Self Help

5 Powerful Ways to Cultivate a Positive Mindset

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Our lives are a reflection of our attitude. It can be easy to become negative and cynical toward the world without even noticing. With the continuous exposure to tragedy and injustice that we are exposed to daily, we can quickly start to experience our own heartache and distress.

Not only is this negative attitude preventing you from enjoying your life fully, but it can also have a significant impact on your health and environment. Here are five powerful ways that you can begin to cultivate a positive mindset and change your life.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

There are times when a single event can ruin your entire day, and an unpleasant interaction can overshadow the enjoyable parts of your day. With this awareness in mind, you can intentionally focus on the good parts of the day by keeping a gratitude journal. Every night, before you go to bed, write down five things that you’re grateful for and see how your attitude changes.

Reframe Your Challenges

You have to get into the mindset that there are no dead ends, only re-directions. DonÕt let uncontrollable events render you helpless. Learn to control the effort you put in and have fun with challenges that you encounter. Embrace challenges as a new adventure rather than attempting to resist an experience for growth.

Use Positive Words to Describe Your Life

The words you use have a lot more power than you think. How you talk about your life is how your life will be. Your mind hears what you say about yourself and your life. If you describe your life as boring, hectic, chaotic, that’s is exactly how it will be. However, if you use the words familiar, involved, or lively, you will see your life in an entirely different light.

Don’t Get Dragged into Other People’s Complaints

A study conducted by the Warsaw School of Social Psychology determined that complaining leads to lower moods, negative emotions, and a decrease in life satisfaction and optimism. Don’t let other’s pessimism bring you down. If you don’t join in with the complaining, others will start to complain less as a result.

Create a Morning Mindset Routine

The outcome of your day can be directly affected by your thoughts and actions when you wake up. Mornings set the mood for the day, which makes it imperative to create a mindset that is positive. Start your day with excitement and enthusiasm and see how it affects the rest of your day.

A shift in your mindset from negative to positive can have a dramatic impact on your life. Not only does a positive mindset trigger optimism, but it can help you achieve your goals. Start cultivating a positive mindset and watch how your life changes for the better.

Meditation: A Key to Stress Management

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We often see people break down in depression, or incapable of thinking properly in times of great need or problems. These are people who let stress rule their lives, and its never a pretty sight to begin with. The only way for you to be free from stress is to make sure that you don’t let it rule you. Here are some stress management tips on how to relax and rule the problems out of your system.

It’s all in the mind

Our mind is the first to be affected in throes of stress. The harmony of your thoughts can be disrupted if you let your worries and problems seep into your conscious mind and control how you think. Financial burdens, quarrels or petty fights can leave devastating effects on your mind – if this does happen then the first thing you should do is relax.

Relaxing your mind is a great way to control stress but not so easily done. It needs a lot of concentration and willpower to achieve. There are ways to induce your mind into a relaxed state; aromatherapy is a great way to induce a sense of relaxation and can help you think straight. The scent of lavender or jasmine can put you in a meditative state and help you relax almost immediately. You can choose scented candles, incense or oils that will suit your preference.

Meditation is the key to stress free life

It’s almost impossible to find a solution to your problems when you are deep in stress, no matter how petty it is. Learning to focus all your energy in telling your mind to relax can be done through the ancient art of meditation.

Meditation allows you to focus your mind to a single idea and letting other sift away to nothing. Meditation classes will guide you through steps on how to initiate your mind into meditation and keeping it there during times of need. This will allow you to focus on a single thought, like finding a solution to your problem, while letting the worries and anxiety float away to nothing.

Steps to meditation

The first step of meditation is to look for a place of peace. Stress management always starts with serenity and solitude, so you better pick a location that will help you start with meditation. You can pick a room in your house with the least amount of noise or go camp out with nature.

Next, you need to relax by focusing your mind on specific parts of your body. Start with your toes, legs, torso, stomach, hands, and chest. Its best if you close your eyes and let your mind zero in on these areas. Tell each one to relax. Be extra careful not to fall asleep since this will immediately cease all meditative attempts.

Once you have relaxed each and every part of your body, you will feel a slight heaviness. This usually happens during your first try at meditation. After a while, you will no longer feel your body – as if it’s a non-existent part of yourself.

Focus on a question, like a solution to your problem, with your mind. You might notice that some thoughts or scenes appear and disappear like a fleeting memory – keep note of these in passing and don’t focus on them too much since this will defeat the practice of meditation. Imagine like you’re watching a movie.

When you encounter problems that will eventually lead to stress, you can invoke meditation almost instantly. If you practice enough, your mind will instantaneously clear itself of all cluttered nonsense and allow you to focus on how to deal with your stress.

The Best Ways to Use Positive Affirmations to Manage Stress

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Stress is an inevitable part of life. However, when stress levels remain high, they can start to have a detrimental effect on both your emotional and physical well-being. It is imperative to find ways to manage stress and repeating positive affirmations is a way for you to increase feelings of inner peace, and to combat daily stress. The idea is to take the positive statements of what you want to manifest in your life and repeat them enough that they become a part of how you think and see the world. Here are some of the best ways to use positive affirmations to help you manage stress.

Repetition

The most popular way that you can harness the power of affirmations is by merely repeating the affirmation to yourself regularly. Saying them out loud to yourself several times a day, in the mornings or evenings, can be incredibly useful. When you repeat them out loud, you hear them more clearly, which can make them more effective than if you were to repeat them to yourself mentally.

Do-It-Yourself Recording

To hear your affirmations more times throughout the day, you can record yourself repeating the positive affirmations and play the recording while you are driving, when you’re reading in the evenings, or when you are exercising. Be sure to talk in a calm voice, and consider playing your favorite soothing music in the background. DIY recordings are a great way to create a tailor-made experience for your specific needs.

Use Post-It Notes

A fun way to utilize your positive affirmations daily is by writing them down on Post-It Notes and placing them around your house to provide you with positive messages throughout the day. You can put them on the refrigerator, your bathroom mirror, and other places that you see frequently. This technique can be incredibly useful on its own, or you can use it with some of the other affirmation techniques as a reinforcement.

Self-Hypnosis

If you want to increase the effectiveness of your positive affirmations dramatically, you can use self-hypnosis with them. Self-hypnosis is a way to cement your affirmations into your subconscious thinking much quicker than merely repeating them when you are in your normal conscious state.

While not all positive affirmations will be helpful in helping you relieve stress, most of them can effectively transition you into a better frame of mind and help you build resilience and help you find enjoyment in your life.

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