I’ve learned a lot over the past year, especially in the area of self-improvement. If I could sum it all up in one simple phrase, it would be this: mindset is everything. There are a lot of different life hacks I use every day and they all involve controlling my mindset. I’ve found that I can turn a situation around by simply looking at it differently. If I’m enjoying myself and start thinking of things to dislike about the situation, I’ll find a lot of them and begin to get down. Likewise, I can find good things in a situation that I dislike and I’ll begin to enjoy it. In both cases, I find what I expect to find.
This leads to a neat little life hack I use to stay positive when someone around me is being negative. I can find something good in any situation and use that to counter their negative points. My intention in doing this is to keep myself in a good mood, but sometimes it puts the other person in a good mood as well. If I’m in a situation I want to improve, I can do so more effectively by looking at it in a positive way than a negative way; looking at it positively makes it feel like making a good situation better, while looking at it negatively makes the situation feel hopeless and any potential changes seem pointless.
Would you rather stay stuck in a bad mood or switch over to a good mood? Personally, I’d much rather switch to a good mood. I still get stuck in negative mindsets sometimes, but now I can avoid most of them in the first place and usually succeed in getting out of them as long as I have the will to do so. The only exceptions are the rare cases in which I feel the need to fully experience a negative emotion before I can move on in a healthy way. In most of those cases, that need arises because I’ve been suppressing certain feelings rather than working through them as they arise.
Some resources that help me control my mindset are The Power of Now, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Four Agreements, The Magic of Thinking Big, and How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Each one of those contains several useful life hacks that I use to reframe situations and improve my mood. The right mindset makes it easy to accomplish what I set out to do, avoid doing things that are wrong or cause more problems than they solve, talk about nearly anything with just about anyone, and work through situations that may otherwise be stressful. I wish I’d learned and internalized this stuff years ago, but I’m glad to know it now and I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.