If you have a lifelong habit of thinking negatively, training yourself to think in positive terms may be one of the greatest challenges you ever face. One reason it’s so easy to choose negativity over positivity is that positivity can be scary. Although a pessimistic outlook can harm your physical and mental health, a negative state of mind may be more comfortable than challenging yourself to think optimistically. You may be afraid that if you think positively, you’ll risk being disappointed if you don’t succeed at a project, get the perfect job or find the ideal relationship. The key is to train yourself view your entire life, not just your successes or achievements, in a positive light. Then you’ll be equally capable of coping with failure and success. Try these five tips to turn your negative thoughts into positive ones.

1. Be aware of negative self-talk and make a focused effort to change it. Negative thoughts can engrain themselves in your consciousness like the lyrics from an annoying pop song. You may have become so accustomed to these internal recordings that you no longer notice thoughts like “I can’t do anything right.” Negative thought patterns can damage your relationships as well as your self-esteem. Thoughts like “she’s going to dump me like every other woman I’ve dated,” may become self-fulfilling prophecies. Spend a week writing down your negative thought patterns in a journal. Think of positive variations of these messages, like “I’m a generous and hard-working person” or “she always supports my goals.” When you catch your mind playing a negative message, stop the recording and replace it with a positive variation.

2. Keep a positivity list to remind yourself of things that make your life fulfilling. Simple items like “adequate food” and “a roof over my head” are a great place to start. When you start your positivity project, you may have only one or two items on your list. As you get used to thinking positively, you can add more items, like “supportive friends,” “a healthy body,” or “a steady income.” Use your list to remind yourself of your growing ability to view your life in an optimistic light.

3. Practice guided imagery at the start of the day or before you take on a challenging task. You might be surprised at how often you visualize something negative happening, only to have your vision turn into reality. Turn this habit around by deliberately visualizing yourself having a rewarding work day, enjoying a social event or launching a new project.

4. View failure as a creative opportunity. Many people who think negatively view their lives from an all-or-nothing perspective. If you see yourself as either a complete success or a total failure, you’re likely to be disappointed. Failure is not only a natural part of life; it’s an essential by-product of creative production. Many brilliant works of art or ingenious scientific discoveries came about by accident when the creator failed to accomplish his or her original goal.

5. Instead of making a to-do list in the morning, make a list of everything you accomplished during the day before you go to bed. Long to-do lists are the perfect setup for negativity and frustration. Try reversing this process by recording your accomplishments at night and rewarding yourself with positive, self-affirming thoughts.

Thinking positively won’t happen overnight, but like any other habit, you’ll improve with practice. Positivity is like a muscle that needs to be strengthened so that you can overcome the pain of negativity. Although you may not achieve instant success or dazzling financial wealth by thinking positively, you can look forward to a richer, more fulfilling life.

Anyone who has ever woken up early cannot deny the productivity gains of doing so. By waking up hours before work or school starts, individuals can participate in a number of activities without rushing. They might use the time to work out, enjoy a book, watch a television program, check emails, work on homework, or just enjoy a cup of coffee while the sun rises. Since the benefits of early rising are so great, it is puzzling why more people do not get up earlier. The truth is many people simply do not know how to wake up earlier.
Waking up at an earlier time seems like an easy task to accomplish. If someone wants to wake up an hour earlier, they can set their alarm for that time. A strange thing happens when the alarm goes off, though. Suddenly, the person no longer feels it is important to wake early. They rationalize a few more minutes sleep, roll over, hit the alarm a few times, and wake up much later. Even those with a great deal of will power in other areas of their life have a hard time conquering the snooze-button habit.

Many people think they can conquer their morning alarm battle by going to bed earlier. If they usually get seven hours of sleep, they simply count backwards from their anticipated waking time. If they want to wake at 6:00 a.m., they go to bed at 11:00 p.m. The problem with this strategy is that going to bed is not the same thing as going to sleep. If a person is not tired at 11:00 p.m., but they force themselves to lie in bed for an hour, they are wasting an entire hour that could be spent doing something else. Wasted time through an unnatural bedtime defeats the purpose of gaining time by trying to wake early.

The best way to learn how to wake up earlier is to force a habit of getting out of the bed when the alarm goes off, not force a habit of going to bed at a certain time. Individuals should go to bed when they are sleepy. The body may require different amounts of sleep on different days. After a few days of hiking, the body may need more rest than it does when days are spent in an office, for example. Allowing the body to regulate the amount of sleep one gets is much more productive than rolling around in bed for hours. If enough sleep is not gained in one night, the body will likely prompt sleep earlier the next night.

Regardless of when someone goes to bed, they should wake up at the same time each day. While the habit is being ingrained, they should set their alarm even on weekdays. When the alarm goes off, they should immediately rise from the bed and begin their day. Immediately putting clothing on helps solidify the waking experience. Lounging in pajamas can tempt someone to return to the comfortable bed for a few more minutes. Although it may be hard to learn how to wake up earlier, the more someone practices getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, the easier it will be. After several months, it will be more difficult to stay in bed than to get up and get moving!

Self-confidence is the key to feeling unstoppable. If you lack confidence, it will show in your demeanor and you will constantly have negative emotions that harm your mental health, such as fear and anxiety. Increasing your confidence in yourself is much easier than you might imagine and will take those negative emotions and turn them into something positive and resourceful instead.

Dress for Success:

Though most of self-confidence starts with your skills, abilities and mentality, the way you look and feel about your appearance is another factor in your overall confidence. If you feel confident that you look amazing, you will reflect those feelings in the way you carry yourself and look to others. If you feel like others will judge your clothing since you feel it is grubby, dirty or even just doesn’t fit you right, you will end up hunching your shoulders and looking less confident or even scared. Putting on great clothes and knowing that you look amazing is often the first step in feeling confident.

Eat for Success:

Even though you may think that the external appearance of somebody is most important, that is only half true. The next thing you need to work on is improving the inner you. Eating properly is one of the best things you can do to increase your confidence. When you feel good physically, you portray it in your everyday interactions with people. The best way to achieve this physique is to prepare healthy and clean meals. You can find great resource for things like healthy weekly menu plans at emeals.com.

Stopping the Worries:

Worries not only sap your energy so that you walk and move with a lethargic way, but it also takes away from your confidence and stop you from achieving anything you planned. Instead of giving into worries, consider the worst that can happen. If you always consider the worst case, note that it isn’t as bad as you thought and then turn your energy to creating a great relationship or reaching those career goals, you will end up more confident and more efficient.

Visualization:

One problem that might impact confidence is failing or doing poorly on the first time when you try something new. While logically you might know that failing or doing poorly is the first step in learning to succeed in your endeavors, it can make you feel unsuccessful. One method of managing this situation and preventing it from occurring is visualization. Imagine succeeding in the task as vividly as possible and then try performing the task. You’ll find that you do better after visualization, which results in greater confidence.

Act Like You Are Confident:

When you are not confident, ask yourself how you would act if you were and then act out the actions as you imagined them. Acting like you are confident results in gradually forming a habit of confidence and after awhile you will find that you actually are confident. When you act like something long enough, you become what you were acting.

Let Go of the Past:

The past failures often drag down confidence, resulting in feeling like you will never succeed in the tasks you’ve decided to perform. Instead of getting bogged down with the past, let it go and think about the present. You cannot change the past and thinking about it will only make the situation worse. The only time you are able to currently affect is the present, so make a goal and then take steps to reach that goal immediately. You’ll find that letting go of things that are gone will make you feel more confident in your current abilities.

Ask for Help:

When you are not sure about something or you feel that you are getting in over your head, asking for help will improve the situation. In fact, more often than not you’ll find that most people are willing to help after being asked. If you believe that asking for help will result in receiving the help you need, then your confidence will automatically increase because you feel that others are willing to give you assistance.

Stop Negative Internal Voices:

We all have that internal voice that says “I can’t do it…I’m a failure” when we mess up, fail or are striving for a goal we haven’t yet reached. This voice is a hit to your confidence. To stop the internal voice, change the way you hear it. Instead of hearing your own voice or the voice of someone in authority in your life, make your mind register the voice as a clown, Mickey Mouse or one of the chipmunks from Alvin and the Chipmunks. These silly voices are hard to take seriously and after awhile that negativity will fade away completely.

Becoming confident doesn’t require taking any classes or never failing; instead, it requires that you keep trying and change your outlook on life. Always learning from your mistakes and trying again will increase your confidence by helping you reach your goals. You can become confident as long as you are willing to work toward that confident state of mind.