Positivity: It’s An Inside Job
Summer is just one Spring breeze away, and we couldn’t be more excited for it! Everything feels better when the sun is shining, and we can’t wait for long days lounging in the sun with a meditation playing in our ears and a smile dancing upon our lips.
Because it’s so much easier to feel positive about life when Summer comes along! It’s like nature is rewarding us for getting through a long, dreary winter with good weather and a sense of summery celebration in the air… but what would happen if all that was taken away? Would you be able to maintain a positive mindset if it rained all Summer long, or if your vacation plans got canceled? Let’s face it, for many of us the answer would be a resounding ‘NO!’, and that’s where the problem arises.
See, positivity is an inside job- it’s your attitude, not your experience- but many of us forget this from time to time. We feel passively positive towards a certain event or thing, rather than actively seeking the positive aspects of life.
According to the American author H Jackson Brown Jr. ‘opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor’, and you can easily substitute ‘opportunity’ for ‘positivity’ in this instance. They say good things happen to those who wait; we say good things happen to those who go out and look for them.
Don’t worry though - it’s easy to train your mindset to be more positively inclined, if you know how to. And that’s why we’re here: to give you 3 simple exercises to help you grow your ‘positivity muscle’ so you can make this Summer your best one yet!
Practice Gratitude
We can’t say it enough – gratitude is amazing! According to Harvard Health gratitude enables us to ‘refocus on what [we] have instead of what [we] lack’, helping us to reframe our mind to see the blessings rather than the burdens (you can read more about the benefits of this practice here). Focusing on the negatives will undoubtedly leave you feeling negative, so change your mindset to see what is there rather than what isn’t.
Work On Your Positive Self-Talk
Positivity is an inside job, there’s no doubt about that. Change your internal narrative to speak kindly to yourself, and learn to be your own cheerleader. The only constant relationship you have in this life is the one with yourself, so talk to yourself as you would to a friend and discover how much more positive you feel when you do so. You can find out more about enhancing your self-talk for a more positive outlook with this article from Healthline.
Practice Small Acts Of Kindness
A study published by the Review of General Psychology found that “when people carried out three to five acts of kindness a day, they experienced significant increases in happiness. It didn’t have to be a big gesture. It could be almost anything, from giving a friend a ride to letting someone at the grocery store get in line ahead of you.” Practice small, random acts of kindness on a daily basis to experience greater feelings of positivity, kindness, happiness, and self-love.
So, there you have it- positivity is indeed an inside job! These are just 3 small ideas for practicing positivity on a day-to-day basis, and there are plenty more out there! For example, if you google ‘how to invite positive energy’ you get 203,000,000 results in 0.56 seconds. Answers to this vague question vary from page to page; some say by practicing gratitude, others put it down to feng shui-ing your home, and some suggest laughing on a daily basis. Whatever you choose and however you practice it, positivity is definitely ‘in’ this Summer, so get practicing to make it your best one yet!