By Daniel Wittler
As we have entered the new year there is always a feeling of being able to start over. Once midnight strikes on January 1st there is an organic reaction to reflect on the past year and hope for a better new year. It can turn into quite a bad experience as it’s the human condition to focus on the negative and not the positive. If you’re anything like me your mind can create a very negative environment and make you stagnant in achieving anything new.
What can be done about that? A negative mindset can put a serious halt on any kind of growth. Before anyone starts writing down goals, it’s best to make sure your mindset and thinking are in the right positive place, here’s some ways to ensure that.
Meditation
Meditation can be intimidating for people who aren’t educated in it. Some people view it as a grandiose art only performed by highly dedicated spiritual people, that certainly isn’t the case.
Meditation is simply the act of getting your mind to quiet down.
Many people find they need to sit still to make that happen but others like to perform certain activities that allow them to go on ‘auto-pilot’ mode and eliminate any thinking going on. Find what works for you.
Some basic meditation guidelines are as follows:
- Find somewhere you can get comfortable
- Close your eyes or keep them open, but make sure to focus on your breath
- If you are having trouble focusing, count your breath. Breathe in is ‘1’, breathe out is ’2’
- Do this for 2-3 minutes
All of us have a different experience with meditation, but across the board meditation creates inspiration and positivity if practiced correctly and consistenly. Starting your morning with a couple of minutes of meditation can completely turn your day around. When I first got sober I would practice meditation at my treatment center and it blew me away how much I would get from it while having very little experience in it.
Positive Affirmations
One of the easiest and most simple actions you can perform is telling yourself positive affirmations. As I mentioned earlier, for most of us it is the human condition to simply be negative and criticize ourselves much more often than when we pay ourselves compliments and give us our own congratulations. There has to be an awareness of the negativity to channel it into something positive.
Some affirmations include:
“I’m doing a great job”
“I love my life”
“I love my family”
“I’m so grateful to have my health”
“Today is going to be a great day”
It doesn’t have to be anything too extravagant, you just need to look into your heart, and see what you can tell yourself to truly have an effect. I bet for some just reading those examples felt good. Affirmations can completely break up the constant negative space in your head and make room for something that makes you feel good and feel happy.
Try your best to throw in these couple of tactics in the morning so when you walk out of your door, you have the mindset that will surely make your days go by smoother. Our minds think without us even having to make it, we go on auto-pilot a lot. Sometimes when you are feeling stressed out, take a very deep breath and review what your mind is thinking about or telling you that is causing the stress.
When we can acknowledge that the thoughts in our head are just thoughts and not the truth, it allows us to flip everything around and combat the negativity with something positive. No matter where you are and no matter the time of day, you can choose to instill positivity into your head and turn your day around.