Encouraging a Positive Mindset
In today’s fast-paced and often very stressful world, it’s easy to get caught up in negative thinking patterns. Encouraging a positive mindset has become a normalised notion to help achieve goals, overcome day-to-day challenges, and to maintain a general good mood. This optimistic behaviour will inevitably affect other areas of your life, like productivity, motivation and joy. Whether you’re currently stuck in a rut, or you’ve simply decided it’s time to change your mindset, keep reading to discover the habits that you can implement into your lifestyle to cultivate a more positive thought process,
Acknowledgement Over Self-Criticism
Step back a little and give yourself credit for what you have already achieved. What we tend to do as critical individuals in a competitive society is constantly overwhelm ourselves with self-judgement. You’d think we weren’t already faced with daily criticism and to top it all off make it even worse for ourselves.
Humans seem to have this nature to nit pick on the things we weren't able to complete to the desired standard and yes, it may have not been ideal, BUT… the process should matter more than the outcome. Reflect a little on the circumstances you simultaneously had to deal with when trying to submit for a deadline for example. Like us, you also probably have other commitments outside of your main life focus: a part-time job, a family, hobbies, etc. So, acknowledge all the other factors of your life that you are able to keep up with instead of pointing fingers in the areas you didn’t perform as well in. At the end of the day, we are all humans who have a limit. You can only push yourself so much before all your efforts come crumbling down due to unrealistic expectations.
Acknowledge your strengths, the tasks you enjoy doing but also the things that you struggle with, dislike but have to do and so forth. Rather than questioning, “Why can’t I do this?”, you can think, “How can I learn & improve myself ready for next time?”. Having the ability to recognise your own thoughts, feelings and behaviours, as well as the impact that it will have on you in the moment and thereafter, is one of the more challenging tasks. But if you manage and you learn to recognise and process your thoughts in a more self aware manner, your whole approach to the problem will change.
In other words, it's a positive manipulation mind game so you focus on improvement rather than criticism. You’d be surprised how effective some time to focus on yourself will get you regarding a positive mindset.
Manifestation
Now that you’ve dissected your strengths and areas to work on without labelling them as ‘flaws’ or ‘mistakes’, manifest your goals. Manifestation can be performed in many different ways. For some this may be repeating a certain phrase routinely until you’ve reached your goal or for others, this could be looking at a visual representation of where you want to be after a period of time or maybe a combination. Your word selection is extremely important. The moment you start to hint hesitancy to yourself, that’s when your negative intrusive thoughts will be after you. Instead of using words like ‘can’, use words like ‘will’. The aim is to minimise self-doubt and gain confidence whilst making forward steps towards your dreams.
If this is a new practice for you, manifest in small things first and then slowly multiply them in size. They don’t say an overnight success is 10 years in the making for no reason so it’s quite unrealistic to manifest for the big dreams in the beginning since the prolonged wait will only lead you back into a pool of negative thoughts.
Need somewhere to begin, look below for some self-manifestation phrases you can start with. Remember, you need to read these phrases with conviction and truly believe what you are saying.
Examples:
“I am capable of achieving my goals”
“I am confident in my abilities.”
“I trust the journey and know that everything happens for a reason.”
Practise Gratitude
Whilst this sounds like the most mundane activity to do, it is one of the most powerful tools that anyone can use, in any given circumstance. By focusing on the positive aspects of your life and reflecting on experiences and interactions you’ve had in the past, it enhances your overall perspective on smaller difficulties and problems. You can practise being grateful in a number of ways. This could be as simple as writing down three things which you are grateful for everyday, or it can be more elaborate as expressing gratitude to others. This can be taking the time to thank people in your life whether they made a difference to you, or just a minor impact towards something which looking back you are grateful for.
This habit can also contribute to strengthening relationships and building resilience in the face of stress and adversity. When focusing on the reasons to be grateful whether you have one thing to be grateful for or hundreds listed, the act maintains a sense of perspective allowing you to step away more effectively when you’re struggling and leaning towards that cycle of negative thoughts.
Fight your Negative Thoughts, Don’t Run
The development of a positive mindset isn’t going to come from a ‘roses and daisies’ approach but more so from a lot of self-reflection. In times of difficulty, you’ll feel down and hopeless but that’s not your sign to give up or brush this feeling aside. Fight against it by questioning the source of the problem, how you’ll overcome it and how you plan on using it to your advantage.
Think of it as a rubbish bin (trash can for you Americans) analogy. The more you allow for the rubbish/trash to pile up, the more it’s going to grow and cause a problem when you have to clear up BUT if you routinely dispose of the rubbish/trash, you will have a clearer view to get from point A to point B the way you want to. Piled up negativity will only cloud up the pathway ahead and hinder your performance trying to pursue your goals. It’s likely that negative thoughts are arising from illegitimate assumptions, many of which you’ve probably made up yourself, meaning they are not credible for you to get hung up on them. More often than not, when you try to look for evidence to support it… you won’t find much.
We’ve discussed quite a fair share of habits and behaviours that anyone who is focused enough can implement into their lifestyle to encourage a more fulfilling and positive outlook. From developing self awareness, identifying negative patterns, increasing your self-acceptance to practising gratitude and manifestation, there’s plenty of methods to try out. Ultimately, take your time exploring these strategies, give it a go and if it fails, don't be afraid to try again. Whilst manifestation works for some, might not work for others, so try to find attributes that resonate with you, and change that mindset!
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