Increase Positive Thinking
According to Gallup, increasing positive emotions could lengthen a person’s life span by 10 years.
Positive thinking is easy to dismiss, but it is a skill that carries as much value in our lives as motivation or work ethic. Let’s talk about the reverse first. When we have negative emotions, our body responds by shutting out the outside world and limiting the options we think we have. Stress, anger, and fear are all emotions that consume our thinking to the point that we can become less motivated.
In turn, positive thinking can create more possibilities in life and increase our motivation. When we increase our motivation, we are more likely to build necessary skills needed for later in life. There are many more benefits to positive thinking, including: lower rates of depression and stress, increased life span, greater resistance to illness, and better coping skills.
Practice ways to increase positive thinking below. If you have other ideas, we would love to hear them!
- Use positive affirmations: When we repeat positive phrases to ourselves, they sink into our subconscious and over time we start to make them our reality. Some examples of positive affirmations can be, “I am confident, I am enough, I am a leader, today I will be positive, or I am perfect just the way I am.”
- Utilize a growth mindset: Having a growth mindset means that we see challenges and failures as opportunities for growth and stretching our abilities. One way to encourage growth mindset is to add a ‘yet’ to statements about abilities. For instance, adding a yet to “I can’t pass this test” makes it “I can’t pass this test yet,” which opens the door for opportunities to reach our goals.
- Practice nexting: Nexting is inspiring hope for the future and talking about what that future looks like. We can create positive thinking by inspiring hope. Read more about nexting in last month’s Power of Positivity tip.
Thank you for creating and inspiring positivity with your mentee.