A huge part of remaining motivated at university is being positive. Thinking about the world positively will improve not only your academic life, but your personal, professional and social life too!
Modern life is busy, hectic and stressful - so it is easy to lose track of the bigger picture. We become so engrossed in all the work we are doing at uni that we forget about the end-goal, or the (positive) light at the end of the tunnel. A lack of energy doesn't help anyone to stay positive, so we need to make sure we eat and sleep well. As a society, we care too much about what others think and not what we think of ourselves. We should only judge our successes on how we feel inside, and not what others think.
There are some huge advantages to being positive in life, as listed here. This list was taken from: http://www.positivityblog.com.
- You will create a better world around you as your surroundings will become affected and change due to your positive thoughts and actions.
- You will make better first impressions. Everyone stereotypes, whether they want or not. A positive first impression can mean a lot in many situations and have a lasting effect throughout your relationship with that person.
- You will focus on the good things in people. Not their faults. This will make things much better overall and improve all kinds of relationships.
- It´s easier to become more productive when you stop laying obstacles in the middle of the road in the form of negative thoughts.
- Work becomes more fun. Everything becomes more fun.
- You become more attractive. People like positive people. Positive people make other people feel good about themselves and they don´t drag the mood down. Also, a positive attitude is an indicator – and source – of high self-confidence, a quality that just about everyone is attracted to.
- Being negative has very little concrete advantages and is not a very empowering way to look at life.
- It opens up your mind to focus on other ways of looking at things. Sometimes wonderful new ways you might not ever have thought about or experienced before.
- It puts the Law of Attraction to better use. The Law of Attraction basically says: whatever you think about you attract into your life. As you replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts you will start to attract more positive opportunities and people into your life.
- You´ll waste less time. Negativity can be like a self-feeding loop. First you think one negative thought. It leads you to three more. And then you start examining your life in deeper detail through a depressing lens. When you get into a vicious cycles like this it can eat up hours, weeks and years of your life. It can drain a lot of your energy whilst trapping you in paralysis by analysis. And you probably won´t become that much wiser in the process.
Every single one of the reasons above will lead you to having a more positive, productive and successful journey through university. So I challenge you, to take up the Positivity Challenge!
The Positivity Challenge! (taken from: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2007/02/09/take-the-positivity-challenge/)
For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.
What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is ok whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way. It´s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you.
Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don't feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.
Realize that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don't have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.
Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.
Accept your feelings, don't deny or refuse them – Although it's often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.
Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.
Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.
Get the physical fundamentals down. If you don't have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to re-prioritize. If you don't do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do re-prioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy.
Act as if. Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.
Start your day in a better way!
Limit your time with really negative people – Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.
Model positive people. Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.
Focus on the now and future, not the past. A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.
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