Keeping a Positive Attitude
For years, we have heard, read and talked about the importance of maintaining a positive attitude towards the hardships life presents us. But it is time to renew our way of thinking, and create new habits that allow us to achieve what we want.
The dangers of extreme thoughts
A well-known truth is if you let negative thoughts invade your mind or let depression dominate you, you’ll spend your life without finding out whats good about it. On the other hand, overly-positive thinking can also distort your view on reality.
In general, excesses and extremes are not helpful. You must change your thinking habits, work on productive techniques for dealing with frustration and find the key to start your inner engine. All this will allow you to have a fuller life.
Steps to maintaining a positive attitude
Identify the cause of your unhappiness. There is always a reason for your frustration, fear, sadness or anger, so this is the first thing you should do. It is not always easy, but focus on finding the real cause of your frustration, which paralyzes you and doesn’t allow you to reach your goals. Sometimes these are questions that go beyond what you want or can accept.
A result of this step might be pessimism. Do not be discouraged, this is just the first step in changing your thinking habits. When faced with difficulties, you can do two things: evade it or confront it. Evading it will only prolong your agony, so I recommend you face it.
Set a short, yet attainable goal.
Imagine the benefits of achieving your goal. Start by creating very basic and simple habits. For example, if you want to lose weight and eat junk food every day, decrease your intake to once a week and order only half of what you usually eat.
The first few days will be pretty difficult for you to start these changes. But after achieving several of these small goals, you’ll feel better about yourself and more enthusiastic. That will be the time to set a bigger goal to achieve something greater; something that brings you closer to your objective and increases your efforts.
Find out which is the most important action in order to really reach your goal. When you have clearly defined your plan of action, you’ll think positively and do it with as much enthusiasm possible. You’ll remain excited and see other possible results. Remember that goodwill or positive thinking is not effective if you do not act.
Identify the good things you have in your life. One of the elements that will help you the most in keeping a positive attitude is being thankful for the good. It’s worth listing everything that you consider appropriate: material goods, people, opportunities, experiences, etc.
It is common, when we are concentrating on what we want to change, that we rarely stop to see the good around us. This is a shame because most people try to move on to the next day without assessing the present and it becomes an endless race.
Lighten your emotional load.
While you identify the good, you will also find things and people that hurt you. It is important to think about why they’re in your life and if they’re really hurting you, you’d better end it.
Of course this is not easy. Ending relationships after many years or disposing of assets that really don’t satisfy you but give you a certain status is not easy. On the contrary, the heavier or more important the emotional load seems to be, the harder it is to let go. But you’ll also have more freedom by letting it go.
We’ll succeed in changing our habits if, after focusing the things that paralyzed us, we are honest with ourselves, set achievable goals, and find our plan of action to help us overcome this obstacle and achieve a more positive life.
A positive outlook as an engine towards change
Have you noticed that your life is just not what you wanted it to be and you’re tired of having a negative perspective on things? The tips mentioned above will help you improve your life, feel happier and have a pleasant outlook on life, improving your day to day attitude.