Many people recently find themselves having difficulty being motivated to keep moving forward with excitement and a positive outlook. We live in a time filled with stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty of the recent Covid-19 calamity that has besieged the entire world.
These are unprecedented difficult times filled with financial struggles, health challenges, personal isolation, social disconnection, and fear. We are mostly in survival mode. The struggles personally and professionally have made our lives challenging, making it easy to fall into the trap of developing a negative mindset.
Only a positive mindset can lead us to a satisfactory life despite the challenges ahead.
The truth is, there are many valid reasons to feel negative about the outlook of the near future, however a negative mindset can do nothing but cause more despair.
Importance of a Positive Mindset
A positive mindset is an attitude someone has who “expects” good and desired results. The power of positivity is immense, and it can help you convert that energy into reality. By expectation, I don’t mean it to be a sense of entitlement.
A positive mindset is rooted in a sense of gratitude, and that helps us tap into the reality of abundance.
In the world of abundance, you can only expect good outcomes, because in that reality there is always more than enough.
That being said, I want to acknowledge that when something bad hits you, you get bombarded with negative thoughts. These negative thoughts cast even more negativity in an already devastating situation. We have all been hit with a bad deal right now, and the feelings of fear, desperation, grief, sadness are all very real, but it comes down to how long we stay in those feelings and stress about things we can’t control.
Having a positive mindset can help you avoid stress. Even out of the most challenging and devastating situations we can find a silver lining.
Every challenge is an opportunity to learn and grow if we choose to accept reality as is and make the best of it.
With a positive mindset you can avoid many physical and mental diseases as well. If you don’t give weight to negative thoughts, you won’t cause your body discomfort from stress, anxiety, worry, and frustration.
A stress-free mind leads to a stronger immune system, and there is nothing more important during a pandemic like Covid-19.
Half of life’s battles can be won if you practice being confident in your abilities. A positive mindset cultivates confidence in your personality, allowing you to perform at your best because of a boosted self-esteem. You can make the right decisions at the right time with confidence.
A positive mindset doesn’t just benefit your professional life, it is also essential for a successful and lovable personal life. Since positivity is rooted in gratitude, you feel thankful for many blessings in your life, especially the people who add happiness to your life. By expressing gratitude and appreciation, the bonds become stronger, giving you access to a satisfying personal life.
How to Build a Positive Mindset
Having a positive mindset when everything is going well is easy to practice. It becomes almost impossible to think positively in difficult times.
If you want to have a positive mindset in difficult times, the key is to start behaving positively right now.
Entering into a day with something positive is crucial. Start your day with expressions of gratitude. Everyday kick off your day by being thankful for something you already have. It could be as simple as waking up and making a mindful statement that you are grateful to be awake. It could follow with being grateful for your family, your home, your health, your life.
Starting your day with all the Covid-19 bad news or having a call with a negative person in the morning can spoil your entire day. Try to listen to or interact with something positive when you wake up. Go for a walk and have interaction with the most positive entity of the universe: the beauty of nature.
Starting the day on a positive note often proves enough to have the entire day filled with positivity.
Another step towards crafting a “positive you” is to start any project or task with the goal of learning from it. Keep in mind, whether you complete your goal, and accomplish it or not, the journey will definitely add knowledge and experience in your life.
If you start a task or goal with the intention to learn from it, you will never be disappointed. That is how you develop wisdom.
Another recommended way to attain a positive mindset is to identify the negativities in your life and remove them like a bad cancer. The more you ruminate negative thoughts the more you feed them.
When you find yourself being overtaken by negative thoughts, stop doing what you are doing and write them down. This way you will slow down the momentum of that negative thought in the first place.
Secondly, read what you have written down and evaluate if it is indeed factual. More than half of your negative thoughts will be dismissed if you simply follow this step, because you’ll discover that more than half of them are fictitious, having no connection to facts or reality.
Most of the time, negativity comes from bad experiences in the past or the haunting fears of the future. If you learn to live in the present moment, negativity will fade out of your mind.
When you live in the present you are more focused, and less likely to be distracted by what ifs, and this can further induce a positive mindset.
You can also keep a journal of the blessings in your life. You’ll discover soon enough that they are countless. All you need to do is to take account of them and feel immediate gratitude. Having an ongoing list of blessings and seeing them grow every day will build your positivity muscle.
Cultivating an attitude of gratitude helps to maintain desired positivity in life.
Memories of unfavorable experiences, defensive nature towards calamities, negative people you may be holding on to, can be a cause of constant negativity in your life. You have to intentionally create positive energy around you.
Everything we experience in life is a result of our intentions, aware of them consciously or not. If you want to experience positivity during difficult times, you have to intentionally do the work to practice gratitude and invite positive people into your life.
There is no magic pill, elixir, or short cut towards having a positively charged life, except for one, and that is to practice unlimited gratitude.
Originally published at tulliosiragusa.com.
Tullio Siragusa is an expert level Certified Life Coach, a pioneer of disruptive technologies, an emotional intelligence (EQ) thought leader, futurist, speaker, and author. For the past 30 years, Tullio has built world class leadership teams in technology companies and startups. Tullio currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Nearsoft, he co-produces and hosts DojoLIVE! a platform that gives voice to emerging technology luminaries. He also hosts Rant & Grow, an entertaining and heart-centered reality podcast where each episode explores people’s personal blockages and how to powerfully move forward with careers, relationships, and self-realization by developing healthy habits. As a founding member of Radical, a social justice movement, Tullio is a strong supporter of human-dignity in all aspects of life, including freedom in the workplace.
Image courtesy of Brooke Cagle.
