Tips for Developing a Positive Mindset

WORDS: Peter Minkoff PHOTOGRAPHY Supplied

If your glass is always half-empty, this can be a problem in many parts of your life. A negative mindset affects your outlook on life, can dictate your attitude toward yourself and even affect your health! So how can you go from being a pessimist to being an optimist? There are different ways you can change your perspective and develop a more positive mindset: 

Start your day on the right foot

As you probably know from experience, if your day starts with stress, it will most likely continue in that direction. If you often wake up too late, start panicking, miss your bus and fail your exam or work assignment, you can try creating a more positive morning routine. When you let negative emotions and pessimism cloud your morning, it will carry into other daily experiences. Instead of letting this happen, you can start your day with positive affirmations and a healthy morning routine. Stand in front of the mirror, tell yourself a few positive things and you’ll be amazed how much your day can get better just from that small action. 

Celebrate good things

No matter what you do, there are things that can affect your day in a negative way—very rarely will you have a perfect day. When these obstacles come your way, focus on all the benefits you can extract from the situation, no matter how small or insignificant they seem. Let’s say you’re stuck in traffic on your way to work. Now you have time to listen to an extra language lesson or enjoy your favorite music. When the coffee shop is out of your favorite breakfast food, you will get a chance to try something new and maybe fall in love at the first bite. 

Look at failures as lessons

Perfection in people is impossible, and you shouldn’t strive for it—it will only strengthen your negative emotions. You’re bound to make mistakes and experience failure, but it makes all the difference when you know to take it. Instead of focusing on the fact that you failed, you can focus on the lessons this brings. If you mess up something at work, you can now know what to do differently next time. Maybe come up with new ways to manage your projects, communicate with clients, etc. 

Work on yourself

When you invest time and effort into working on yourself, you will realize something amazing: You are worthy of love, care and praise. Through different positive behavior support workshops and classes, anyone can improve communication, implement environmental changes, learn how to react to negative behaviors and manage stress and anger. These are especially beneficial for individuals living with disability, so they can receive tips from real experts. As you work on your self-development, you can naturally develop a more positive outlook on life after you see that all sorts of improvements are possible.  

Surround yourself with positive people

Positive emotions are contagious and you can often get a more positive mindset when you surround yourself with optimistic people. Their words and actions will touch your subconscious mind and affect your life and thinking in a positive way. It can be difficult to find positive people, especially today, but it’s easy to eliminate people and things that make you unhappy and depressed. As you let others’ positivity affect you, you can do the same for them and create a circle of positive thinking.  

Learn to laugh at yourself

Humor can make even the darkest of situations easier to get over. Remind yourself that one day, you will look at negative experiences as lessons or even funny stories. Through humor, you can train your brain to focus on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative. 

While toxic positivity exists, it’s much better than toxic negativity. So don’t hesitate to fake it till you make it and practice these tips until you completely adopt the positive mindset.