Think happy thoughts

Negative thoughts are the killer of creativity, fulfillment, inner peace, joy, and many other profitable feelings. We have 65,000 different thoughts each day and 70% percent of those are negative- if you ask me that makes it awful hard to live a life full of love and happiness. The best way to combat negative thoughts is to take part in pleasurable activities such as hanging with friends or practicing meditation.

I enjoy meditation and I honestly should do it a lot more than I should because it is immensely helpful when trying to maintain a positive peace of mind. Being able to effectively meditate is a skill, once you learn how to do so it is a lot easier to control your emotions and align your thoughts. If you are ever dealing with stress in life, try and just sit by yourself and breathe.

Anyways back to thinking happy thoughts, personally I struggled with this in the winter like many others I am sure. Having to be alone in the house and not being able to visit friends really takes a toll on the mind. There was one question that kept bouncing around in my head, "How can I be an optimist in a cold isolated world?". It's hard to think in a positive way when everything and everyone around you seems to be succumbing to the dread and misery around them. My list of "pleasurable activities" was dwindling, like many others, I could not do the things I was so used to doing. I learned that when this happens you need to learn to appreciate and practice the smaller things in life. Whether that be sending a text to someone, helping mom out with dinner, or just simply being kid to someone. So basically what I am getting at is, you need to learn to adapt to your current environment and find small things that make you and others around you happy.

Even if you just tell yourself that you are doing a good job, that will go a long way in your mind. For instance, last night I was bartending and I started to remember drinks by memory without looking them up, it was a rewarding feeling and I metaphorically pat myself on the back for all the hard work I did leading up to it. Something as simple as that put a smile on my face.