There are so many life factors that contribute to happiness – supportive friends, a loving family, regular access to food, a stable income, brain chemistry, self-knowledge, a social safety net, good health, a safe discrimination-free neighborhood, self-confidence and access to healthcare…just to name a few.
Of course, we can’t control some of these factors; but we are not helpless either. We have the ability to add meaning into our lives just by changing our mindset.
I won’t pretend that simply having a positive outlook on life will solve all your problems. But it’s also entirely true that a small behavior or attitude change can make a huge difference in how you feel (which is what we’re all about here at UCAN!).
Here are some tips to try out tweak your mindset in a positive direction:
1. Cultivate self-compassion
On a bad day, how do you treat yourself? Do you talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend or are you judgmental and cruel? Do you compare yourself with others to try to inflate or deflate your self-worth?
Or rather, do you consider how you are not alone in your struggles and everyone has bad days sometimes? Do you think that in order to motivate yourself you have to constantly be critical of yourself?
The answer to these questions will reveal your self-compassion. Self-compassion is a way of making yourself feel better without having to think of yourself as special or above average.
At its core, self-compassion is about being kind and understanding with yourself, finding common humanity with others, and being mindful of your own emotions.
Next time you’re having a bad day, check in with yourself and try to understand what you’re feeling. Then, take a moment to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. To try out other self-compassion exercises to flip your internal script.
2. Challenge the mindset “I’ll be happy when ____”
You deserve to be happy now. We all have goals and dreams but if we put off our happiness for when we finally reach them, we’ll probably be disappointed. And what’s worse, we will have spent a whole period of our lives unnecessarily boxing ourselves into unhappiness and discontent.
Often one of the common ways we implement this mindset is when it comes to our body: “I’ll be happy when I lose weight,” or “When I gain more muscle, I’ll be content with my body.” And we tell ourselves: “When I lose weight, I’ll be able to wear nice clothes,” and “When I get the body I want, I’ll feel confident around my friends.”
To all these thoughts I say NO. You deserve to be and can be happy and content with your body now! You don’t need to wait until you “have the body you want.”
Feeling confident in your body is not something reserved for people whose bodies fit into societal norms. And more often than not, even those with bodies that fit into societal norms experience body dissatisfaction too, proving that confidence is not dependent on your body.
You deserve to feel good, unconditionally, no matter your size or weight. So, skip the diet, ditch the scale and know you are worthy as you are.
3. Try out some self-affirmations
Positive affirmations can help you rewire your brain to have a more positive outlook. They don’t work for everyone, but they can be powerful reminders that you can do hard things and you have what it takes to persevere.
It can feel like a “fake it ’till you make it” sort of thing, and that’s ok. You can actually re-wire your brain this way – so what do you have to lose?
There are many ways you can incorporate positive affirmations in your life. Here are a few:
- Come up with a list of affirmations and practice saying them to yourself in the mirror everyday.
- Write positive affirmations on sticky notes on post them around your room.
- Download a positive affirmation app that will send you notifications throughout the day. Or, make a positive affirmation your new phone display.
- Look for the good in the people around you and practice affirming them.
To learn more about self-compassion and other mindset shifts check out Dr. Kristin Neff’s Ted Talk. Start changing the way you think and you will soon notice the trickle down affect of how mindset can reshape your mood and behaviors.