Shift Your Perspective, Transform Your Life: 8 Ways to Build Lasting Positivity

linnearader
Apr 14
6 min read

Sunrise. Setting your positive mindset — Sunrise

The Morning Mindset: How You Start Sets the Tone

Do you…

Wake up feeling tired? Roll over and hit the snooze button a time or two (or six)? Dread the day ahead of you?

Do you…

Wake up feeling refreshed? Get out of bed ready to seize the day? Excited about the day ahead and the opportunities yet to come?

What is the difference? Is the difference circumstances beyond your control or is the difference YOU?

The Power of YOU: Taking Control of Your Perspective

Recognize the good things that are going on in your life.

YOU are the difference. Your perspective on life is the difference. How you interact with the world is different. So how do you make sure that you have a positive outlook? Here are eight great ways to change your mindset and make your life more positive:

1. Daily Gratitude Practice: Finding the Good Each Day

Recognize the good things that are going on in your life; gratitudes. Practice looking for gratitudes daily. Big or small, find what is positive in your life and pay attention to it. Then, at the end of each day, write them down! Why at the end of the day and not right when you wake up every morning??? Well, it’s kind of a trick…if you have your routine every evening that you write them down, you’ll spend all day looking at what is going well rather than zeroing in on what might not go so well.

2. Creating a Positive Environment: People and Media That Lift You Up

Surround yourself with positivity, both people and interactions. Have you noticed when you watch the news too much or are on social media at length you feel down? How about if you watch one video about something negative, what comes up next? A video about something similar. Take that the opposite direction and look up something that makes you smile and has a positive impact on you, guess what will show up more? You guessed it, more positive! The same is true for the people we choose to spend the most time around; if they are positive, you’re more likely to be, if they are negative…. well, so are you!

3. Focus on What You Can Control: Understanding Your Circle of Influence

What is in your circle of influence? — What is inside your circle of influence?

What is your circle of influence? Steven Covey made this term more greatly understood when he wrote “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” your circle of influence references what you can actually do something about. If you can’t change it/do something about it, don’t worry about it! Easy to say and sometimes hard to do, but when you find yourself worried about something, ask yourself what you can do to make it better. If the answer is NOTHING, move on! If the answer is to divide yourself into four humans and be awake 27 hours each day without sleep, that’s still nothing you can do anything about, move on!!! If you can make a phone call to your neighbor and help him move his boat in a few minutes, do it!

4. Reframing Challenges as Opportunities: The Growth Mindset

When things don’t go well, take that challenge, and use it as an opportunity instead of seeing it as a failure. Take ownership of your challenges and see it as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than asking yourself why something is happening to you. On a similar line, search out the positive version of events. If we don’t train ourselves positively, we may miss positive angles on situations that we might miss initially.

5. Staying Present: Removing the Storm Cloud Filter

Stay mindfully in the present situation. How we interpret events is often clouded by previous interactions, past regrets, and anxieties. You’ve probably heard of rose-colored glasses, this is the direct opposite, it’s the storm cloud that negatively affects how we react. Your boss asks you when you’ll be back from a meeting. Last time someone asked you when you’d be back, you got back to a hot mess, sh*t show…your instinct may bring you dread. Your response may be worry about what is next with nerves getting the best of you. Reality check, in this example, it was simple curiosity. If you can back the situation out and take questions as questions and situations at face value, handle things when you KNOW there’s something to handle…your life will be far more peaceful (and positive).

6. Setting Yourself Up for Success: The Importance of Reasonable Expectations

Set every day and situation up for success by setting reasonable expectations. Don’t expect a meeting scheduled for 2 hours of talking to be crazy exciting. Set the goal or expectation that you come out of the meeting having learned something or shared something important with others.

7. Celebrating Small Victories: The Path to Big Achievements

Celebrate the wins when they come. If you only allow yourself to celebrate when you meet your big giant goal, you’ll spend most of your time disappointed and often give up entirely. Say I want to lose 100 pounds, which is one heck of a goal. If I wake up every day, weigh myself and am horribly disappointed that I haven’t lost 100 pounds already, I’ll be disappointed for quite some time. However, if I take my 100-pound goal and break it up into smaller goals, like every 10 pounds, each time I reach a goal I will celebrate the win and keep working positively towards my next goal. The likelihood of me actually getting to my big goal is far greater this way.

8. Daily Acts of Kindness: Boosting Others and Yourself

You will notice I mention social kindness a LOT. I want everyone to perform at least one act of social kindness each day. Very similarly to practicing gratitudes, by looking for an act of social kindness each day, you will be on the lookout at all times for ways you can show kindness to a friend or stranger. By looking out for ways to show kindness, you will continue boosting your own positivity each and every day.

Positivity During Difficult Times: A Realistic Approach

There is a caveat here…I’m not saying terrible things don’t happen. I’m not saying training yourself to be more positive can prevent your father-in-law from having a stroke, or someone being diagnosed with cancer, etc. What I’m saying doesn’t prevent all of that, what I am explaining is how to make your perception of every situation as positive as possible. Even when those horrible things happen, if you’ve prepared yourself for them you can break those situations down to what you can and can’t control, look for mile markers and goalposts towards recovery, appreciate the life you’ve enjoyed with them, and make the bad things not hit quite so hard.

Taking Action: Your First Step Toward Positivity

we aren’t ignoring life’s challenges but choosing to approach them as best we can.

So, what’s your first step towards a more positive tomorrow morning? Are you going to dread the alarm? Are you going to roll around in bed and think of how many ways you could call in sick? Or are you going to own the day, find the positive, change your perspective and step by step change your life?

Choose one of these strategies to implement when you wake up. Plan an act of kindness for a colleague or friend. Spend your day thinking about what you are grateful for. If a situation hits you the wrong way, reflect on it and see if you’re viewing it with rose colored glasses or a storm cloud. These small shifts in perspective compound over time into life-changing positivity.

We are on this journey together. Share what you are grateful for today in the comments or tell us which of these strategies resonated with you the most. By sharing your gratitude or strategy selection you may provide the extra boost someone else needs to get started!

Remember that we aren’t ignoring life’s challenges but choosing to approach them as best we can. Your positively trained mindset will hold far more power than you realize.

And, as always, carry social kindness with you everywhere you go. The world needs you and your positive mindset!