You are what you think

Most people would accept that when you talk about something you are using your words to describe how you feel about it. However I believe you can turn that understanding on its head and say that the words you use to describe something change the way you feel about it.

This concept is something Tim Ferris talks about Real Mind Control but I think the experiment can be taken even further. It is not just the things we actually say out loud that affect us, our internal dialogue has an effect on the way we feel about things as well. By learning to speak to ourselves in the right way I believe you can gain greater control over your own happiness and achieve success, Neuro-Linguistic Programming is based on the same ideas. 

If you talk negatively about how you feel you are telling yourself that you are unhappy and so all events will be interpreted by you in a negative way, whereas if you can find the silver lining and use positive words you pass a message into your brain that says you are happy and so you will interpret events in a positive way. If you think about it for just a minute or so I'm sure you can come up with plenty of examples of this, for instance we tend to say how we are looking forward to the weekend and so the weekend takes on a happy feeling for us.

Negative questions and thoughts such as "Why can't I do this" implicitly says to your subconscious that whatever it is you wanted to do is too hard for you, a positive way of phrasing that question would be "I am getting better at this all the time". This sends an empowering message to your subconscious that says you are doing what you set out to, which makes you feel better and therefore more likely to succeed. Putting the sentence in the form of "I AM" or "I have" is more positive than "I would like to" and so sends a stronger message. The more you put your thoughts into a positive framework the easier it becomes and the more natural, until it is the way you naturally think and behave and you are one of life's happy people able to deal with anything that comes your way.