Do you see the world through rose colored glasses? Are you dealing with a cup that's half full? Your answer to these questions can give great insight in regards to your overall outlook on life. If you're generally optimistic, then you generally think positive thoughts and your cup would be half full. There have been countless studies linking positive thoughts to effective stress management. This is an important link because stress can exacerbate a plethora of health issues including diabetes, obesity, depression and even heart disease. So if you don't see the world through rose colored glasses, then your pessimistic or negative thoughts could affect your health.

To be clear, thinking positively does not mean that you simply ignore all the stressors you experience in your regular day to day living. Instead, it means that you tend to approach life and its experiences in a more positive way, imagining the best outcome of a situation rather than the worst. Essentially, this boils down to your own self-talk €" the thoughts that float around in your head, the thoughts that go unspoken. Does your self-talk tend to be positive or negative?

Self-talk comes from all different places, like your voice of reason and logic. Some may call it that little voice inside your head, or your conscience. Some of your unspoken thoughts could come from your need to sort of fill in the blanks and make sense of the pieces that you have even though you could be missing some information. Filling in these blanks with your own thoughts and your own reasons could lead to misconceptions and often does. How you deal with these misconceptions can play a big role in your outlook on life €" do you tend to have positive or negative thoughts when you don't have all the information?

If you answer this question by saying that you mostly have positive thoughts and really try to imagine a happy ending to each of your life's stories, then you are most likely an optimist. On the other hand, if you tend to think of the worst case scenario and then move towards dwelling on the negative outcomes a situation could have, then you could be considered a pessimist. Don't fret if you can categorize yourself as a pessimist. Optimism and the power of positive thinking can be learned.

In order to combat negative thinking or negative self-talk and begin to change how you see the world, you'll need to identify your negative thoughts. A common form of negative thinking is known as Filtering. This is when you filter out all the positive aspects of a situation in your mind and only focus on the negative things. An example of this is if you planned out a day of shopping and were able to purchase all of the items on your list on sale or with a coupon, and when you got home you realized that you forgot to buy one little item. Later that evening you continue to dwell on the one little item you forgot to purchase rather than enjoy the great job you did by getting everything else and staying under budget.

Another common form of negative thinking is called Personalizing. This is when you immediately and automatically blame yourself when something bad happens. Let's say you had plans to hang out and spend time with a few friends. When the evening out is canceled, you immediately assume the change in plans is because your friends don't want to see you.

You could also find yourself Catastrophizing. This is when you think the worst about a situation without a second thought. Say the drive through at your favorite fast food restaurant gets your order wrong, if you Catastrophize things then you would think that the rest of your day will be a total disaster because one thing went wrong. Polarizing is another form of negative thinking where you see things as either good or bad without any type of middle ground. This means you feel either you have to be perfect or you're a total failure, there is no in between.

To combat this negativeself-talk, identify areas of your life that you tend to think negatively about. For instance, if you tend to think negatively about things like your relationship with your parents, or your job, or where you live, then start small and choose one area of your life to think about more positively. And periodically stop throughout your day and analyze your thoughts. Are they mostly negative? Look for a way to change your thoughts so they are more positive and get freedom from anxiety & strees.

A great way to combat negative thoughts is to try to find the humor in a situation. Laughing can also relieve stress. And exercise is a great stress reliever, and it will positively affect your mood. Eating a more healthy diet will also help with your mood, and this is turn will help you laugh more. You could also incorporate a natural supplement to your diet to help lift your mood. Things that include Passion Flower Extract, L-Theanine and St. John's Wort have shown to help your mood and help you to get relief from strees naturally.

Take a look at the people in your life. Try to surround yourself with positive people who will support you and provide dependable and helpful advice. Negative people can increase your stress level and your negative way of thinking. And practice positive thoughts. A good rule of thumb is to never say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to another person. For example, if you find yourself thinking €I am a terrible communicator€ try to turn it into positive thinking and say €I'm going to speak up a little more and work at explaining my ideas better.€

You shouldn't expect to go through a complete change overnight. Teaching yourself to change how you think could take just a little time, but with some practice you'll find that your negative thinking becomes less and less. With that, your stress will dissipate and you should see some relief from your anxiety.