How to Boost Your Positive Mindset

Hi everyone!

I previously wrote a story about my favourite techniques to avoid negativity in our brains and our lives. Today, I feel that now is the perfect time to focus on improving our positive psyche. Instead of running away from negativity, we will try to feed and nurture that part of ourselves that’s already living and hiding within our souls in order to create happiness, motivation and gratitude.

Inner Thoughts

As the day goes by, our mind is going to process different thoughts and moods. Some of them will be completely irrelevant, like remembering the tasks you need to get done by the end of the day, and some others to bring you joy, like eating a delicious breakfast or having your first coffee of the day.

However, some thoughts will be as nice as a little ball of dirt crust in your brain, like a negative memory from your past for example. And finally, some others will generate a pleasant, warm feeling, that makes you immediately grateful to be alive.

This ‘butterfly effect’ in your brain can be the genesis of an awesome day. Let’s imagine that your positive reflection is the idea of visiting Japan. Even though travelling doesn’t seem to be a very smooth process right now, you can spend your free time planning how do you want your trip to be. You can get a tiny notebook and organize everything related to the trip: The budget, the landmarks you want to see, the restaurants you are going to try and the accommodation. Those actions will bring you joy during the day, bringing you excitement towards the future.

Additionally, this type of planning will also help you sort out everything by the time you can book your flight!

Trigger those thoughts

My second tip is to provoke the creation of the same type of thoughts if they don’t come by themselves, because “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain”.

Try to write down, on paper (or the previous notebook that I mentioned), all those ideas and concepts that make you feel excited. Some examples can be moving to another city, a celebration that’s coming up, changing jobs in the near future or even an upcoming festival.

Everything good deserves your attention, and paying attention to positive things creates endorphins. It’s a chain of thoughts that develop chemical reactions inside of our bodies and will fully change the course of our day.

If writing everything down isn’t enough, try insisting. Tease those thoughts. Watch videos about it, listen to a podcast. Is it travelling? Watch Youtube channels with travel content. Is it joining a photography class? Awesome, you can listen to podcasts about photography, or maybe even start checking electronic shops to find the perfect mirrorless camera for you.

Energy

We produce limited amounts of energy. Being in a good or a bad mood uses part of that energy as much as performing other activities.

Negativity, or doing tasks that you hate will drain your energy levels in seconds, whilst doing those things you love will make you lose track of time without realising, making you feel as if you were renovating that source of energy inside of you. It will also affect your physical health, as you will feel more empowered to eat healthily or move more than you do when you are feeling down.

Things that are good for you will make you evolve, grow up and expand yourself. Good things are positive for you and will push you to improve and feel like the owner of your own life and destiny.

Avoid Negative people

In the book “The 48 laws of power”, Robert Greene phrased: “People’s moods are more contagious than illnesses”.

Let’s say you receive some flowers for your birthday and get extremely happy. Now you show them to your flatmate, who is a nice person but won’t stop pointing at the ugly flowers from the bucket. Those comments will make you feel lower, regretting the act of sharing such a positive feeling with that person.

All of us have lived/worked with negative people at some point in our lives. It’s incredible how much our moods can improve by simply staying away from them. On the other hand, we’ve also had the chance to meet people in unfortunate circumstances being kind and positive towards others around them, whilst spending their entire free time working hard on improving their lives.

A few days ago I read something along the lines “it’s funny that people who complain about finances the most all the time are never good with money when they have it in their hands”. That sentence stuck with me. Every time we are aware that something is off in our lives, we choose between complaining or try hard to change it.

Our existence is made up of different factors: our job, finances, lifestyle, relationship status… It’s completely normal to have some of those open to improvement and it’s nobody’s responsibility but ours to work on that.

How do you manage to stay positive?