I'm sure that virtually everyone in the western world has heard of the concept of positive thinking. I am equally sure that almost as many people have no idea as to what a positive mind really is and how it can help you achieve happiness in life.

Most people seem to associate positive thinking with an upbeat state of mind where the so called positive person is always talking about positive things and repeating positive affirmations and is all enthusiastic and fired up most of the time. This is not positive thinking. This is positive mania.

Positive mania is almost as bad as negative mania. The mind is overly active. The fact that it is overly active on positive things does not counteract the fact that an overly active, noisy mind is not the type of mind required for maximum success.

The noisy part of the mind is the conscious mind. However the minds that you really need to get on side for success are the subconscious mind and the even deeper, spiritual mind. When the conscious mind is overly active it interferes with the sound functioning of the subconscious mind and the spiritual mind.

The role of the conscious mind is to hand down clear, non-ambiguous goals to the subconscious mind. These goals have to be supported by congruent goal oriented actions. If this is achieved then the subconscious will establish habit patterns to help you achieve your goals and also hand those goals on to the spiritual mind. The spiritual mind is the mind that communicates directly with universal consciousness; the field of all possibility.

The noisy mind, whether noisy with positive rhetoric or with negative rhetoric interferes with these positive aspects of the deeper minds and thereby keeps your best players on the side line and out of the success game.

The best way to activate the positive aspects of those deeper facets of mind is to quieten the conscious mind and allow your mental energy to focus on the subconscious and spiritual mind processes. This is achieved most fully in a state of meditation, but it can also be functionally achieved throughout the day by having a quietly focused conscious mind.

The high achievers in life tend not to be running around rah-rahing. They don't spend their time ramming positive affirmation down the ears of everyone they're talking to. They are not mentally hyperactive.

The high achievers have a quieter, more focused, self confidence. Their form of positive thinking is their belief that they will achieve their goals regardless of any obstacle. They are positive in their focus and in their actions and don't really care whether or not other people are impressed by them or whether or not other people would regard them as positive.

The person who has to make a lot of noise about being positive is more likely to be a person trying to convince himself or herself that life is going to work out for them. They will either mature into the quietly confident, high achieving, truly positive person or else they will burn out.

If you are in this hyperactive form of positive thinking then perhaps it is time for you to spend some time developing a focused, steady mind and allow the truly powerful subconscious mind and the even more powerful spiritual mind to do the job that they are best at; directing you to a happy and fulfilling life.