What are the consequences of focusing on negative thoughts?

You won’t like them, and neither will any sentient person.

So, in the spirit of positivity, I will answer the question by offering the many pleasant and productive consequences of positive thoughts, and you and other readers can add their own antithesis. Positive people:

1. Live longer and happier, demonstrated by a number of controlled, longitudinal studies. In one, 180 nuns wrote of their hopes for the future as they entered the order. Ninety percent of the more optimistic and happiest lived past age 85, while only 34 percent of the less happy did.

2, Are more aware of the world around them, which prepares them to be more open to new ideas and practices, which in turn enables them to be more creative, productive, tolerant, and, in some cases, wealthy. I expand on this point in n my book, If You’re so Smart, Why Aren’t you Rich:

Think poor, be poor. Think rich, be rich. SMART will lead you to rich. It will show you, with lively anecdotes and a touch of theory, how to convert the powerful intangibles of thought to the profitable tangibles of behavior and money.

Almost anyone can program their mind with negative thoughts to become poor, or with positive thoughts to become rich.

They can do that by flipping the bonehead bloopers of Losers that led them to poverty. Or they can embrace the positive, productive mindsets and behaviors of Winners that lead them to prosperity. SMART will demonstrate the power of either approach.

3. Positive people create more and more compatible, enjoyable, and enduring relationships with people that they can treat kindly, certainly an important, if not the most important, cause of happiness. Within the broad domain of relationships are close friendships with people and the deity of your choice, more distant friendships with acquaintances, and the most intimate love with spouses, certainly a double-edged sword. It seems that happily married people are among the happiest, and most positive, and unhappily married people are among the saddest and most negative. Divorced people are a mixed bag. The bottom line is that nobody likes a grump.