Ready for more positivity in your life? Break through the negativity with these tips

In today’s society where we are confronted with shocking news from time to time, it is not easy to stay positive. Yet life itself is neither positive nor negative: this assessment depends entirely on your own state of mind. Mindfulness expert Marisa Garau offers some helpful tips for consciously choosing positivity without falling into denial.

If you follow the news closely, it seems that the whole world is made up of exploiters, scammers and criminals. But in reality, most people are just trustworthy and okay. How the world appears to you depends on your own focus: do you want to see negative or positive things? Positivity is good for your health, but it won’t work if you try to deny the bad sides of living with it. With mindfulness, you recognize that there is suffering in the world and you consciously choose the power of positivity. How does it work exactly?

3 tips for more positivity in your life

Positivity Tip 1: Note Positive Actions

There are many abuses in the world in which people and animals are humiliated, exploited and killed. Nature is also exhausted by our insatiable thirst for economic growth. These are facts, yes. But that doesn’t mean you have to deal with it day in and day out. Unless you really find your sleeves yourself, worrying won’t solve this injustice. Limit the influence of the media, because all these negative messages undermine your emotional health. Instead, take a hard look at your own life.

Once you sharpen your focus, you’ll notice lots of good things: the garbage man whistling a tune, the neighbor cleaning up the mess in the park, the school kids running a race for a good cause. This way you protect yourself from the negative influence of the media and you see with your own eyes that a lot of good is happening in your immediate living environment. This is not only reassuring, but it will also inspire you to bring something positive to your own neighborhood.

Positive Tip 2: Ignore Negative People

Negative people have a habit of constantly dragging you into things they know well. It starts with an innocent chat about the weather, but before you know it, you’re engaged in a nasty discussion about everything that’s wrong with the world. Obviously, they win these discussions because they know these topics in detail.

You can try to avoid their verbal confrontations…but negative people don’t just get distracted. They will throw their favorite hobbies into the group at random to feed their appetite for conflict. Know that you can’t build meaningful relationships with negative people because they just want to send, not receive or exchange.

So keep these people away. After all, they can’t add anything to your life except moaning and exhausting talk. Instead, focus on people you get along with, who appreciate you for who you are, and who inspire you.

Positive Tip 3: Appreciate Your Good Sides

In our Western culture, it is normal to magnify faults while successes are often modestly mocked. Just look at the feedback processes: After the obligatory compliment, you usually hear out loud what’s wrong with your performance and the areas for improvement that you need to work on. It’s really not bad to look at your own thinking and actions from time to time and make adjustments if necessary. But many of us constantly put ourselves under the microscope and discover more and more “flaws” and “gaps”. This is an unhealthy situation that leads to overthinking and self-degradation.

To counter this, it is wise to acknowledge daily what you have done well. Even if it’s just about getting the trash out in time…you’ve thought about it and had the discipline to drive this thing down the curb. Maybe you emailed an old friend or messaged your elderly neighbor. At the end of the day, take a moment to reflect on these seemingly insignificant events and appreciate that you put your precious human energy into such humble but positive activities. By acknowledging your good qualities, you counteract the overly critical ego that only wants to see negativity, and you give your self-confidence a nice boost.

A new dimension

To consciously practice positivity, you need mental toughness, because the constant flow of negativity requires a constant counterweight. Conscious positive thinking is therefore not a naive game: it is a reasoned choice that requires perseverance and discipline. But as soon as you start cultivating positivity, you’ll feel calmer inside, less likely to get upset, and much stronger in your shoes.

Read more? You will find more inspiration and practical advice in my long article on positivity.

About Marisa Garau

Marisa Garau short Cultivate Mindfulness, an online platform for zenless mindfulness. Because she has always been an entrepreneur, her approach is down-to-earth and results-oriented: which mainly appeals to enterprising men and women. She’s lived in New Zealand since 2007, produces her own olive oil, loves The Bravery but at the same time reads Dickens without embarrassment and sweats it out with a personal trainer three times a week.