5 Ways Positivity Can Change Your Life

We’ve all have fallen victim to rolling out eyes at the flood of motivational and inspiring quotes on our social media feeds.

Sometimes you sarcastically laugh them off, rolling your eyes. Other times you just scroll right on past.

But have your really given serious thought to the idea?

Can positivity reallymake your life better?

At risk of sounding like a self-help book — in a word, yes. You can make a positive impact on your life - and changing the way you think is the first step.

Maintaining a positive attitude has shown to improve numerous aspects of your life. So while you’re snickering at someone’s post or dismissing a new, popular self-help book, you may be missing the point.

Below are five ways that positive thinking can impact your life.

1. It Boosts Your Health

Studies show that a positive attitude leads to better stress management. Whether it be laughing, or just not flying off the handle at little things, less stress leads to a healthier lifestyle.

The effects of stress can be monumentally detrimental to your health: from small complaints such as headaches and sleep difficulties, to much larger, more serious health problems.

Positive thinking also involves an optimistic philosophy. Optimists are known to be more active, eat healthier and overall lead a healthy lifestyle.

2. Job Satisfaction

Putting less stress on yourself at work will make you, and your coworkers, much happier. Working with happy people will create a positive, more constructive work environment for everyone.

A positive work environment will lead to a better outlook on life as well. As you leave work each day you’ll leave with a certain sense of accomplishment. A constant positive attitude will increase your productivity, and therefore, your chances for a promotion.

A happy person who gets work done will always get the promotion over a negative pessimist. Obversely, being a negative person can get you canned.

3. Better Sleep

If you don’t believe that a positive attitude or positive thoughts can help you sleep, try cognitive behavioral therapy: a method implemented to fight sleeplessness by noticing when a bad thought comes to mind, and replacing that thought with a positive one — not only throughout the day, but as your going to bed as well.

Try it out and you’ll get into a cyclical rhythm — positive thoughts lead to better sleep, which leads to positive thoughts, which lead to better sleep …

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4. Social Life

No one wants to be around a “Negative Nelly.” It’s well known that people tend to gravitate toward positive people and distance themselves from negative people.

Positive thinkers are more outgoing and fun to be around. Living a life of positivity will make you more intriguing, you’ll form more meaningful relationships, and people will seek and appreciate interaction with you.

Ask yourself if you’d rather be around a group of perpetually positive or negative people. The answer should be very apparent.

5. Increased Self-Confidence

Along with positive thinking comes positive self-talk: cutting out negativity in the way that you talk and think about/to yourself. This means not putting yourself down as much, dwelling on worries so that they get blown way out of proportion, and blaming yourself for things that are out of your control and not your fault.

Positive self-talk promotes ideas such as recognizing what you’re good at, not comparing yourself to others, and a better tolerance of yourself and others’ mistakes. When you talk and think about yourself in positive ways, you become more confident.

As you let go, stop focusing on all the negative things about yourself, you’ll start playing to strengths and become more self-reliant and self-sufficient.

In case you haven’t noticed, all of these aspects of life play off each other quite frequently. Self-confidence can lead to better job performance and satisfaction, which can lead to better sleep, which can lead to a healthier lifestyle, which can lead to a more developed social life.

With a more positive attitude, your quality of life will increase, and as one aspect of your life is made better with positivity, another one will be as well.

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Avery Phillips is a freelance human based out of the beautiful Treasure Valley. She loves all things in nature, especially humans. Comment down below or tweet her @a_taylorian with any questions or comments.