Positive Mindset; the only propel left in a world of pandemics

My mom is a wise woman.

As a child, she used to always tell me to think of the positive things in life and make everything that is bad disappear. She used to put me in this bubble of happiness and never talk to me about sad things. Even when life would be tough, she would ensure that I felt safe and that “everything will be ok”. She used to tell me to enjoy everything as it comes and just be happy.

Beautiful.

Soon though, I became an independent adult and real struggles came in life. I had no idea how to face them. I felt completely insecure having to deal with real problems; be it financial insecurity, emotional instability, sudden health issues, other people’s misery. It was extremely TOUGH. Firstly, because I had no idea how this emotion of sadness feels like. At this stage of my life, I blamed my mom, for not giving me the space to experience life. For not preparing me for what was I about to face. Frankly speaking, who doesn’t blame their mom for something at some point?

It took years of work with myself to allow feelings of sadness or emptiness to exist. I did manage though, and things became more normal again. And life started being more stable with regular ups and downs, but definitely less emotional suffering. Emotions always come after you, but you have to deal more with daily stress, coping with busy routines, balancing life, relationships and work.

It was only then when I realized that what my mom was teaching me, was a great secret at the time. She was showing me how to have a positive mindset, a beautiful stance in life. And this has resonated with me all these years of existence, it is part of my identity. If I look back, when I was on the edge, I still knew better days would come. I still knew I was strong.

Building a positive attitude in life is like everything else. It takes practice and commitment. Our minds, just like our bodies, they need training and habits to succeed. If you ever ask a fit person how do they stay fit, I am sure they will have some habits to share; exercise, diet. It’s the same with people with a positive mind, it’s the same with successful people. They practice everyday to be where they are. They are taught ways to achieve these things. Talent becomes a shadow, if unpracticed.

I would like to share some tools that I have found extremely useful. Building a positive mindset doesn’t only make you resilient, but it can have an automatic shift to your energy levels. It can change your relationships; when you are positive, people around you become happier as well. For me, I can still have a bad day, but it’s much easier to shift my energy and focus. I have learnt how to work out these emotions, and have clarity on what is important.

1. You need time for yourself everyday. How often do you spend time with you? Just you. No phone calls, no social media, no other people. Just time to walk, read, exercise, meditate, draw. It’s so important to get this time for you without distractions, it can set you up of the day. Also, great ideas come when the mind is clear. If there is noise everywhere, then you will just get noise. Optimal suggestion here: 2 hours per day just for you. Might sound a lot, but maybe there are few things you could adjust in your day.
2. Daily affirmations. This might sound strange to some, familiar to others. However, it is definitely a game changer. Every day, when you wake up, look at yourself in the eyes in the mirror and talk to yourself. Say things out loud, like: “I am strong”, “I am happy”, “I am full of energy”, “I love you”. It might be hard to even look at yourself in the eyes in the beginning. We look into our general image and appearance, but we forget to look inside ourselves. We forget to tell nice things to ourselves. We forget to affirm how we want to feel today. We affirm all the negativity, by saying things like “I am getting older/fatter/uglier”, but we never say “I feel GREAT about myself”. If you say negative things to you, that’s how you will feel. If you start saying nice thing to you, that’s how you will feel. It’s that simple. If you are curious reading this, please try it out for a week and tell me how it felt. When I was affirming “I am full of energy” I was magically waking up an hour earlier everyday without an alarm feeling completely fresh. How did that happen?
3. Gratitude. Are you thankful for everything you have? My favorite book as a child was Pollyanna. Her attitude in life was: “I broke one arm, but it’s ok because it would have been so much worse if I had broken 2 arms”. And this might be a bit of an extreme attitude, but still, are you everyday grateful for the things you have in life? Your family, your job, your food, your home, you? Gratitude is happiness and humbleness. Practice 2 minutes of gratitude everyday before you go to bed if you can.
4. Dream. In detail. Are you still dreaming? Are you thinking what you are going to be when you grow up? I still do. But it’s so easy our dreams to be only about our next salary promotion, our next party, our next ephemeral experience. I am talking about beautiful, glorious dreams; dreams that will make your heart overflow of joy. It could be a wonderful marriage and a family, it could be fulfilling your purpose by your work, it could be building a massive farm with animals. But dream of it, in every little detail. Close your eyes and sense everything. Many think that dreams end when we graduate from university. I think that dreams are even more important when we enter adulthood. They can give you purpose, mission, they can make you feel alive. And who knows, the more you dream of it, the more it can become true? Just saying.

The last thing I wanted to share is the quote of a famous coach, Tony Robins: “Success is 20% strategy and 80% mindset”. Maybe it’s not the strategy that is failing then.

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If any of you reading this, gives a try to all the above, please give me a reach out. I would love to learn more about what shifted and I have lots of material to share to keep up the journey.