70 Inspirational Quotes for Positivity (And A Positive Mind)

Reading time: 16 minutes

Especially during adversities, a positive mind works with optimistic future projections. It helps keep you resourceful, constructive, and hopeful during your hard times.

There are two helpful ways to boost your mood and bring positivity into your life. One is to surround yourself with realistically positive people. The other is to seek the support of those who encourage you when you fail.

But how do you keep a positive mind when you don’t have anyone to pull you out of hopelessness? Well, you can quickly pick up a positive mind quote and recite it as a positive affirmation mantra.

This collection of “positive mind” quotes will encourage you to keep a happy and healthy attitude and gain an optimistic perspective on your life.

Inspirational Quotes for Positivity

Here are some intensely powerful quotes for having a positive mind:

• 1. Convince yourself every day that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive; all is well. ― Germany Kent

• 2. In order to carry a positive action, we must develop here a positive vision. – Dalai Lama

• 3. Keep my word positive. Words become my behaviors. Keep my behaviors positive. Behaviors become my habits. Keep my habits positive. Habits become my values. Keep my values positive. Values become my destiny. – Mahatma Gandhi

• 4. A positive mindset can build a positive physical and mental structure for an amazing life. ― Hormuzd Dossabhoy

Handling Rejections: Rejections are unmistakable cracks in your perfect image of an imperfect world.

No one gets through life without being rejected at something, often many things. Learning to handle rejections is a necessary skill for living positively.

One effective way is to interpret your endeavors as practice sessions in a game called Life. The more you fail during practice, the more you learn how to win the match and the game.

Also, do not expect worse things to happen further when faced with one rejection. Waiting for bad things to happen pulls down your mind’s attitude toward negativity.

• 5. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. — Leonard Cohen

• 6. A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. ― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

• 7. Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. ― John Wooden

Failed Goals: We always have some goals, whether they are clear or ambiguous in our minds. Now, most of our ambiguous goals, and a few of the clear ones, stay stubbornly outside our control. These undefined and uncontrolled goals are the ones we are more likely to fail at.

And the failed goals leave us frustrated and demoralized.

However, if we have a positive mind, we do not brand our failures as points of loss or frustration. Instead, we see them as windows of learning that open us up for future wins.

• 8. Live life to the fullest, and focus on the positive. – Matt Cameron

YOLO! (You Only Live Once!): You have one life, so aim to live the best and happiest version of it. If you see your future self as the best version of yourself, you can begin your journey to a brand-new self right away.

As the late “King of Pop” Michael Jackson sang, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.” To make that change, we need to start building a positive mind.

• 9. A positive mindset is a mental and emotional outlook that aims for a good future on the other side of a tough present. — Unknown

• 10. Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success. — Joyce Brothers

Sometimes, what makes you act negatively is a memory of a bad day, a negative situation, a cynical person, or a guilt-ridden mistake from your past. These force you deep into negative emotions.

Soon enough, that one act traps you into a toxic loop of overthinking. To get out of it, start with one of these positive mind quotes before you find a friend, family, or therapist to help you.

• 11. The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. ― Winston Churchill

• 12. The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude. ― Oprah Winfrey

• 13. We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. ― Swami Vivekananda

• 14. One small positive thought can change your whole day. – Zig Ziglar

• 15. Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. ― Albert Einstein

Words can change your mindset: If you are in the habit of describing your workday as busy, chaotic, or rough, then you should be ready to feel their effects in other areas of your life.

When you continually describe your leisure experiences as tiring, colorless, and soul-sapping, your brain settles into an overall negative pattern.

Soon you find your other life experiences have become insipid, chaotic, and bad.

But if you check yourself to recount the parts of your experience that were genuinely fun and relaxing, your brain wires up for a new pattern of positive thinking.

Using positive phrases to describe your life while trying to see the good in most situations can help you reinforce your positive thinking mindset — science says so.

• 16. Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results. ― Willie Nelson

• 17. It makes a big difference in your life when you stay positive. ― Ellen DeGeneres

• 18. The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. ― Carl Rogers

• 19. You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. ― A.A. Milne

• 20. Positive thinking can be contagious. Being surrounded by winners helps you develop into a winner. ― Arnold Schwarzenegger

Change your words: Life is full of responsibilities, big and small. Each day, you have to hurtle from one crisis to another.

You have to wake up, have to eat breakfast, and have to go out to work. You have to go shopping to buy clothes. And you have to pay for insurance for your car and house.

Your life is full of these things that you have to do. But what if you change your viewpoint and see your burdens as things that life has blessed you with? You could say to yourself:

I felt blessed to wake up today, so I savored it in all its simplicity.
I felt fortunate to be able to eat breakfast and go to work, so I prepared some food for a homeless person.
I felt thankful for being able to shop for clothes and pay for insurance; why not be generous enough to donate some to a charitable cause?

• 21. A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results. — Wade Boggs

• 22. It always seems impossible until it’s done. — Nelson Mandela

• 23. You always pass failure on the way to success. ― Mickey Rooney

• 25. Choose the positive. You have a choice. You are the master of your attitude. Choose the positive, the constructive. ― Bruce Lee

Let social pressure not dictate your choices: Society today actively promotes egoism and egocentricity, with social media bombarding you from all sides to get on that “me-first” bandwagon. It’s almost a trend to obsess about how one could make their own life better, always and first.

But if people choose to go easy on that, they could spare a thought about others who are not as blessed or privileged as them — and do a bit for them. You can do that, right?

You do not need to buckle under that toxic social pressure. You do not need to forget you always had the power to look up from your smartphone to do things that put smiles on people’s faces.

• 26. The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” — Winston Churchill

• 27. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. — Alice Walker

• 28. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. — Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-king

• 29. You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind. ― Joyce Meyer

Change your inner voice for good: Like the rest of us, your inner voice is quick to remind you of all the wrong things you have done to that day. It criticizes all of your flawed actions and minor mistakes. It points out you could have done better and even says you are not good enough.

But if you constantly stay tuned to that negative self-talk playing in your head, you gradually change into a person with some deeply negative opinions about yourself.

Over time, these add up to a pile of lame reasons as to why you are not a good fit for anything. You gradually notice more and more of your mistakes and even come to think you are no good at all.

In time, it becomes a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy, and you slide down more.

• 30. Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. ― Zig Ziglar

• 31. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. ― Vincent van Gogh

• 32. Positive thinking is a valuable tool that can help you overcome obstacles, deal with pain, and reach new goals. — Amy Morin

• 33. If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges. — Pat Riley

• 34. I really believe in the power of positive thinking and the collective power of people’s thoughts spawning something into becoming reality. — Finn Balor

Balance the bad with some good: An unpleasant exchange can eclipse our entire day. A coarse interaction at home, work, or commute can demoralize us for the rest of our day.

Our minds tend to cling to the negatives. So, a single event can fill our day with fury, stress, regret, and other negative emotions. To offset this, we could focus on the good parts of our day and record them in a journal.

If you regularly use a slew of negative words to describe your life, you probably spend a good part of your days in a climate of negativity.

So, add more positive words to your mental vocabulary. Give it an extra push to describe the joyful parts of your day. In time, your mind and your life will fill up with practical positivity.

• 35. What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity. ― J. Sidlow Baxter

• 36. If things aren’t going so well, I try to stay positive and not give in to negative thoughts. — Rosanna Arquette

• 37. Change your thoughts and you change your world. — Norman Vincent Peale

• 38. A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. — Herm Albright

• 39. When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple. ― Paulo Coelho

• 40. Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success. — Shiv Khera

• 41. I shall stay calm in moments of stress and anxiety, so as to allow positive thoughts and actions to manifest from me. — Leon Brown

Find ways to feel grateful: When you see your daily chores as burdens, they sound imperative and carry a negative undercurrent. But when you see them as blessings, they feel permissive and bring a sense of gratitude and joy.

Positive thinking is more than just a tagline. It changes the way we behave. And I firmly believe that when I am positive, it not only makes me better, but it also makes those around me better. – Harvey Mackay

If you are living with an overly negative person by compulsion, you might try Guided Therapeutic Imagery. Research shows it can decrease depression, fatigue, and total mood disturbance. It can also affect mood positively and reduce cortisol levels. Guided imagery scripts are available online, and you might practice the technique by yourself.

• 42. Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude. ― Lou Holtz

• 43. Every day may not be good… but there’s something good in every day. ― Alice Morse Earle

• 44. It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts. — Robert H. Schuller

• 45. When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought. — Joel Osteen

• 46. Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results. — Willie Nelson

The Negativity Trap: It is easy to fall into the trap of focusing only on the problem because it might derail your train to your goals. But by focusing again on the process itself and changing tracks to find novel solutions, you help yourself get into a higher state of positivity.

Sometimes, the people around you are each a little swamp of negativity. They say and see things from a pessimistic point of view. They maintain a steady focus on the negative aspects of life. These are the perennial complainers.

For example, it is common to hear some of our friends whining about the weather. People like them feel good only when they have aired their many complaints. Even if it were within their power to change things they grumble about (not the weather, obviously), they would not want to change any of it.

• 47. You can’t control the world, but when you control your thoughts, you bring order. — Bernie Siegel

• 48. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. — Henry Ford

• 49. Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace. — Buddha

• 50. When I got fired from my first sales job, it seemed like I had fallen at the first hurdle. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. It led me into a job where I really learned the ropes and showed me that even disasters have positive sides. — Tony Clark, Iron-Man

The key to being content is lowering your expectations – but not so far that it leaves you miserable. Researchers found that managing our expectations, not too high or too low, boosts happiness.

We should treat happiness as a tool rather than a goal. You may enjoy yourself more if you don’t expect everything to go perfectly.

• 51. “The key to being content is lowering your expectations – but not so far that it leaves you miserable.” ― Robb Rutledge

• 52. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ― Marcel Proust

• 53. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ― Abraham Lincoln

• 54. “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” ― Mother Teresa

• 55. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” ― Dolly Parton

• 56. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” ― Bertrand Russell

• 57. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

• 58. “Lead from the heart, not the head.” ― Princess Diana

• 59. “Always find opportunities to make someone smile, and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.” ― Roy T. Bennett

• 60. “The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.” ― Mark Twain

• 61. “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer

• 62. “Say yes, and you’ll figure it out afterward.” ― Tina Fey

• 63. “As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them” ― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

• 64. “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” ― Marcus Aurelius

• 65. “Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” ― John Lennon

• 66. “There is no way to be perfect and no fun in being perfect.” ― Alicia Keys

• 67. “Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see a shadow.” ― Helen Keller

• 68. “Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.” ― W.P. Kinsella

• 69. “Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world.” ― Orhan Pamuk

• 70. “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” – Dennis P. Kimbro

Final Words

A positive attitude is a critical ingredient for our mental health. Studies have found those who are more positive have much better psychological well-being. A positive mental attitude can protect us from having heart attacks and going into depression. Optimism, one of the six qualities of a positive-minded person, lowers the risk of dying from several diseases.

A positive-minded person has the following six key traits:

1. Mindfulness — staying aware and mindful in the moment.
2. Optimism — keeping the hopes up about good outcomes.
3. Gratitude — appreciating life’s goodies, and being thankful.
4. Resilience — bouncing back strongly after falling down.
5. Acceptance — accepting that it is only human to fail.
6. Honesty — remaining upright at all times, in public and alone.

There’s a cool mnemonic to remember those six qualities: MOGRAH, from the first letters.

Finally, remember what Jon Bon Jovi said, “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.”

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Author Bio: Researched and reviewed by Dr. Sandip Roy. His expertise is in mental well-being, positive psychology, narcissism, and Stoic philosophy.

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