Since 2020, it has been really tough for each one of us. But let's not fret about the things that have gone wrong. Instead, let's commit our 30 days to at least a moment of positivity each day.
A moment of positivity won't bring you joy for the whole day or the whole year. But it can lead to the creation of a ripple effect for sure. Your one moment of positivity can create a positive aura around you and emanate good vibes. Slowly it will become a habit for you and you will attract positivity towards yourself, which would bring the ultimate merriness and joy.
So, here is a regime of positivity that you can follow for the next 30 days and begin taking action.
There will be umpteen things you do so much different and better than others. But for today, let's just focus on 2 things. These things need not be massive, instead of stuff as small as making a sumptuous Dal Makhani, or playing songs on guitar or decorating your house differently. It's just about stuff which you do better than a large number of people.
You don't need to be thinking of 'The Best'. Just think of 'Better Than Others'. Just contemplate on two things. Did you work hard to achieve those skills? How do others respond to you about these skills? How does doing these activities make you feel?
List '10 Biggest Achievements of Your Life'. These achievements shouldn't be weighed from others' perspectives. These are your achievements and you worked hard for those. It may not be an award/reward in physical form. It could be an act you did in the past and you felt deeply satisfied. Or it could be your first-grade achievement where you finally didn't stand last in the standard.
If you worked hard for it or if you ever felt that it’s impossible for you to do it, and still you did it, it counts. It demands no one else's validation, but yours. Who knows if you could achieve 10 achievements, there could be 10 more and then 10 more and so on!!
I am a huge fan of TED Talks, after all, it's Ideas worth sharing. You would have definitely heard of Ted Talks, if not, go ahead and search for them on Google. For today, spend 15 minutes of your time watching a TED talk and learning something new out of it. You can choose a topic of your interest, your education, your profession or something random which you never heard of. This would help your mind be open to different ideas and what would serve us better than that.
Today, put in some effort and teach someone something willingly. This someone could be your significant other, your colleagues, friends, relatives, siblings, children or anyone who doesn't know what you've to teach. Be patient with the person while teaching. If they don't understand it in one go, try to do it again with a different approach or a different method. By teaching others, you get a more positive view of yourself; generosity and capability.
Gratitude is the most undermined yet extremely powerful way of positivity. Today, we are going to list down at least 5 things we are grateful for in our lives. These 5 things need not be big. Is it the fact that you are safe amid the Covid 19 crisis? or is it your car that helps you move from one location to another? It could also be your spouse or your mother who is there for you.
Feeling gratitude for even smaller things in our lives opens up our mind to positivity and we shift our focus from things that aren't happening to the things which have happened well for us. Just remember, when you're deciding whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, you can even feel gratitude for the glass you're holding in your hand.
This one is the easiest of all the activities pertaining to 30 days of positivity. The only key of difficulty here is to remember to do it all day long. You just need to take long, deep, and slow breaths through the entire day. In our fast-paced life, we are always in a rush and we don't realize that we take shallow breaths. These shallow breaths fuel stress. While taking slow, deep and long breaths send signals of calmness and relaxation to our brains.
You don't have to go ahead and compliment strangers unless you want to. But THINK of compliments. Whosoever you meet today, even strangers, think of one nice thing about everyone. This one thing could be their way of talking, greeting, their voice, facial features, disposition, gestures, good attributes or anything else.
Train your brain to think of nice things whenever you meet anyone. This would help you recognize good in others as well as yourself. With good practice, your brain would be tuned to find positives even in unfamiliar or strange territory.
We feel gratitude when someone helps us in times of distress. This feeling of gratitude we reciprocate with 2 verbal words - THANK YOU. This is very gentle and polite to say thank you to someone who has helped us. But do you know what is even more heartwarming, sweet and thoughtful? It's a written thank-you note. The written piece could stay with the person for long, not just in the heart but as a souvenir from you for any beautiful memory.
This would benefit you as well. It would be a constant reminder to your subconscious that you're not taking someone's help for granted. Or worse, you're not taking people who regularly help you and support you, for granted. Today, send a Thank-You Note to your father, your sister, your mother, your relative, your friend or to the coffee guy who brews you the perfect coffee every day per your taste. It would make your day as well as yours too.
We all are connected to a couple of people in our lives who are close to us in proximity but not close to our hearts. These might be the people who pretend to be there for you but pull you down whenever they get a chance. If you have toxic family members or friends who spoil your mood, drag you down or make you feel worthless all the time, then today is the day when you give a good look at the list of such people and struck one of the names off the list.
It's really hard to dump people just like that. Don't do this to everyone whose name you have on your list. Or don't even take a single fight into consideration thinking you need to dump everyone. Some people are just harsh to you for your own good. Stick to the list of toxic ones, not otherwise, and start defining your boundaries, declare your stand and show them your capabilities and true worth. It's time to take the control of your self-esteem into your own hands and stop empowering people to validate your worth.
The previous might have been the toughest one so far but it does help you get rid of toxicity and be more positive. Today, you would be feeling light as you're permitted to induce happiness for yourself but responsibly and rationally.
Is going to a cinema hall and watching a movie give you tremendous joy? Or is it having a mani-pedi treatment after a long time that makes you feel special? It could be a bar or a pack of Cheetos. Whatever it is that brings you happiness, spend your day doing the same. Remember, your way to be happy should be responsible and rational. Because there's no point in being happy for a day and messing yourself up for the upcoming days.
Today, let's go back to memory lane and think of a time when you experienced excruciating pain, but you don't feel that pain anymore in your current situation. List down three such incidents.
This could be a relationship issue, divorce, death of a loved one, traumatic accident or anything devastating which caused you pain for a long. If you've been the luckiest fellow, then probably you never experienced anything traumatic, but you would have your own scales of trauma. Weigh down your incidents and list the one which weighed the heaviest on the scale.
You need to realize that you don't feel this pain anymore. The exercise of reminding yourself of your past struggles and realizing the fact that you're not in that situation anymore, makes you feel positive towards your life and brings out the courage in you to prepare you for future struggles.
A smile is an outward sign of happiness and positivity. When you smile at someone, you create a ripple of happiness around you by inducing positivity in the person you're smiling too. It brings in friendliness and helps you feel connected to everyone. Not to forget, it automatically uplifts your mood and makes the other person feel better. Your kindness has this tremendous power to make someone's day and to improve your outlook towards life.
At a given point in time, we are all facing problems. The only difference lies in the problem's magnitude from one person to another. Today, focus on a problem that you've been trying to find the solution to for quite a while. Take it into consideration and try jotting down the solutions to the problem.
For now, don't bother yourself with the fact of whether that solution is realistic or feasible. Simply write it all down. This would give you a list of all the solutions to your problem. And also a boost to your subconscious mind to work on solutions that you have been blocking for quite a while and which can work now with a little tweak.
You would be reading a lot of posts or blogs during the day. And these posts are thoroughly helpful to you in certain areas whether you agree or not. If we are honest to ourselves, we know that whenever we need any help, we Google it, most of the time. And these bloggers and writers across the world research on a topic to bring it to you and help you understand certain things. Today, leave a positive comment on your favourite article, a website or a blog post, which you genuinely liked or which has been a great help to you in the past.
We are uninhibited in the company of our best friends. We share, laugh and talk about the good days, immediately lifting our moods. So let’s do that today. Let’s meet up with a good friend, or connect on a call if a meet up is not possible and spend a good amount of time reminiscing about the adventures you’ve shared together. Remember the victories, the failures and the funny moments. Remember these always.
Songs have the power to uplift your mood or to motivate you during your hard times. They can put you in action when you don't even want to get out of bed. Today, pinch in some time for yourself to create an uplifting playlist for the hard times which wouldn't allow you to wallow in self-pity on the hard days instead help you stay positive. Don't forget to save the list on your device. Invest your time in the power of a positive playlist today and stay positive during your future hard times.
Nobody knows you better than yourself. Nobody can thus console you better than yourself. It's hard to find something encouraging during your hard times. So, what can be better than you consoling your own self?
It's hard to find something encouraging during your hard times. So, what can be better than you consoling your own self? If your current situation is really wonderful, write to yourself about how amazing your life is. If you have struggled in the past and overcame it, then write to yourself about your strengths and learnings.
Find some words today to write a letter to yourself. Write some encouraging words. Write something positive about your life. If your current situation is really wonderful, write to yourself about how your life is amazing. If you have struggled in the past and overcame it, then write to yourself about your strengths and learnings.
When in future, you would be in trouble, you would read your own encouraging words to yourself and feel the positive vibes. You won't end up thinking that the person giving me advice doesn't even know what it feels like walking in your shoes, as the person would be you and only you, who knows what it feels to be like you.
The easiest thing to do when you're feeling bad is 'Take A Walk', yet we undermine this little effort the most. The moment you start feeling bad about anything, the best solution is to pick yourself up and go out of that environment. The moment you move out of your room, office or the area that's making you feel depressed, you get to feeling better.
Go take a walk in the park, near a lake or closer to nature. These days, due to the lockdown situation, it is difficult to go outside your houses, so going to the terrace would work. And feel the nature, the beauty around you. The wind, the trees, the birds, the plants, the grass, the water bodies, whatever you're seeing, observe carefully and embrace the magic of everything present to you without a cost.
This would work wonders on your psyche and you would forget about your whole situation. After taking that magical walk, you are allowed to go back to your room, or your space with a fresh mind to start thinking of a solution to your current situation.
Today, scour the internet for the articles published on the virtues of positive thinking. Or you can go to a library, read up books on the same. You can't change your thinking overnight. But the idea is to share the information on positive thinking to your subconscious brain, as much as you can, so that there is a scope of change in your thinking. Try to look for as many methods, challenges, or ideas for your brain and try to follow those over the course of time.
Print at least one or more positive quotes you like. You can get as many as you want printed and post them in your room. The whole idea behind this is to surround yourself with positive words before you go to bed and after you get up.
Once again in the past 21 days, we are going back to memory lane. Go back to your childhood today. Think of all the dreams you've had, when you were younger. Write all of them down. Now choose one dream that you're still passionate about, the dream that makes you lit up on mere thought.
Now write down the list of excuses you made to not follow your passion. All these excuses are your negativity. 'I am not..', 'I couldn't..', 'I tried, but..' etc. Give all your excuses and reasons a rational thought. Counter them with logical evidence filling your subconscious with positive thoughts on how it is possible to follow the passion you've always dreamt about. Get yourself to learn that learning is never-ending and take baby steps to make big things happen.
As they say, life is not a bed of roses. We struggle through a lot of challenges in our lives, big or small, it's hard to quantify. But these challenges left us with some really great life lessons. We may not understand the learnings while wading through the tough times, but we end up knowing what we learned out of the whole situation.
Today, share one of those life lessons with someone younger or a co-worker. It would help you share a good bond, instilling a feeling of mutual trust and leave you with some positive feeling in your heart.
It's very common that most of the people around us expect something out of us. To say the least, a small gesture of kindness, or gratitude, or integrity. These are some of the basics I quoted here. They may be expecting lots of materialistic things out of you. And I have been among those who hate that. Expectations would be endless. Yet you can't stop fulfilling them. But there's a time when you really can't stay up to the mark. Well, today is not that day.
Today, you're going to do something nice for someone who is expecting nothing out of you at the moment. Surprise someone and bring that smile on their face.
This would not only help spread the beautiful smile around but also help someone feel your nicer side, which would bring positivity even during the negative times and would help save your relationship in the future.
It's very easy for us to find faults with our facial features. If I ask you to make a list of these faults, you can come up with a huge list. It could be your crooked nose, wide lips, small waist, wide forehead, hunch back, etc.
But that's not on agenda for today. Today, you need to enlist your facial features which help you save your day. It could be a bad hair day when these two features make you look presentable, or it could be a sweaty day, or a dark circles day, but these features would help you make an impression, and which you adore on your face as they are just there. Focus your energies on just these two features today.
With time, we tend to forget a lot of things. Especially the things which weren't there a couple of years ago. So, we also tend to forget feeling gratitude for such things.
Try to remember your life ten years ago. Definitely, most of the things weren't there. Today, you're going to make a list of 3 things that weren't there ten years ago and you feel gratitude for having them in your life. Things that made your life easier.
Remember to keep the positives in your mind as we always tend to forget those positives and fill our subconscious with negatives.
This one wouldn't take much of an effort. You just need to think of a positive statement, which can help you pass a bad time easily. It could be something that gives you hope to survive through tough times.
For instance, the year 2018 was going pretty bad for me. It was a shattering experience. Yet I kept telling myself that 2019 is going to be good. And those shattering couple of months passed in a good faith.
You don't have to make the same statement. It could be anything that keeps you going depending on your situation. Such as, 'I can do this.', 'This is meant for me only.' etc.
It is a common tendency that we underestimate the impact we have on another person's life. Having you around can enlighten your parents' burden, is merely a little example. You have so many people around, who talk to you or connect with you, your family, your friends, your relatives, your coworkers, your neighbours, etc. The least you can do is share your knowledge, extend a helping hand to them, talk to them, or be around.
Today, you're not going to meet someone specifically for helping them around. You just need be conscious of it. You need to realize how substantial your existence is. Learn how you're helping bring a change around you. You add value to the society that nobody can put a price tag on.
List your goals today for the upcoming 3 months. These goals can be big or small. This is just to give you an idea that whatever efforts you're putting in at present, they aren't for nothing. These efforts are for the listed goals. Though the goals may not be achieved within 3 months, yet you're clear in your mind, what you're doing and why are you doing it.
Did it ever happen to you that you don't have a coin for the vending machine, and a complete stranger helped you out? Or you are trying to reach out for the top shelf in a supermarket and somebody randomly picked it up for you.
There could be several scenarios in your life, where randomly someone helped you out without expecting anything in return. They found you worthy of help. Isn't that special enough?
Today, think of 2 incidences where you received support without any expectations in return from a complete stranger and feel your worthiness.
We all have learning capability, no matter how frustrated we are at the moment. So, learn! Learn a new word, a fact, a story, or a lesson and share it with the people around you. Despite the frustration in your life, you can learn, grow, and develop others. This won't only give you satisfaction but learning continuously can help you steer your life towards an appropriate direction.
I hope you enjoyed the series as much as I did while sharing it with you. Stay in touch. And write to me about your experiences.
We at IM Impeccable wish you positive well-being during these grave times. Stay healthy!!
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
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