Thursday, January 14, 2010

Destress Yourself With A Positive Attitude

"A positive attitude"

A positive attitude increases our happiness, energy, and vitality. Attitude is everything! When we have a positive attitude we see things that are good in our lives, we feel grateful for what we have, and we are in a good mood.

How do you destress yourself with a positive attitude? Or better yet, how does a positive attitude increase our happiness, energy, and vitality? When we think positive, we think of the good things in our life, and that makes us feel good. When we feel good, we are happy, we have energy, and we have vitality.

Yes, our attitude can increase or decrease our happiness, energy, and vitality.

But you already knew that!

We have control over our attitude because we have control over our thoughts. Although, this is not something they teach us as we grow up. When I say, "they" I mean our parents and our teachers. Teachers meaning, school teachers, our friends, and our mentors.

I would jump for joy if we implemented, in our school system, how we can have control over our thoughts. We are the only thinkers of our thoughts, and learning to think what we want to is a habit that can be formed.

Just as the habit of our minds being on autopilot has been learned over 20, 30, 40, or more years (depending how old you are).

For many, many years, I have been teaching stress management and I meet a lot of people that believe they have a positive attitude. After working with many of these individuals, they discover that they may not be as positive as they think.

Finding out how positive we are, or are not, is very important to managing our stress. People with a positive attitude have less stress and people with a negative attitude have higher levels of stress.

How do you know if you have a positive attitude?

Let me ask you some questions to help you determine if you do.

1. Do you wake up grateful for your life and another day or do you wake up dreading the day and what you have to do?

2. Are you grateful for what you have, all day or do you complain and discuss what could be better in your life?

3. Do you express daily to the people you love, how grateful you are for them or do you forget?

4. Do you believe you can accomplish your goals or do you have doubt in having a better life than you have now?

5. Do you think of what you want and focus forward or do you do the same ole thing over and over again everyday?

6. Do you enjoy your work or do you have discontent for your job/career?

7. Do you enjoy the people you are with or do you get irritated by something or someone else?

8. Do you enjoy the places that you are at or do you have your mind on something or someone else?

9. Do you have faith in yourself that you can make more money or do you fear that life will always be "this way"?

10. Do you think of the things that are great in your life or do you wish that things could be better?

11. Do you look for opportunities in your obstacles or do you label things as "this is bad"?

12. Do you believe that life is working for you and your good or do you believe you have bad luck?

13. Do you have fun and are you playful or are you serious all the time?

The first part of the question indicates a positive attitude and the second part of the question indicates a negative attitude.

I am going to be brave and say, if you pick even one or two, of the second part of the question, chances are, you are more negative than you think.

Ayayaye!

That was brave.

I hope and pray that this is helpful...

Until next post, don't forget to have fun and be playful!

Elizabeth