How to stay positive and feel good about yourself

Do you think positive or negative thoughts?

How good do you feel about yourself and your life? Are you happy most of the time or sad or depressed? The way you feel about yourself and your life depends on the thoughts that you think. If you think happy thoughts you feel happy, if you think sad thoughts you feel sad; it stands to reason.

Every minute of the day you are making judgements, affirming things to yourself, making decisions about the world around you. etc These can be positive or negative depending on your state of mind, mood, what’s going on in your life or your predisposition to seeing the best or the worst in things.

When you were younger, if your parents or carers were generally positive people and saw the best in everything then you may well have learnt to do the same. However if your parents/carers were generally negative people who saw the worst in everything then you may well have learnt to do the same. The fact is that having negative thoughts about yourself and your life does not make you happy, and wouldn’t you agree that your main aim in life is to be happy?

The good news is that if you learnt from you parents/carers how to be negative (because after all you weren’t born being negative) you can learn how to be positive, just by changing your thoughts. So the more you focus on the good things in your life the better you will feel about yourself.

Are you filling up your "Feel good pot" or your "Feel bad pot"? For the purpose of hopefully explaining things a bit better, imagine you had 2 pots in your mind (you haven’t really but bear with me) one was labelled “Good feeling thoughts” the other was labelled “Bad feeling thoughts”. Every time you say something good/positive to yourself the more you fill up the “Good feeling pot”. The more you fill this up the better you feel about yourself and your life, so the more your self confidence and self esteem will increase. The positive things you say may include such things as “I am excited about…”, “I am happy about…”, “I can do…”, “I am grateful for…”, “I love…”, “I did that well…” etc.

The reverse is of course true every time you say something bad/negative to yourself the more you fill up your “Bad feeling pot”. The more you fill up this the worse you feel about yourself and your life, and the more your self confidence and self esteem will suffer. The things you say may include “I hate…”, “I can’t do…” “I am unhappy about…”, “I dislike…”, “I am useless….”, “I’m stupid…” etc. The more you say these sorts of things to yourself the more you will feel stuck in your life and unable to move forward.

How to change your thoughts You can take steps every day to change your thoughts around by making a point of focusing on all the good things in your life. If you get into a habit of asking yourself these questions every day, preferably at the end of the day, then these will help to keep you focused on the good things in your life:

● What went well today? ● What did I learn? ● What did I give today? ● How has today added to the quality of my life? ● What am I grateful for? ● How did I help? ● What am I happy/excited about in my life right now? ● What am I committed to? ● What did I do today that took me nearer towards my goals? ● Who do I love? Who loves me?

The more you focus on the positive things, the more you will see the positive and the more positive you will feel.

Bear in mind that you are thinker of your thoughts, nobody else is doing it for you, so you can choose to think positive or negative thoughts. Which would you prefer?