One Person Project

“Positivity is kind of like washing your hands, you wash away the negative and have a nice clean place to start over with positivity,” Said my wise 10-year-old. She was right when she said this; we have to “wash away” or rid ourselves of negative thoughts, patterns, or habits and start over with positivity. Just as with hand washing, we must do this repeatedly. If you stop washing your hands, you will become dirty and likely get sick frequently. Similarly, if we don’t regularly rid ourselves of negative thoughts, we will continue to perceive the world, ourselves, and others as restrictive, complicated, or miserable.

I think every single person on the planet struggles with pessimistic thoughts. Some of us are skeptical of others and their motives, while others engage in toxic inner dialogue, and many worry about all the terrible things that might happen today. We are constantly bombarded with bad news, hateful comments online, judgmental statements, and division. It can become challenging to not follow the loudest voices into the pit of pessimism. This is also true of toxic inner dialogue; most of the things we tell ourselves are influenced by what others have said in the past. “I am too fat to wear that” usually comes from someone making comments about our weight or peers poking fun at the overweight lady at the park. “I am not very smart,” or feeling inadequate, or incompetent, most likely stems from the comments your parents would make if you got a low grade, or from a friend who was extremely booksmart and made jokes about your academic achievements. Negative thoughts are often deeply rooted in past experiences, and as a result, they become ingrained habits.

I personally struggled with negative self-talk. My parents had a habit of calling me stupid when I was younger. They would make comments such as “you’d better marry rich because you’re not going to be a doctor or anything.” I remember sitting at our dining room table, crying over a math workbook because I simply didn’t understand the subject. Instead of helping, my parents would make me sit there until I finished the homework, all while making comments about my lack of intelligence. So for years, I told myself that I wasn’t smart enough. I failed many high school classes because, in my mind, I was too stupid to figure it out, so why try? It took me years, a 4.0 GPA in an engineering program, repeatedly being on the dean’s list, and running a successful business to finally realize that I was and am smart enough to accomplish anything. I have made it a practice to tell myself that I can figure it out when something is difficult, because those old thoughts of “I can’t do this, or I am not smart enough to figure it out,” do still surface. I have to consciously catch these thoughts and change them. That is the trick to reshaping how you see yourself: catching the thoughts, discarding them, and reframing them as positive.

When negative thoughts rear their ugly heads, we have to stop them in their tracks. If you notice that you are being too hard on yourself, try changing the thought to something more encouraging. Instead of “I can’t,” say “I can” or “I will.” If you are pessimistic about other people, when a negative thought occurs about someone, try to immediately think of something complimentary about that person. If your peer group tends to focus on gossip or negative topics, consider taking a break from them or redirecting the conversation to more positive ones. If the news or social media influences you to feel that this world is horrible, take a break from your devices and look at all the good around you. Making significant changes to your personality and mindset can shake up your external world. Friends may fall away, you may decide to change your career path, or you may feel out of the loop with current events. Anything you can do to help foster a better attitude will be worth it in the long run.

Creating a gratitude journal is a great way to start focusing on the positives in your life; simply thinking of three things a day that you are grateful for can significantly improve your mood. I have a practice with my daughter, every day after school, I ask her about three things that made today better than yesterday, then I ask her what she is grateful for that day. This 5-minute-a-day practice has made an enormous difference in my daughter’s attitude. At the ripe age of 10, she was very negative, judgmental, and sarcastic. I had to take a look at my behavior, because she picked up these negative habits from somewhere. It was a mix of my influence, schoolmates, social media, and YouTube. We both took a step back from social media and watching TV. I consciously think about what I am going to say so I can influence her to think and say more positive things. And we practice daily gratitude. Doing this is a great starting point to growing gratitude, which in turn sprouts positivity.

These are all great techniques to practice positivity and gratitude. If you slip up and have a bad day, don’t beat yourself up; we are all going to have days like that. Wake up tomorrow and say Today will be better. This is a practice just like washing your hands; you will have to do it repeatedly. If you continue to practice gratitude, you will notice that it becomes increasingly easier to see the good in everything.