some complain about their feelings, the weather and environment, and often unimportant things.

We must keep in mind that nobody wants to hear about our aches and pains. If you complain to friend about your headache or stomach ache, what can he or she do? If you complain about feeling bored or about the weather, what difference can the other person make to these situations?

They will listen to you once, but if you don’t stop and keep on wailing about whatever is causing you distress, chances are you will soon be left alone. No one wants to be with a whiner. So change your habit of complaining.

Smile

A smile is inexpensive. Smile more often to improve your looks. We are living in a society where everyone is disturbed by various factors in their lives, so having a smiling face will give not only you a positive feeling, but others too will feel pleasure by being in your company.

Connect with positive people

Undoubtedly, we become part of what we surround ourselves with. Let me share with you my own experience. Before starting college, I had friends, but most of them were inclined towards pessimism. They always talked negative things behind each other’s back and hardly ever shared a good thought.

I didn’t realise this at that time, but all this had a bad impact on my nature and overall personality. Years later, when I moved to another city for higher education, I found some nice changes in my personality. This was because then I had new friends, all of them were optimistic, everyone had a dream and they worked hard in a particular direction to achieve it.

So it is clear that if you have people around you who are pessimistic in nature, you will soon find yourself feeling hopeless and aimless.

Become aware of your negative areas

Most people don’t know how to do self-assessment, whereas it is the best way to know your own self. But others, who know us very well and are truly our well-wishers, can also help us to discover the negative traits in us.

Let me tell you one way that helped me. At a gathering of my best friends, I suggested that we should tell each other’s positive and negative habits.

Believe me friends, it worked out very well to spot the negative areas which we often miss seeing ourselves. Sometimes, we are blinded to our good and bad habits, but our friends can spot them and tell us.

Welcome criticism on yourself and have the courage to listen to it, because you are a human being and you can make mistakes. There is always a room for improvement. In fact, there is no growth without change and improvement.

Stop overthinking

I read in a magazine, wherein it was printed in large fonts, ‘‘Our minds can be our best friends; they can also be our worst enemies!”

If you keep thinking about problems the whole day, it will never work out. You mind will be crowded with unimportant things and drain the energy needed to concentrate on the important ones.

Energise yourself with positivity

We should first make new good habits and then our habits will make us. When you are surrounded with a negative environment and cannot change the negativity there, you must make an effort to connect with some positive things that counter that impact on you.

So try and connect with motivational books, personalities, movies or whatever is possible, to balance the negativity you took in earlier.

Society is simply made up of people, and influenced by their thoughts and actions. So if we all try and bring more positivity into our thoughts and actions, there will be more positivity going around and slowly, but surely, people will become more positive. So start changing yourself and the people around you from today.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 12th, 2022