Is positive thinking really the best way to change life or does positive and negative thinking combined increase the rate of success?

You may have heard the line "Hope for the best (positive thinking) but prepare for the worst(negative thinking).". So i feel it is a combination of both. Positive thinking helps us through tough times or while taking a well-calculated risk. But while planning we must take into account all possible negative things and find a way to beat them or work around them. I think just thinking positive and planning as per the best case scenario is not practical. A lot of trouble can be avoided if we can take into account some setbacks or roadblocks and find a way to avoid them, rather than thinking (positively) that everything will work out. Thanks for the A2A. When I get asked questions like these, I feel like a grown up.!!! Keep 'em coming !!

according to me only positive thinking will not help ...dat may lead to overconfidence .. positive thinking will definitely help but along wid dat we should have some amount of fear or care about work .. which will help to get success ...but excess of fear or tension may lead to failure so it should be properly balanced

Good question! I think that being optimistic is a good thing. It allows you to live a happier life. It keeps you away from catastrophic thoughts and helps you to channel your attention to the brighter side of things/to change adversities into opportunities for betterment. However, being overly optimistic certainly isn't very good. I feel that it is important to realize, and definitely recognize and acknowledge that there are 2 sides to a coin, and sometimes bad things happen and you can't be overtly optimistic through self-deception. I feel that a good dose of an ability and willingness to look at different facets of things and being able to face up to the harsh reality with optimism and positivity is commendable. But being all positive about everything and deceiving yourself that that something bad won't happen is just a form of meaningless escape.

Stoicism has a powerful set of techniques for exactly this kind of mixing of positive and negative visualisation. There's a respected post on it here: http://stoicguy.com/positive-thinking-isnt-enough/ In short, positive thinking is better than nothing, but employing Stoicism gets better results and effectively makes it redundant.

When you add "to change life" to your question, you are changing it (life) from some pre-existing state. Based on the nature of the topic, I am assuming that that pre-existing condition is at least somewhat troubling for you. If that is the case, then I would definitely suggest increasing your ratio of positive-to-negative thinking (-: [and getting more exercise]

According to me combination of both positive and negative thinking is needed, Positive thinking:We can fly in sky...."invented Aeroplanes". Negative thinking: "invented Parachutes".