How to Stay Positive (10 Tips)

Introduction

A reader wrote me this week to ask me for some advice on staying positive. I struggled tremendously with staying positive, but through the years, I have developed my own systems that work for me. I would encourage you to try out some of my tips below and be willing to experiment to see what works for you.

As a quick note before beginning, we should be aware that negativity does serve a purpose. It allows us to understand when there is a problem or something that is not working properly. If nothing else, it allows us to see that we should consider making a change in our lives.

Even from negative circumstances, there is something positive for us to take from it.

A conclusion I have come to is that everything is a form of practice. These days, I am actually grateful for much of the negativity that happens around me. I see it as something that allows me to practice a positive mindset.

Ready to begin? Here are 10 Tips on how to stay positive:

1.     Read Books on Positivity and Mindfulness

I especially recommend 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By, and you can also pick up 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By (free eBook). They can make the biggest impact when read together or one after the next.

These books include some of the best advice I could give to live your life positively. While some of the advice in these books comes from personal experience, much of it comes from the timeless wisdom from around the world. To see further book recommendations, scroll to the bottom of this post.

2.     Surround Yourself with Positive People

Focus on those who have a positive outlook and who are working to improve themselves and their communities. In these times, as you may be isolated due to Covid, be sure to call or have a video chat with loved ones who tend to have a positive spirit. Of course, being around people who care about you and support you always makes you feel more positive.

3.     Share Your Concerns

When we are going through a difficult time, some people tend to withdraw or want to keep their thoughts and worries to themselves. Rather, it is important that we have family or someone close to us that we can confide in and share our troubles with. We should avoid dwelling too much on the negativity, but at the same time, it is important to acknowledge when something is troubling us, as this can help us to find a path forward through it. Even if you are sure that there is no solution or constructive way forward through your problems, it can still help to share them with people who you know will support you no matter what.

Personally, when I speak about my troubles out loud, I tend to realize that there is something I can do to make improvements. Then, this makes me feel more positive about the situation.

4.     Snap Out of It

If you get caught in negative thinking loops, don’t try to think your way out of the loop. Thinking sometimes leads us into further negativity, and instead, it is better to find something that can snap you out of it. I may do this by watching a standup comedian, playing a video game, going for a walk, being with nature, meditating, or even whistling along to music (you may prefer to sing or dance).

5.     Find Your Purpose

In my life, finding my purpose and meaning have been tremendously important. Without these, I tend to feel directionless and lost, and I would not be a very positive person. An overarching message I’ve seen in many books and places is that when you have a purpose, you develop the strong mindset needed to overcome anything. If something matters that much to you, then you will find a way to keep making progress. Essentially, the positive feeling you have toward what you truly care about will always outweigh the negativity or obstacles on your path when you have meaning and purpose.

6.     The Power of Now

There is great power in knowing how to be truly, truly present. When you are fully absorbed in what is happening Now, there is no room left in your mind for negativity. Negativity involves abstract ideas oftentimes, perhaps worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. Still, the Now is the concrete reality that you are faced with every moment of your life. You can practice getting into the present by avoiding distractions, practicing meditation and mindfulness, and getting in the flow (see next point). To delve deeper into this topic, I recommend reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

7.     Get in the Flow

When you are in Flow, you challenge yourself and focus completely on one thing, making your mind operate at its highest possible level. When you do this, there is no room for any negativity in your life. Working on your goal is all you have the time and energy for. To get into this state, I may play a challenging video game that requires all my focus or play a chess game. Otherwise, of course, I can work on writing a book or blog post.

To understand how to practice Flow in your life, read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

8.     Let the Negativity Pass Through You

I don’t recall with certainty where I heard this advice, but I believe it was from one of the Dalai Lama’s books. The advice was that we should not hold onto negativity that others pass to us. Whenever someone directs negative energy toward me, I will visualize it as passing through me. When this happens to most people, they will acknowledge and hold onto it – becoming filled with hate and anger. If we do this, then we take this negative poison, and it can ruin our day. Instead, it is better to allow that negative energy to pass through you. You can choose not to allow it to make an impact on your life if you wish.

Do not hang onto the negativity that others toss your way. Release your grasp on it. Let it go.

I’m sure this can sound impractical and like wishful thinking. But I have practiced this for years, and it works for me. I was given an excellent opportunity to practice this today, as I just read the most scathing review of one of my books ever (0 out of 5 stars!). This reviewer found no value or use from one of my best books. I just let the negativity pass through me and spent no more time or energy on this after reading it.

9.     Take Meaningful Action

As mentioned before, you should work on snapping out of your negative thinking by getting away from your thoughts. One way to do this is to take meaningful action. A problem I have often seen, and that I’ve had myself, is that we get overwhelmed with a task, and then we get stuck thinking negatively about it. This becomes a vicious cycle, as then we don’t take action, and we don’t make progress. Then we may fall further and further behind, getting stuck in a negative thought loop.

Instead, I try to get in the zone of taking meaningful actions. For example, I don’t like to do the dishes, laundry, or other household chores, but I’ve learned to appreciate them because I see them as meaningful actions. Stop seeing your actions as worthless and inconsequential, and perceive the meaning in them. I do the dishes and the laundry to keep my living space clean and orderly because this makes me feel good. The messier my personal space becomes, the more chaotic my mind tends to become as well.

Even if you have a task that you truly cannot stand, but you have to do it, then the meaning should be to get it out of the way so that you can get to other activities you actually care about. I find that the more active I get, the less negative I tend to be. Of course, one way many people stay active and that helps them to combat negativity is to engage in physical exercise regularly.

10.  If Needed, Seek Professional Help

I am not a clinical psychologist, so my advice can be of limited value for someone who is struggling tremendously. After a certain point where your thoughts or behaviors prevent you from living your normal life or from making progress on your goals, you should consult a doctor, psychologist, or therapist. If you would like some professional help in book form, an excellent guide is From Depression to Contentment by Bob Rich, a retired psychotherapist with a lifetime of dealing with his own depression and helping clients work through it as well.

Final Thoughts

I have made great efforts to maintain a positive mindset and expect positive things to happen in my life while putting in the work to get there. All I can tell you is that these tips have worked very well for me. Of course, I understand that sometimes things happen outside of our control that can guide us into negativity. For that reason, we must Practice our Positivity regularly. This way, when we need it the most, we will know how to use it effectively to overcome the obstacles of our lives.

One of my blog posts discusses (on tip #7) how we can create happiness in our lives, even if we may be dealing with a situation that is not ideal. It’s an inspirational post on the life of Oliver James and how he is overcoming his struggles with learning to read at 34 years old.

Recommended Reading

7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By by I. C. Robledo

365 Quotes to Live Your Life By by I. C. Robledo

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

From Depression to Contentment by Bob Rich

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama XIV

An Open Heart by Dalai Lama XIV

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss

Learn to Unlearn

In my life, I have focused not just on learning but also on unlearning. We all absorb bad patterns and habits and even knowledge at some point in our lives, and it’s important to be aware that this happens so that we can overcome it.

Many of the things we learned were never worth learning. Or they were only worth learning so that we could realize that they were wrong and stop doing them.

Here are a few things I have unlearned in my life:

1.     Sudden Anger and Impatience

In my teenage years, I was generally calm. Still, I recall that if I became upset about something, I would sometimes get suddenly angry and impatient, not handling the situation well. And some of this extreme impatience carried on into my twenties as well.

By my mid-twenties, I realized that this was terribly maladaptive and that this was not helping me grow, and my behavior would only drive people out of my life. I realized that my loved ones did not deserve this from me, and usually, they were the ones who had to suffer through it.

Most of the time, I was fine – but I was fairly easily pushed to my limits back then, and I would sort of blow up in anger, making minor situations into something much bigger than they needed to be.

I unlearned this quickly when I had the realization that my wife (who was my girlfriend at that time) did not deserve to deal with this and that she probably would not deal with it for long. Eventually, it seemed clear that she would leave if I could not manage my behavior appropriately.

Strangely, unlearning this was easier than I thought. I’m sure it was a challenge at first, but I feel that in a matter of months, I made a sizeable change in my behavior. I was no longer blowing up over trivial matters. Over the years, I was able to become a great example of patience rather than impatience. I do not get angry very easily at all anymore. In fact, I think it takes much more for me to become angry than it would for most people.

2.     Intense Shyness

Through much of my childhood and young adulthood, I feel that I was intensely shy. Although never diagnosed, I may have had social phobia / social anxiety disorder. Sometimes the thought of being around new people would make me very anxious. Inside, all I wanted to do was avoid being around new and unfamiliar people.

If I knew there would be a lot of people around at a gathering or party, I sometimes would feel physically unwell from the anxiety.

Even for the people I knew, if I didn’t know them very well, I often felt uncomfortable. And even for the people I was more familiar with, I sometimes felt anxious and uncertain about how to handle a social situation.

What helped me unlearn this intense shyness / social anxiety was realizing that there was no single right way to handle a social situation. I often felt that I had failed to properly socialize with people, which made me want to avoid these situations more and more. But when I realized there was no one right way to do things, it became easier.

Of course, it was also an important shift when I realized that I had a real problem. I was actually scared and overly worried about talking to someone new. This was an irrational fear that I could be rejected, misunderstood, that I would be disliked, or perhaps even made fun of if people thought my social skills were not good enough.

To unlearn my bad patterns, I began to make it a point to interact with as many people as I could. If I were invited to something, I would go even if I had to fight my own instincts to avoid it. I made an effort to speak to new people, although I’m sure many people would have easily spotted me as an extreme introvert. They probably could not have known that merely showing up to a place with people could take some effort from me.

In time, I found it easier to engage in conversations, let go a bit, and enjoy conversations with new people. I no longer had to analyze whether my social skills were good enough. I realized that the less I thought and worried about my social skills, the better things went.

Eventually, I lost most of the anxiety. I can still get a bit of anxiety if I meet a group of new people, but I think it is normal and mild. It is nothing like the outright fear that I used to have.

3.     Responding By Feeling Depressed or Hopeless

I’m not sure when I began feeling depressed if things would not go my way. It was probably connected to feeling like a failure socially. But in my late teens / early twenties, if I didn’t perform as well as I hoped on an assignment or test, I may get depressed about it. At some point, I may have gotten used to being in a depression, and I didn’t really work to get the things I wanted out of life. I accepted it for what it was, which is a horrible way to deal with it.

Then when I began graduate school and faced the biggest challenges of my life, I became deeply depressed. My natural response to challenges and obstacles was to feel depressed, and so it made sense that I would get deeply depressed then.

To overcome this took therapy and medication for a couple of years. Then I meditated to help keep control of my mind. I also decided always to take action to make things better rather than to allow my thinking to drift deeper and deeper into depressive loops.

I’m not sure that depression is always something that can be unlearned, as everyone is different. In my case, I was fortunate that through my own will to change, I was able to unlearn this habit. My habit had become that when something didn’t go my way, I got depressed. So it was critically important that I develop a better response to such challenges in my life.

Unlearning my depressive habits was something that took years. My therapist at that time stated it perfectly to me once – she said: “You have spent a long time with certain issues, and it can take time to work your way out of them and to heal them.” Similarly, as with the prior examples, I feel that I am quite resilient at this point, and I do not fall into a depressive mood or state very easily.

What is Worth Unlearning in Your Life?

In revealing the above things I unlearned, I see that a common theme is I wanted my freedom. I was trapped by my anger, shyness, and depression. And in time, I was able to unlearn those behaviors and to live my life more freely. I didn’t need to respond to the world by withdrawing from it. Instead, I could participate in it and enjoy it.

Is there something in your life that is holding you back that you would like to unlearn? Often we focus on learning new things, but it is just as worthwhile to unlearn the bad habits and thought processes that are preventing us from leading the life we truly want to live.

Surely everyone’s problems and paths to overcome them will be different. But in my life, usually, I noticed that there was a big problem holding me back. Then I realized that this was important enough that I needed to work on it. There was a point where it was no longer a question – to meet my life goals and live the way I wanted to, I would need to dedicate myself to overcome certain issues. The particular steps you take from there may be different, but eventually, you will find your way to better if you are committed.