How to Develop a Positive Personality

A positive personality can have a significant impact on your success and happiness in life. However, many of us aren't born naturally optimistic. Does this mean we still have a shot at becoming more positive in life? Absolutely. Just like you have the power to control your physical fitness, you also have some degree of control over your mental health and positivity. By learning what it takes to adopt a more positive personality, you too can adopt some of its most coveted traits. Here's how you can develop a more positive personality and boost your mental wellbeing.

What is a Positive Personality?

Before we delve into how you can become more positive, we must first analyze the positive personality definition.

According to the Collins English Dictionary:

"If you are positive about things, you are hopeful and confident, and think of the good aspects of a situation rather than the bad ones."

The idea of viewing life through a more positive lens seems simple, but if that were really the case then we would all be optimists. Rather than simply "being more positive," you must train your brain to seek and adopt more positive personality traits.

What are Positive Personality Traits?

Inviting positivity into your life means controlling your positive and negative influences. Therefore, even the most positive people are governed by the people they spend time with. To become a more optimistic person, you need to know how to spot positive personality characteristics so that you can welcome the right people into your life.

List of Positive Personality Traits

Here is a list of positive personality traits to help you spot those magical, optimistic people:

• Alert: Positive people are self-aware. They know their strengths and limitations and they respect them.
• Compassionate: Positive people encourage others rather than tearing them down to feed their own insecurities.
• Joyful: People with positive personalities focus on the good in life. They acknowledge negativity, but they know it is impermanent.
• Self-confident: Positive people usually have a high degree of self-confidence because they have worked on building themselves up. This doesn't come across as gloating or boastful, however.
• Honest: Positive people know that dishonesty breeds negative emotions, so they always strive to tell the truth.

Of course, positive personality traits will look different on everyone. You may wish to visualize yourself as a positive person and identify which traits you want to work on. Make a list of all the words you want people to use when they describe you, such as warm, loving, creative, empathetic, nurturing and so on (Positive Words for People with Mental Illness).

How to Adopt Positive Personality Qualities

"Your mind is like a garden. If you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend them carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all." – Brian Tracy

Just like we have to feed our bodies healthy foods to improve our physical wellbeing, we also have to feed our minds with positive information and thoughts to develop a more positive and constructive personality.

This involves taking control over your mind and eliminating negative thought cycles that may have held you back in the past. Mental fitness is very similar to physical fitness in that you won't see results overnight. Instead, you will develop strength and resilience through practice and training.

Scientists say that 95% of your emotions are determined by how you talk to yourself throughout the day. This is why so many of us are locked into negative thought cycles that we can't break free from.

Luckily, you have a powerful ability to turn your negative self-talk into positive self-talk by simply being kinder and more compassionate to the most important person in your life – you. It takes work, but by actively changing the information you feed yourself, you can enrich your mind with positive personality traits and spread positivity wherever you go.

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