I never considered myself a negative person, I tried to roll along with life. What I know now is that I just did not train  myself to be positive. Quite frankly if you had told me five years ago I would be either blogging or writing about positivity I would laughed my ass off. What I have recently discovered and am still learning, is the Art of Positivity.

Lets face it, bad things are going to happen to everyone. We have all heard the expression “its how you handle hard times” that determines the kind of person you are. The problem is when you are having a hard time, you are having a hard time. It is hard to be positive. I learned that its an attitude you have to train yourself to do. Once you do, it actually makes life easier.

My road to positivity started with two friends, who I met through my business. These two were constantly vibrant and positive. They were encouraging and supportive but just did not dwell on the negative. So Step 1 for me was to surround yourself with positive people and spend less time with negative people.

People are drawn to positive people. Did I want to be a person people enjoyed being around? I decided to work at being positive. This lead me to Step 2. This was an intentional decision to try to be positive, to change my mindset. I really had to work at this. Reading good books with positive messages was  helpful. When I was being too negative, I would stop myself and refocus my thoughts. I could talk to these two friends who would always see the positive to make me feel better. I would stop every night and think of one thing that went well that day and one thing I was grateful for. This takes time but is worth it.

I feel like I was successful in changing my mindset last summer. I had a very early morning flight. For some reason, my alarm did not go off or I slept through it, I do not know. I flew out of bed and raced to the airport half thinking I had missed my flight. When I got to the baggage counter I said “Wow, how awesome is my morning? I slept in and still made my flight. This is going to be a great trip”. Now a year ago, I probably would have thought “This trip is doomed. I started my day by almost missing my flight, grump, grump”. My day continued on but I was happy and thankful I made that flight instead of flustered and grumpy. I understood that all my work in Step 2 had finally paid off. My mind naturally went the positive direction without me having to redirect it.

Now how does this effect real life? Lets say that you are working on losing some weight by eating well and exercising. Its Sunday morning and you go to breakfast with your husband who orders the big egg and pancake meal. You look at the fruit and yogurt but pick some eggs, toast, bacon and hash browns instead. As soon as you are done eating, you feel sick, you feel guilty, you feel like giving up and ordering dessert. Well what is done is done, you need to move on with your day. The best way to do this is to think of the nice meal you had with your husband, to appreciate the experience with him and your joy of eating it. You can count the meal as your cheat day and refocus your energy on having a good balanced dinner. You can’t change the past so “just keep swimming” a Dory would say.

I challenge you all to try this. Even actively trying to change one negative thought to a positive thought once a week will greatly benefit how you feel! I would love to hear about your experiences, please feel free to share them with me. I would love to hear from you!