Donegal counsellor Sarah Barr shares five helpful ideas to create more positivity in your life.

Being positive will impact your life in so many ways. Your relationships with others will improve as people are drawn to positive people and your stress levels will decrease helping your overall health.

Here are 5 ideas of how you can bring more positivity into your life:

1. Try To Find The Good In Bad Situations

Bad things happen, to us all from time to time.
But by trying to find some good in what has happened can help us to process it as well as learn from it.

2. Daily Affirmations

Beginning each day with an affirmation will create a positive feeling and have a knock on effect on how you behave that day. By owning what you are saying you are further telling yourself that this affirmation is true.

Such as “I am confident” or “I am capable”.
After all we believe what we think.
See previous article for more tips on creating daily affirmations.

3. Gratitude

If you’ve been feeling negative, it can help to show some more appreciation for the things and people you have in your life. We can tend to focus on what we don’t have, and compare ourselves to others. This just grows negativity, resentment and jealousy.

Being grateful is not about appreciating only the big things in your life,it is literally about being grateful for everything.

It is also a lot harder than you may think.

A good challenge to set yourself is to complete a 30 day gratitude journal. You can start this today.

Just use a notebook, journal or copy book and write down 5 things you are grateful for. But also give one reason for each one. As our brain will believe something more if we have a reason (fact) to back it up. Such as I am grateful for my family, because they give me so much love and support. So not only are you saying what you are grateful for, but you are also backing it up with evidence and re-creating the feeling of love and support.

However you must write 5 different things each day. This is to help you really look at your life and become more aware of all the positive things and people you have in your life.

4. Self-Improvement

Being positive means taking control of your life, and accepting responsibility. One way to do so is to focus on some form of self improvement. This can be learning a new skill, starting a new class, reading books, joining an exercise class or creating a new hobby.
Taking care of yourself will feel good and make you more positive.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay 

5. Focus On Solutions

By focusing on solutions instead of problems can help you stay positive. Being solution-focused and not problem-focused, will help you feel more in control and hopeful.

Take care of yourself, change your thoughts, and practice gratitude will all help to create more positivity in your life.

Take care ~ Sarah.