Let’s start with a proposition – you are responsible for your attitude 100% of the time. Your attitude is a reactive response to the world around you; things don’t happen to you, they happen around you, and you simply react to them.
Positivity, then, is a choice. We’ve said this before, but optimism (different from positivity) is an outlook, a long-term perspective that the future looks bright. Being positive, at any moment in time, is your point in time reaction to the world around you.
We often blame others for the way we feel. “He/She said something mean to me, I got angry, it and ruined my whole day.” Anger, the emotional reaction to the comment, was given the highest priority and became all consuming. What made you angry? Why did it make you angry? Why did you let that moment in time affect a full day?
What kind of emotional strategies can you employ to change your emotional state to positive?
First, let’s answer why this is important. This didn’t just affect the way you felt in the moment; it affected you all day long. How did your presence touch everyone else in the next room you walked into?
You are responsible for the energy you bring into every room.
The next people you see don’t know about your unkind interaction, and frankly they probably don’t care. They only care about the way you treat them, there and then. It is your responsibility to check the way you project that onto the next people you encounter.
Your emotional state is infectious; smile vs. frown, laugh vs. cry, happy vs. sad.
Another good example you can observe in real time is the way children pick up on the attitude of their parents. Kids mimic their every move; snap at them once, and risk the consequences of locking that negative memory deep into the recesses of the child’s brain. Parents don’t get “days off” from being parents.
The caveat to this strategy is that this does not include stuffing real, necessary emotions in a box, like trying to suppress grief after a personal loss. It is not necessary to put on a face to guard real vulnerability; this might be the truest form of emotional strength.
You won’t always be happy. You’ll have good days and bad days. You’ll have periods of really high highs and really low lows; but the effort to make more good than bad is our choice.
This outlook pertains to the times where your attitude is inappropriate to the situation you are in, like being unprofessional at work. If you work in customer service or hospitality, you don’t get “days off” being kind, courteous, or helpful, no matter how bad a day you are having. If you need to deal with something, take the responsibility to step away.
Mental resiliency takes practice and work, especially if you have conditioned your emotional response to be reactive, or worse, negative.
Habits like gossip, complaining, and using confirmation bias to reaffirm a negative mindset (when bad things happen) are insidious to developing good mental resiliency. They are death by 1,000 cuts, each slowly eroding the way you can handle mental stress.
The responsibility is yours to control your reactions, and ultimately your attitude.
Want to change your emotional state? Change your physical state. Exercise, be around people who lift you up, find an inspiring space to think. Get out of your own way.
This is the ‘Best Day Ever Mindset.’ No playing victim.
Take responsibility for your attitude.
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