Staying positive is one of the most important things we can do in life. When we are positive, we are more likely to be happy, healthy, and successful. We are also more likely to overcome challenges and achieve our goals.
Welcome to my first blog post, in this blog I will discuss the power of positive thinking and how it can help us in all areas of our lives. I will also provide tips on how to stay positive, even when things are tough.
When I was doing gymnastics in college, I landed on my head doing a double pike dismount off the parallel bars (feel free to look it up if you aren’t familiar with gymnastics terms) and had a transverse process fracture in my back (along with a slew of other back and neck pains from landing on my head). Of course, at the time I was devastated because it was a horrible injury and had to miss a good part of the season because of injury, but looking back years later, this was my first epiphany of major life changes I would make in the coming years.
I grew up playing a ton of video games, and I never noticed it until I sustained that neck injury, but I had terrible posture. Slumped shoulders, head forward, and so on, and it never really became a problem until I started playing so much golf and working in an office. That terrible posture combined with sitting all day and playing a ton of golf started to lead to a ton of nerve and back related pain. I remembered back to all the neck therapy I had to do after landing on my head and thought, “Maybe I should be doing some of these things proactively to avoid pain and future injury?” Not only did starting this proactive action fix my pain, but improving my posture actually improved my mobility and golf swing.
This is just one personal anecdote, but I think it’s a great example of how we can turn adversity into a positive situation. I think there are 3 ways staying positive can have a major influence on our life: Staying positive usually leads to accomplishing more, it can help us turn adversity into a positive situation, and we can learn to stay positive in the face of challenges to accomplish our goals.
I find that one of the keys to accomplishing more is thinking positively as much as possible. When you are always thinking negatively, it’s very easy to de-motivate yourself or become overwhelmed by the tasks that you have to do. I find it becomes easy to dwell on the negative thoughts and get stuck, but if we are positive, it will start to attract other positive people who want to be around us. This will lead to a lot of opportunities. I’ve never been a super lucky person, but I consistently find that if you work hard and stay positive, good things will happen. Now, all these new opportunities will of course lead to challenges. I plan to talk about this in a future blog, but one way to persevere through challenges is to track your progress and results, and stop getting so frustrated with yourself whenever something goes wrong. This has helped me enjoy playing golf a lot more, and accomplish additional tasks, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Adversity is a natural part of life, something will happen, and when it does, we can just dwell in the negatively, or we can try to figure out what positives we can take from it or how to move forward. My most recent adverse situation was when I decided to have LASIK eye surgery. I had worn contacts and glasses for all of my life, but as I started to play more and more golf, my eyes became itchy from the contacts and being outside all the time. My prescription in my eyes hadn’t changed for years so I figured I would be a good candidate for LASIK. I ended up having the procedure and after a few months I noticed that my vision was still quite blurry. I thought something was going terribly wrong but it turns out that I needed a touch up procedure to fully correct the vision. I had the second procedure and my vision is good now, but one thing I didn’t account for was dry eye symptoms (I wasn’t expecting 2 back-to back LASIK procedures). This was quite an adverse situation as it had a permanent effect on my vision, but what I consider another major epiphany in my life. Having some of these dry eye symptoms really made me realize how much I am staring at computers and phone screens all day.
Not only did starting at these screens all day have a permanent effect on eye health, but it made me realize how much time I was wasting mindlessly scrolling, when I could be using that time to explore new interests or be more productive. This LASIK procedure was just the wakeup call I needed to change my daily screentime habits, or at least find better ways to cope with them because after all, I still need to do work. (FYI: I drink a ton of water at work to force myself away from the screens every 20 min to give my eyes a break!) Sometimes it could feel like it’s easier to just give up, especially if it’s a life altering physical event, but if you can find a way to use it to fuel your motivation, you will find that you will grow and become better as a person.
You may think that sometimes the situation is too bleak, or “how can I possibly stay positive in the face of these challenges?” and that’s how I’d like to wrap up this blog, talking about some techniques we can use to stay positive in the face of challenges.
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Practice gratitude for what you do have: In today’s age of social media, it’s very easy to get lost trying to “Keep up with the Jones”. This can leave you feeling like you don’t have enough, or comparing yourself to others you see on social media and making you feel inadequate. Everyone goes at their own pace and success is defined differently for different people. So don’t get caught up in the rat race and be grateful for what you do have, and you will be much happier.
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Focus on the positive aspects of a situation: One last example I’ll give you guys, this year I tried to not have road rage. I felt like I always had too much innate anger after driving on the road, and the negativity was affecting the rest of my day. I told myself I was going to stay relaxed and positive on the road and it turns out I became a much safer driver, and the gas milage on my car improved by 3.5mph (an added bonus!)
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Surround yourself with positive people: If you are always surrounded by complaining and negative energy, inevitably it will bring you down. You will naturally start acting similar to fit into this group without you even realizing you are doing it! If you surround yourself with positive people (or in the case of sports, perhaps a teammate who is better than you) you will find yourself emulating their positive habits or striving to be better to keep up/surpass them.
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Visualize yourself succeeding: This one cannot be understated and was a major part of my gymnastics character. Visualize what you are trying to achieve and then go out and execute it. Going along with visualization, it’s also important to set goals for yourself and periodically evaluate our progress vs our goals, to make sure we can actually achieve what we are visualizing in our mind. (I’ll probably do a blog about this as well in the future)
- Take actions towards your goals: Even if it’s just a small amount each day, make sure that you are always doing something to work towards your goals. If you have very large goals, I find it is helpful to break larger goals, into smaller sub-goals that are easier to accomplish to help chip away at that larger goal.
These are some techniques I use based on my life experiences and what I’ve learned dealing with adversity, hopefully you can use my experiences to help you accomplish more and overcome adversity too.
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If you guys found this content relatable, then I challenge you to get out there and try be more positive in your own life. Even if it’s something as simple as no road rage or less social media time, you will be surprised on how well staying positive and simple changes can improve your life in the long run.