5 Ways to Cultivate a Positive Attitude

Hi EveryOne, Welcome to the month of November, wow where has the year gone? If you made a new year’s resolution to be more positive in 2017 – how are you going with your resolve? Is positivity still obvious in your attitude? Are you grateful for all the good and all the not-so-good that you may have experienced this year? Or have you allowed yourself to get caught up – focusing more on the not-so-good stuff? You know, our resolve can easily go by the wayside when we let ‘life’ catch hold of us in it’s vice and squeeze us till we can’t breathe. So here’s the deal… We can choose to quit and justify our ‘reasons’. Or we can choose to get up, dust ourselves off, and simply keep going. We may not be able to control the hand that we are dealt, but what we do with that hand, is one choice that’s entirely our own. So lets look at 5 Ways to Cultivate a Positive Attitude…

1. Develop an Attitude of Gratitude

Life can be hard or life can be joyful, it’s all up to our own interpretation (how we view the world) and our own willingness to see the benefit in each situation. If we choose a victim mentality in life than even in the most positive experiences, we will somehow manage to find a negative. But no matter how tough, there is always benefit (though we may not see it straight away or we may have to dig a little deeper to find it). So as the song goes ‘always look on the bright side of life’. However, cultivating a positive attitude does take practice. And practice. And practice. So a good way to start is to write a ‘gratitude journal’ wherein you write down 5 things each day that you are grateful for. Or to make it even easier, just have a whiteboard handy in your kitchen and write the 5 things on there – every single day.

2. Write Your Own List of Commandments

Write your own list of ‘rules’ or guidelines that you can stick to, to keep a positive attitude. This is another great way to stay positive and on track in daily living. But keep it realistic and make it doable to hold yourself accountable, with love, not with force or aggression. My son recently told me that together with his partner, they are coming up with their own ’10 Commandments’ that they both have to adhere to and are allowed to remind each other of (gently)… I think this is brilliant 🙂

3. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is really a form of meditation – which is really a form of positive thinking! It enables us to stop revisiting the past (which we can’t change). And enables us to stop rushing to the future (which we can’t control). Mindfulness means to bring ourselves back to the present moment again and again and again, as a means to ‘check and change’ ourselves. This allows us to enjoy, to appreciate, to flow and to grow.

4. Strengthen Your Faith

Faith comes with experience. If we don’t regularly try different things (take ourselves out of our comfort zones) our faith will be lacking in many areas because doubt has a way of creeping in. So be adventurous with your thinking, after all, your thoughts are the seeds of your actions. And YOU are the Creator of your thoughts! Use your courage to experiment with your thinking because if something is NOT working, then we MUST change the way we think about it! Experimenting enables us to work out which thoughts sabotage us and which thoughts support our growth. Then simply create more of those thoughts that will help you to continue to move forward. Don’t waste time on negative thinking – it’s a waste of your time and energy that’s best used for facing the right direction and for more productive activities.

5. Cultivate a healthy lifestyle (simply)

A healthy lifestyle means to adopt a non-violent way of living – to be kind to ourselves so we can be kind to the world. This means no beating up on others and certainly no beating up on ourselves! No matter how tempting!… This also means to care for our own wellbeing. Like mindfulness, a healthy lifestyle starts with our thoughts. So it pays to become a little more vigilant to what we are putting into our mouths as well as our minds. Exercise for the mind is equally important as exercise for the body. The key is to keep it simple. Not all ‘gym junkies’ are healthy! Just keep a simple diet of unprocessed foods and gentle daily exercise that stretches your mind, body and soul. There’s much scientific proof out there that poor diets contribute to poor thinking – which contribute to lack of motivation and lack of self esteem… Which contribute to anxiety, stress, depression, chronic pain, suicide – which are at an all time high.

We each have the ability to turn our thinking around and indeed, our lives – it starts with just one thought. Life is all about experimenting, so be playful and have fun with it. Stay positive everyone 🙂

Question: How well do I nurture of my own attitude?

Consideration: Do I care for my own wellbeing or do I ‘always’ find something more ‘important’ to do? If so, why?

Action: For the month of November (ahead of the ‘festive’ season when stress and depression peak) practice to STOP and to BREATHE, as a means to CHECK and to CHANGE your own attitude. Our own self development is the best gift we can give anyone in the whole wide world.

Lots of love Annemarie

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