Living in a world where there is so much emphasis on what went wrong, we lose sight of all the things that went right. All it takes is one thing to fall out of place for us to feel pessimistic or defeated. However, there is something we can do to fend off these feelings of negativity and that is to practice gratitude.
It can scientifically be shown that those who are more grateful, tend to be happier and healthier. Since stress is a major topic of discussion due to its causes on the body and skin, we figure we can give you another method to help fight it off! Safe to say, everyone would love to experience constant positive emotion, but if we indulge in the negative too much, it can suck us in quickly and lead us down a road of misery. And of course we are creatures of habit and part of our inherent working is to dwell on the negative, but all it takes is a brief counter thought to resist.
Here we suggest a few counter thoughts to help you cope the next time you are experiencing something negative:
- Choose the top three things you are grateful for in your life and simply substitute them in for the negative thoughts clouding your mind.
- Adverse conditioning: The next time you find yourself falling into a pessimistic trap, sometimes pinching yourself or snapping a rubber band on your wrist can do the trick to condition you to think otherwise.
- Remembering how good those positive emotions made you feel when you experienced them
Remember, this takes time and achieving constant positive emotion isn’t achieved overnight. We must allow ourselves to take the time we need to embrace this change of thinking!