With all the negativity in the air, staying optimistic about the future presents a challenge.
Everywhere you look, you can find evidence of rough waters ahead. How can you be happy while surrounded by so much fear and uncertainty?
A positive attitude can help.
What is a Positive Attitude?
A positive attitude is a mindset.
People with positive mindsets are optimistic and resilient. They see the good in most situations and know the bad times don’t last. They also tend to be kind, appreciative, and happy.
People with positive attitudes also tend to be successful. Pessimists may say those folks are only positive because they are successful, but the opposite is often true.
They’re successful because they’re positive.
They see opportunities others may dismiss. Their confident optimism is contagious, and everyone they meet loves them. Their positivity helps them succeed in business and friendships.
How To Develop a Positive Attitude
Developing and maintaining positivity takes a conscious effort. It’s too easy to fall into the pit of despair that everyone seems to want you to enter.
Here are 21 ways to stay positive regardless of what’s happening around you.
Get Off Social Media
Social media thrives on hate. Rage bait sells, and the more you engage, the worse content you will see.
Turn it off. Stop doom scrolling. Don’t feed the trolls. You’ll be surprised at how much your outlook changes when you stop surrounding yourself with negativity online.
Seek Happy News
If you don’t want to ditch your favorite apps altogether, make them work for you. Show your algorithm that you refuse to engage with hateful, harmful content.
Follow accounts spreading love and positivity and block everyone else. Like and share joyful content and ignore the rest. Eventually, your feeds will burst with happiness, improving your overall mood.
Go Outside
It’s hard to be unhappy when you’re enjoying nature. Get outside, watch the squirrels frolic, listen to the birds sing, and smell the flowers.
When stressed and upset, walk around the block for fresh air. It will rejuvenate you and inject you with a much-needed shot of positive energy.
Do Something that Brings You Joy
When you’re feeling down, doing something that makes you happy can help.
Pull out your old photos, paint a picture, or have coffee with a friend. Engaging in joyful activities will help you maintain a positive attitude about everything else.
Engage in Self Care
Stress destroys positivity. To be more optimistic, you need to be in the right headspace.
Self-care can help.
Indulge in a bubble bath or massage, and take time for yourself. When the stress melts away, you’ll see the world in a brighter light.
Practice Self Love
You need to take a hard look at how you speak to yourself. Turn off the hostile inner critic and show yourself more compassion.
Treat yourself with more grace. Say nice things to yourself. As you start to believe them, you’ll become more optimistic about your future.
Cultivate a Happy Life
Happy people have positive attitudes, but happiness is an elusive beast. When pursuing happiness, we often focus on the wrong things.
Discover the true meaning of happiness. Pursue activities that bring you closer to your personal heaven on Earth.
Enjoy Simple Pleasure
Most of us have only a handful of significant events in our lives. The majority of our time consists of smaller moments. These seemingly insignificant seconds link together and form our lives.
Make the most of them.
Spend your free time enjoying life’s simple pleasures: a warm cup of tea, your purring cat, or a good book.
Set Realistic Goals
Bad attitudes come from not achieving your goals. But sometimes, that’s our own fault. We set these crazy, unrealistic goals that hardly anyone can achieve and then pout when we don’t accomplish them.
Most people won’t become famous athletes or astronauts. That’s okay.
Set realistic goals that you can actually achieve to turn your defeatist attitude around.
Lean on Loved Ones
Humans thrive with social connections. Spending time with loved ones can change your perspective on the world.
They can provide fresh insight into your struggles, calm your fears, and help you tackle problems. But they are more than that.
Being with our friends makes us happy. Spending a few hours with people you love, doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company, will make the world seem more positive.
Focus on Your Strengths
We’re often our own worst enemy. We have a negative view of ourselves because we focus on our biggest flaws.
Script the script. Stop dwelling on your mistakes and focus instead on your strengths and accomplishments. Concentrating on your best qualities will instill a positive attitude about yourself.
Build Your Skills
If you’re worried you don’t have any strengths to celebrate, cultivate them.
It’s never too late to learn new things. Take an online class or find a mentor who can help you discover your hidden talents and abilities.
The more you learn and grow, the more you’ll have in your life to be optimistic about.
Show Gratitude
We all have hundreds of little things to be thankful for in our lives. We don’t see them because we rarely take the time to appreciate them all.
Start a gratitude practice. Force yourself every day to give thanks for all the good in your life. You’ll realize things aren’t so bad after all.
Try New Things
Variety is the spice of lift. Trying new things is the perfect remedy for boredom.
It doesn’t have to be a paradigm-altering lifestyle change. You could try a new restaurant, read a book in a different genre, or explore a hobby you wouldn’t normally consider.
These activities inject freshness into your life, making you feel a little more positive.
Meditate
A lot of our negative emotions stem from anxiety. Meditation helps keep us grounded, soothing that anxiety and helping us live in the moment.
Practicing meditation boosts our moods, giving us a more positive outlook on the day ahead.
Look on the Bright Side
To be more positive, you need to change your perspective. Depending on how you look at it, the glass is either half empty or half full.
So why are you looking at it as half-empty?
The half-full folks can see the brighter side of every situation. Learn from them and challenge your negative perspective.
Laugh
Laughter is the best medicine. How can you be upset when your entire body shakes with glee?
Watch a funny movie, play dress up, get silly, and fill your home with laughter. The dark cloud will evaporate, filling you with a positive attitude about the world.
Accept that Bad Things Happen
Life won’t be a constant string of happiness. Bad things happen. We get passed over for promotion, fail a test, and lose friends.
That’s not negativity, it’s life.
Nobody lives an entirely blissful life without challenges. What would be the point? We can only appreciate the good things because we know what the bad feels like.
We need to accept that bad things are part of life. It’s okay to grieve, but we can’t let them destroy everything we’ve worked so hard to obtain.
Take Care of Your Physical Health
It’s easy to be negative when we don’t feel good in our bodies. Ailments, injuries, and illness can cause stress and strife.
Minor changes to improve our health work wonders to keep us positive. Swap out junk food for healthy snacks. Commit to eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. Stand for an hour at work. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.
These tiny changes add up to a healthier body, which will help you maintain your positive attitude for years to come.
Be Kind
Nothing lifts your mood better than a smile on someone else’s face. If you want a positive attitude, fake it and spread positivity to others.
Hold doors for people, pay for someone at the checkout, give compliments, and be the positive influence you want to see in the world.
Kindness is contagious. People will start to emulate your kindness, and everyone will be uplifted.
Make You Time
With today’s busy schedules, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to carve out time for the things we enjoy. But it’s essential for remaining positive.
Say no to invitations that don’t serve you. Make your partner step up and contribute their fair share around the house so you have free time. Reduce your children’s activities.
It’s okay to set time aside for you so you can enjoy the things you love.
Positivity Starts With You
We can’t control most things that happen in the world, but we can control ourselves. We can be positive despite the negative news cycle.
Cultivating a positive attitude when the world feels like a pit of despair can be a massive challenge, but you can make your small corner a better place. Inject positivity in the world and watch it spread far and wide.