Healthy and Productive Habits for a More Positive Mindset

Do you want to get into a more positive mindset? Find out how you can develop healthy and productive habits to become more positive!

Healthy and Productive Habits for a More Positive Mindset

A positive mindset can be difficult to achieve. Luckily, there are healthy and productive habits that encourage a more positive mindset.

We are surrounded by so much negativity every day that it can sometimes be so hard to find a silver lining. But it’s so important for you to believe in the power of positivity.

Not only will these healthy and productive habits help you achieve a more positive mindset, but they’ll also improve your overall quality of life and help you enjoy every day to the fullest!

With a positive mindset, you can:

• find more creativity and inspiration within yourself
• see more beauty in the smaller things in life
• find happiness anywhere
• believe in yourself more

There are so many benefits to a more positive mindset that I can’t even count on my two hands and you’ll be able to start seeing these benefits by working on these healthy and productive habits.

Related:

• Healthy Habits Before Bed to Wake Up a Better You
• New Year’s Resolutions to Start Working Towards Now
• 8 Ways a Retail Job Helps You Grow as a Person

What healthy and productive habits lead to a more positive mindset?

Stop feeling guilty for being selfish once in a while

For so long, the word ‘selfish’ has been perceived as a negative trait. A trait that is undesirable and not something that you would look for in a friend or partner.

Being kind and selfless is great. Everyone loves someone who is genuinely kind. But when is it socially allowed to be selfish?

The idea of being selfless was so ingrained into my thought processes that I felt guilty whenever I chose myself over others. And I asked myself “Why? Why is it that I should feel guilty over putting myself first?”

I realised that I was afraid. Afraid of what others would think of me. Which, now that I look back on it, seems like such a ridiculous thought. So, I decided that I was going to work on not feeling guilty whenever I needed to put myself first. I was going to make it one of my healthy and productive habits.

Sometimes it’s okay to be selfish

1. When you need to say no

Being selfless is not a negative trait. But neither is being selfish. If you’re constantly putting someone else’s needs and wants over your own and they don’t know that you’re doing so, it can be easy for someone to assume that you’ll just go along with anything.

If what someone asks of you makes you feel uncomfortable and you’re unwilling to go along with it, then you 100% should not feel guilty for saying no. Someone who truly wants the best for you won’t push you any further, nor will they try to make you feel bad about it.

2. When you need help

Everyone needs help sometimes and there’s nothing wrong with asking for it. Being able to ask for help just shows the strength in your character and that you’re confident enough to admit when you can’t do something alone.

3. When you feel overwhelmed

We all have times when we feel overwhelmed by everything in life. It’s at times like these where it’s really important to take a step back and let yourself recuperate.

We’re human and we feel. We’re not perfect. It’s only natural that we burn out.

Nobody can push you to be perfect. If you need a break, then you take a break. If you don’t look after yourself, then no one will.

4. When it doesn’t hurt others around you

It’s okay to think of yourself and do what would benefit you the most if it doesn’t hurt others around you. It’s also okay to focus on yourself when you could be helping yourself MORE than you could be helping others.

5. When it’s time to let go

When it comes to toxic friendships or relationships, it can be hard to distance yourself and even harder to let go. All relationships should be a two-way street. If someone isn’t treating you the same way you treat them, or if they’re incapable of ever putting your needs above their own, then you need to let them go.

There’s no point in trying to maintain a relationship that’s draining you dry, so do yourself a favour and let go.

Encourage positivity and cut negativity out of your life

This is one of the best ways to improve your overall perception of life and to live more healthily and productively. Negativity can impact your mood and your day-to-day experiences so much, especially if you allow yourself to dwell on it.

Some of the ways you can cut out negativity:

• Slowly cut off contact with everything toxic in your life, examples being habits or friends
• Stop expecting things from anyone
• Take responsibility and recognise when you’re at fault instead of trying to find flaws in others
• Give yourself a designated time to release your negative thoughts so that they don’t plague you every second of every day
• Control the content you see on the internet, whether it be social media or the news

In addition to cutting out negativity, encourage and bring more positivity into your life. Not only will this lift your mood, but it’ll also impact those around you in a positive manner as well.

Encourage positivity by:

• Consciously looking for the bright side and silver lining in most, if not every situation
• Trying to understand from others’ point of view and put yourself in their shoes before you cast judgement
• Interacting with more positive people who lift you up instead of bringing you down
• Focusing on the people and events that you’re grateful for
• Finding more reasons to smile or laugh
• Embracing change and celebrating life
• Surrounding yourself with people you love and who love you back
• Being your own best friend

The key to maintaining positivity in your life is to make a conscious effort to recognise your own emotions and find the appropriate way to address them. This is what’s known as empathy and self-awareness. Only by being self-aware can you regulate your own emotions and prevent them from impacting your life.

My experience with negativity and how it impacted my life

Cutting out negativity is one of my personal goals that I’ve been working on for a while and will continue to do so for the next year.

Looking around me, I always managed to perceive everything in a negative light. I saw the bad and the ugly in every situation. Over time, I went from a sunny, uplifting person to someone who found herself in a mood 90% of the time. It was affecting my sleep, my grades and my desire to do anything worthwhile and productive.

That’s when I realised that something needed to be changed. I didn’t want my mind to remain in the shadows anymore. I wanted to smile more, to laugh more and to celebrate every day to the best of my ability.

So, I began to live my days more purposefully.

I decided to make a conscious effort to bring more positivity into my life and to cut out some of the negativity.

I reduced contact with anyone who made me feel bad about myself and surrounded myself with people who encouraged me to be the best version of myself. Instead of constantly comparing myself to those around me, I focused on improving myself and becoming someone that I liked.

When I found myself thinking negatively about someone, I would try to put myself in their shoes to see if I could understand their reasons.

However, the most important change I made was that I stopped having expectations of others. I realised that no one has an obligation to treat me a certain way and I can’t expect someone to treat me the same way that I treat them. As long as I could look myself in the eyes every morning, then I was happy with myself.

These healthy and productive habits helped a lot with reducing the negativity that I felt and I started feeling more content with everything in my life.

Listen to uplifting and inspirational podcasts

If you find it hard to be inspired, listening to uplifting and inspirational podcasts can be one of the best ways to stimulate your mind. Not only can it improve your mood, but it can also encourage more ideas to flow through your mind.

Podcasts are also something that you can listen to at any time of the day. You can listen to them when you’re working out, when you’re on the train, even while you’re in the shower! Listening to a podcast is just like listening to music, except you get to learn a lot more. Unless of course, you’re trying to study or work, then a podcast might just serve as a distraction.

Personally, I become a lot more motivated after I listen to a good podcast and I find that a lot of new and more creative ideas pop into my mind while I’m listening to one.

Learn to become more productive

It goes without saying that getting into the habit of being more productive is one of the most healthy and productive habits out there.

We all struggle with productivity, but it’s one of those habits that we keep trying to improve upon. Maintaining high levels of productivity can make you feel a lot more positive about yourself and can improve your attitude towards many areas of life.

Being productive is the key to getting more done in less time. Whether you’re a student or in the workplace, being able to spend less time on the things you need to do frees up more time for you to spend with your loved ones or on your hobbies.

As a student, productivity is something that I’m continuously working on, simply because I constantly go through phases of productivity. Sometimes I experience days of high productivity, but then it’s followed by weeks of me in a slump. I think we can all agree that it’s easier to gain or lose productivity than it is to maintain it.

To get you started:

• 18 Tips to Achieve Higher Levels of Productivity
• How to Work With Procrastination + Tips for Breaking Down an Assignment

Limit social media usage

Social media can be anything you want it to be. It can be inspiring and positive or dark and negative. It can be the platform to kickstart your creativity and inspiration or it can be a huge time waster. In essence, social media is what you make it to be.

Social media can be overwhelming. If you find that it’s impacting you negatively, make an effort to turn it into something positive by only following those who inspire you. In addition, if you realise that you spend a lot of your time each day checking on your various social media accounts, then it may be time to limit your usage.

Checking up on all your social media accounts can be a huge time suck. It can be really easy to find yourself mindlessly scrolling when there’s a lot more that could be done. You can probably recall a time when you found yourself watching video after video with no recollection of how much time had passed.

Deactivate your accounts

If you’re serious about limiting your social media usage, then you might choose to deactivate your accounts, just as I did.

I realised that I was spending way too much time each day just mindlessly scrolling and it was severely impacting my productivity. I remember times when I would be scrolling through Facebook, watching video after video, and before I knew it, an hour had passed and my phone was burning hot.

To combat this, I deleted the Facebook app off my phone so that I was limited to using a browser. It made it a little bit more of a hassle to access Facebook so I found myself scrolling a lot less.

Once in a while, I’d deactivate my account so that I would have time to disconnect and I would only login again if there was information that I needed to check. If I ever found myself mindlessly scrolling again, then I would deactivate again and repeat the cycle.

Keep a gratitude journal

Keeping a gratitude journal is a healthy way to prevent you from focusing on the negatives and instead highlight the positives in your life. It’s one of those habits that encourages you to be more productive and live a more healthy lifestyle.

It’s easy to recall bad memories, so why is it so hard to remember the events that bring a smile to your face? From personal experience, bad experiences stick with me a lot longer because of the way they make me feel.

I’ve always believed that our emotions and our reactions to certain events are a lot more important than the actual events themselves. So, the way we feel plays a huge part in the importance of a memory.

Negative emotions have always stuck with me longer than positive emotions. Which is why I’m more inclined to remember the horrible way a single event made me feel rather than the small bursts of happiness at smaller acts of kindness I see throughout the day. One single negative experience can overshadow an otherwise perfect day.

I get over this by journaling every night and writing down the small things and events that I’m grateful for. This way, when I’m having a bad day, I can flip back and read about everything that makes me happy. If you’re like me, then keeping a gratitude journal might just be the key for you to maintain a healthy and positive mindset.

Maintain a healthy and consistent sleep schedule

Regardless of if you’re a morning bird or a night owl, maintaining a healthy and consistent sleep schedule is so important for keeping your productivity levels high and mindset positive.

Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule can:

• reduce your need to sleep in
• ensure that you get enough hours of sleep
• reduce your need for an alarm
• help you feel well-rested
• help keep your days structured

Feeling alert and well-rested can help keep your levels of productivity high throughout the day.

Personally, if I wake up feeling refreshed, then I know it’s going to be a good and productive day. However, if I wake up tired and lethargic, then my entire day is going to consist of me moping around and refusing to do anything worthwhile.

So, those were my tips on healthy and productive habits that can lead to a more positive mindset!

Do you have some of your own habits that helped you form a more positive mindset? Share them down below!

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