Are you looking to bring a little more positivity into your life? While it’s ok to have bad days and not always feel full of cheer, there are active choices you can make to increase optimism and improve your mood. Here are five tips to get you started.
1. Be Grateful
There are many things in life that can drag us down. While it sometimes feels easiest to focus on these aspects, choosing to consciously focus on things that bring you joy or that you’re grateful will help you to be more hopeful and optimistic. With practice, this will refocus your natural train of thought towards positivity rather than negativity.
2. Set Goals
All of us like to feel a sense of accomplishment—even if it’s just from something small. Learning to set goals can help you work towards these moments and celebrate achievements as they come. Setting larger, long-term goals is a helpful way to gain big picture perspective, but setting smaller goals is also helpful to notice the day to day moments. Try setting both for a balance and reward yourself when you accomplish something that you’ve worked towards.
3. Consider Others
Often the reason we can feel negative is because we’ve become focused on ourselves. While this isn’t always negative and taking care of your own needs is important, it can also be extremely helpful to look to how you can support or help others to take your mind off of your own struggles. Try volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about, help a family member or neighbor with a chore or even complete a random act of kindness for a stranger. Not only will this brighten your day, but someone else’s too!
4. Avoid Comparisons
Comparing ourselves to others can be natural, but is also often unproductive and poisonous to our positivity. The fact is that we are all very unique—each one of us has different gifts, skills, struggles and stories. Learn to appreciate what you offer the world around and be gentle on yourself for what you can’t do. If there’s something you’d like to improve on, set a goal towards it! This will help to sweep away some of the negative thinking and move you towards optimism.
5. Surround Yourself With Positive People
It’s true that those we choose to surround ourselves with can really affect the way we feel. If you’re surrounded by people who are negative, gossip a lot and mostly focus on themselves, you might be in an environment that’s harmful to your positivity. Instead, try to spend time with people who live out the optimism you’re working towards—people who are also aiming to be grateful, set goals and help others. Their positivity will rub off on you and yours on them.
Featured image Lazare
