By Trevor Silvester.

People ask me about positive thinking and something I say a lot to them is “you feed what you focus on”. By that I mean that our brain is choosing what to pay attention to every moment of the day out of the huge range of options around us.

Over time most people will find they habitually pay attention to certain things – for example, optimists will focus more naturally on positive things, pessimists on negative.

One will spot the pound on the pavement, the other will miss it because they’re looking out for cracks.

So the more we focus on a particular thing, the more we’ll find ourselves doing so. Over time we live in a world we expect to live in, rather than the one we actually do.

We’re feeding what we’re focusing on, and it grows as a consequence, while other things whither. That is true positive thinking.

So my question to you is this: in your life, what are you focusing on – the things that are a struggle?

Like taking exercise, another day of a diet, another difficult day of work or the things that annoy you about your partner?

Or are you focusing on the feeling of achievement you get after exercise;

or when you measure yourself and see you’ve lost inches;

or whatever is the moment of satisfaction you get from your job;

or those moments of love and appreciation between you and your partner?

How you balance your focus between these choices will define the day you have, and ultimately the life you live.

If we feed what we focus on, then it makes sense to take charge of that focus by positive thinking.

To realise that you’re not stuck being who you don’t enjoy, feeling out of control of your choices, or a slave to emotions that just seem to happen to you.

Learn to spend some time each day deliberately paying attention to what you have that you want more of.

Tune in to the good feelings in the day that motivate you, and the states of mind that produce the best version of you.

You’ll discover this can cause major changes in the amount of fun you have being you.