Chapter 7: Steps On How To Train Your Mind To Think Positive
Step 1: Observe Your Thoughts
The first step to training your mind to think positively is observing your thoughts. The truth is, most of the negative thoughts we have often creep in at a certain time, place, or during special events in your life. This may be explained by the fact that we are creatures of habit. For instance, you may be anxious whenever you have a trip coming up. Or you may be stressed because you have an interview up ahead of you. Or it may be that what is causing you to be upset is because you had a major fight with your spouse.
The moment you know the negative thoughts that keep bothering you, it will be easy to devise a plan to resolve the problem. For instance, if it is a job interview that is causing you stress, you will simply start preparing early and asking people who have attended similar interviews for advice.
Everything starts from your thoughts, so be on the lookout for negative thoughts and their possible triggers.
Step 2: Scan For The Three Daily Positives
Every single day, we have experiences and encounters, some of which are negative while others are positive. Therefore, before you decide to go to bed, you can make it a habit to reflect on three positive encounters you had that day.
It can range from someone buying you coffee at work, watching the sunset with your husband, or landing a new client. It can also be small things like a compliment from a coworker/friend, bumping into an old friend, making a new friend, or watching your kids play. All these are more than enough to make you happy.
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Step 3: Give Someone A Shout-Out
Gratitude is important. According to research, gratitude can make one optimistic and can even help ward off heart disease. The best place to start is by keeping a gratitude journal where you record all the things you are grateful for every single day. However, I have discovered that sharing gratitude is far much fulfilling and satisfying in life than just writing it down.
Here, you can record anything from just thanking yourself, child or spouse for all the hard works, complimenting your friend, having a discussion with your spouse about how their day was. This may feel a little weird at first, but with time, you will appreciate just how awesome it feels to give someone a shout-out.
Step 4: Help Others
Each day is an opportunity for us to help someone in need. Most people think that helping someone is only about giving them money.
However, helping others may take any form from just helping a friend organize their work/project to helping a colleague with invoicing. It may be helping someone in the kitchen with the cooking or the dishes. It may be holding the door for someone, buying a stranger a cup of coffee as well as volunteering among others.
Just find anything that you can do for someone today. Daily, try putting a smile on someone’s face and watch what positivity that has in your life.
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Step 5: Surround Yourself With Positive People
Did you know that emotions are contagious? Imagine walking into a room happy and jovial, and you find people gloomy and sad. What effect will that have on you after having a meeting with them for an hour or so?
The truth is, you will leave that room feeling worse than you found them. So, it is important that you pay attention to the people that you interact and spend most of your time with.
If you spend time with people who like complaining and blaming others, you will soon be doing the same. Therefore, the only thing that makes sense is you surrounding yourself with people who inspire you to be a better person, giver, lover, and friend.
Step 6: Look After Your Body And Mind
Based on research findings, it is evident that when you take good care of yourself both physically and mentally, this will influence happiness and satisfaction in your life. It is through this that your mind will learn to think positively with time.
For instance, when you eat healthily and work out regularly, the body will tend to release feel-good hormones that will lift your mood and change your general outlook of life. One of the best ways you can train the mind to practice positive thinking is by meditating and practicing mindfulness through yoga.
Mindfulness is one of the most important steps in helping you stay aware of your thoughts and feelings without necessarily passing judgment on whether they are good or bad. One of the ways you can practice mindfulness is setting three separate alarms throughout the day. When the buzzer goes on, you simply stop what you are doing to take a deep breath. This goes a long way in restoring balance and positivity to your life.
Step 7: Let Go Of All The Negativity So That You Can Have Inner Healing
One of the tricks of becoming positive is uncovering all the negative thoughts we have and then releasing them all. Do not try to hold back; just let them go one after the other.
It is these negative thoughts that often bring us pain and wounds in our lives, and we can never progress if we cannot let go of these degrading thoughts. It is only when we are able to free ourselves from negative thoughts, we are able to build a new system of affirming beliefs that can empower our future.
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Step 8: Make Time To Do Something That You Love
This is easier said than done. However, it is one of the most important steps of winning back positivity into your life. Start by looking around you to determine the things that you enjoy doing. The truth is, the action does not matter, but what counts is that you love it. This could be reading, singing, teaching, sports, movies, or cooking, among others.
Start by setting aside time each day from just an hour to focus on the things you love. Free up some time to do something that you genuinely love and enjoy. These are some of the things that impact your happiness and fulfillment in life, and you do not want to miss out on them.
Try to fix it at the time when you have the least amount of distractions. Within no time, you will realize how that changes your thinking to one with more positivity than you ever thought possible.
