HOW I STAY POSITIVE

How do you stay positive in an instant world where we're constantly surrounded by people who are smarter than us, prettier than us or in some way more talented than us? This is a question which I've really had to think about during my first year at university, especially during the first term, when I was having a bit of a hard time. However, by the end of the first year I felt like I'd developed a far more positive attitude. So I'm sharing a few of the techniques that helped me most.

These techniques mean I now hold this expression of relative contentment (Most!) of the time:

Contented

After having held the following expression for almost half a year, which is, by anyone's standards, a feat of endurance:

Grump

 Disclaimer: None of this is professional advice, clearly. These are just a few things I did that I found changed my life for the better!

1. PRACTICE KINDNESS TO SELF
The number one rule of trying to get yourself out of a negative spiral of thought is practicing kindness to self. When I first started practicing some of the techniques listed below, I ended up feeling worse about myself. At the time it was hard to work out exactly why this was. But I think it was something about me seeing these techniques easily available made me feel even worse about the fact that I didn't know about them. It's hard to express and sounds silly in hindsight, but the fact that I hadn't dealt with how I felt in the best way made me feel even worse. I was beating myself up about not being able to deal with my emotions properly.

 But  of course this just made the whole thing worse. The way I resolved it? Practicing kindness to yourself. Instead of beating yourself up further because you didn't know these techniques or haven't dealt with a setback the best you can, remember that everyone is different. If someone else seems to react to a setback better, what does it matter? They've had a whole different past to you, maybe they're innately different to you: but it doesn't mean they are better than you. Appreciate the facts in your past, good and bad, which have made you what you are, and don't beat yourself up about them. Focus on changing the future instead of obsessing over the past.

2. PRACTICE GRATITUDE
Now for a really simple technique. Every night before I go to bed, I make a list of the things that I am happy for in the day that has just passed. Actually the idea for this originally came from Oprah, and there's a couple of videos you can find about this on YouTube.
Normally I actually say this as a kind of prayer, but you can also just write them out afterwards like this. I think like any kind of journaling its really nice to make this look pretty, like so:

3.KNOW THAT THE ONLY THING THAT CAN FULFIL YOU, IS YOU

This can sound intimidating but I personally think that it's actually super empowering! What it means is: YOU are enough. You are enough to fulfil yourself. When you think about it, that is incredible. Especially in the West where I think we expect things external to us- especially relationships- to fulfil us.  I used to REALLY have this problem. Whenever I was sad, or nervous, or not very confident, I would just wish to myself that I had this incredible boyfriend who believed in me, who told me this, told me that I was good enough and so on. But then I had the realisation: there is no reason you shouldn't treat yourself like this. It's kind of the opposite of treat others as you would want to be treated: treat yourself the way you would want another person to treat you. And I don't  mean go all out and become infatuated with yourself; taking yourself and a mirror on dates. I just mean it's a good idea to build your own confidence up from within as opposed to relying on something external.

And that's the gist of my point: I keep seeing gratitude journals in stores or happiness journals and really I think they can be a great help on the way to positivity but I think they're also part of the problem. Because the idea is this: you buy this happiness journal, and you'll so much happier, or you'll buy this gratitude journal, and that's the work done for them. But really for these things to succeed you have to work with them. And fundamentally I think that we're such a consumerist society that we need to stop looking outward for fulfilment, and more inwards. It's the same as when you're at university your professors reward original thought, at least in the humanities. It's  because the deepest learning is the learning you do by yourself.

So: be kind to yourself, practice gratitude, and know that you are enough. STAY POSITIVE! X