#11 How to shift to a positive mindset and increase your happiness

When you’re thinking negatively it’s no fun. You are coming from a place of scarcity and lack. Everything is wrong and these negative feelings manifest in your body e.g. stomach pains, muscle tightness, butterflies, headaches etc. You get sucked into a vortex of negative thinking and can’t see the wood from the trees. You might not be sleeping as you’re overthinking, worrying about work problems or what you said in that meeting.

Your body is your best tool… it will tell you when you are not in alignment with your flow. If you are feeling physical symptoms in your body, it’s a sign something needs to change. But it’s easier said than done. You can experience positive shifts when you are open to learning how to do it.

You can become more positive and motivated.

What does it mean to have a positive mindset? 

Firstly, it does not mean that you live in a dreamland where everything is perfect all the time. Life is supposed to be hard, it’s not supposed to be easy. We are all here on this journey to learn lessons, to give, to love and to experience the joy of life.

To think positively is to veer to the side of hope and optimism instead of hopelessness and pessimism. 

Thinking positively raises your vibration and attracts more positive things. This is a basic scientific law called the law of vibration. You’ve heard lots about the law of attraction, the law of attraction is the pre-cursor to the law of vibration.

It’s crucial if you want to change your life, that you change the way you think. 

When problems occur, whether they are at work or at home you have 2 ways of looking at them.

1. This is crap, I can’t believe this is happening to me. I don’t want it to be this way. This is so hard.

   How do you feel when you are like this? If you can’t change the situation you‘ve got to change how you think about it if you want to stay sane.

2. Look for the opportunity or learning in every apparent failure or negative circumstance. I love what Tony Robbins says “ Life is happening for you, not to you”. When this clicks with you, the game changes.

E.g. when your team member calls in sick and you don’t have enough resources, look for the opportunities that are all around you to streamline your business processes and make things leaner. See this as a game. Make it fun.  Look at it as an opportunity for your other team members who want experience in this area to step up and grow.

My sister and I had a chat about positive thinking and she was like there’s no way you can turn every situation into a positive. There is!

For example, when my father-in-law passed away, although I was sad and devasted and gave myself the time to grieve, I also saw that I had a second chance to spend more time with the rest of my family.

It made me realise how short life really is and had that not happened, I may not have seen that. It made me quit my career to follow my passion.

So do you see, in every single situation, there is a gift or opportunity. 

If you’re not getting what you’re asking for right now, it’s because it’s not your time. If you find yourself in the same situations over and over again, its because you haven’t learned the lesson yet. Life will keep throwing you the same problem over and over again until you learn what you’re supposed to.

So if you see apparently negative situations as an opportunity to grow and learn, they don’t seem so scary. I’m not saying block the negative emotions, you need to express them. But then dust yourself off, and flip to a mindset of positivity. Who suffers when you don’t?

Time for change

I didn’t always think this way. I was in victim mode a lot of the time. If something went wrong, I dwelled on it and blamed myself. I thought everything was my fault. I got stressed when things weren’t going according to my perfect plan. I  was looking at what went wrong rather than right e.g. Pharma deviation, world-ending… what is the gift or opportunity in this event?

How can I use this event to improve our processes? Why are there problems? It’s my job to solve problems.

Another example is when I started my business I found it hard to get clients. I was putting out content on Instagram and getting nothing back.  It made me slow down and look at my messaging and my target audience. Look at the problem I was solving. And that’s when I decided to really focus on women in leadership.

I took the time to hone in on my messaging and create more resources to make my program Powerhouse Revolution even more valuable for my clients. I believe I didn’t get the clients at the time I wanted them as I wasn’t ready for them. I didn’t have SOPs for my business, I didn’t have systems to support the growth that came.

And as soon as I hired a VA, got my systems, improved my service, everything changed.  My program Powerhouse Revolution was good, but now it’s bloody great! It’s packed full of resources, tools and training videos that may not ever have been created had I been so busy with clients. And because of this, I’m serving a higher purpose in the world and delivering more value.

There are many scientific studies that support the benefits of a positive mindset. Take this article for example, 3 Scientific Studies That Prove the Power of Positive Thinking.

1. People with a family history of heart disease who also had a positive outlook were one-third less likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular event within five to 25 years than those with a more negative outlook.

2. A University of Kansas study found that smiling—even fake smiling—reduces heart rate and blood pressure during stressful situations. “This is not going to cure you if you have chronic stress or a major life event,” Dr. Sarah Pressman, assistant professor of psychology and co-author of the study, said. “But, it’s almost impossible to be really angry or really stressed with this big smile on your face…. You can’t help but reduce that negative effect.”

3. Another studyfrom Harvard found that women who were optimistic had a significantly reduced risk of dying from several major causes of death — including cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and infection — over an eight-year period, compared with women who were less optimistic.

How can you change your thinking?