Feel Positive … Perform Positive

Have you ever wondered how our emotions and feelings play on our mind to provide the fuel that drives our thinking, and help shape what we experience.

Think about a time (or times) when you were feeling good. How did the day go? Did you feel productive or sluggish ... happy or sad ... energised or frustrated?

You see when we envelope a positive mindset our thoughts and actions are widened, more open to exploration of new ideas and experiences. We are more able to see positive outcomes and less likely to be hindered by roadblocks.

Learning to access a positive mindset can be a very useful tool for you in all facets of life. Being able to maintain a positive mindset over a length of time is another avenue towards growing closer to achieving your potential to be in flow. You are living each day not just with confidence ... you are interacting with a sense of happiness and purpose, a feeling of engagement with your world!

This comes from within – from your mind. Believe it or not, it shows in everything you do.

Of course, wanting to have a positive mindset and actually developing one are two different things. It takes effort, even courage, and especially practice.

Let’s concentrate on some strategies you can adopt right now to increase your level of positivity.

Enhance the pleasure you experience daily

• Share how you feel. Tell others how much enjoyment you gained and how much value you experienced.
• Create a memory. Take mental photographs of this positive experience so you can think back on it later and re-live the moment as many times you like.
• Build the picture. When you re-visit your memory, think of what it was that gave you the most pleasure.
• Block out any negativity associated with each memory.
• Immerse yourself in the memory. Allow yourself to be absorbed by the memory. Don’t let conscious thinking take over – enjoy the sensation. Imagine what it would be like if you could have that feeling of positivity every time you undertook an activity.
• Congratulate yourself. Don’t be backward in rewarding yourself with a well-earned sense of pride. It’s not ego; rather it's recognising you have done well and deserve to have this sense of positivity.

Be aware of the present

• Much of what we do in our everyday lives operates on automatic pilot. We perform our daily routines without much active thought into how we do them, nor what we are feeling about them at the time. And this can lead to a sense of detachment and a risk of falling in and out of flow throughout the day as you experience different activities and interactions with others.

Avoid focusing on only one pleasurable experience

• A word of caution. It’s all too easy to latch on to one great experience at the expense of others. We all do it. We all have our favourite memories and it feels good to re-visit those memories time and time again. Unfortunately, whilst this is pleasurable, our minds work best when confronted with a variety of experiences.

Engage with others

• Research has shown that sharing a positive relationship with another person is one of the most defining elements of satisfaction with a task or activity. Believe it or not, much of your experience of flow will come from others – how they react to you, how they support and share with you.
• Investing time and energy in fostering and maintaining a positive working relationship with significant others in your world will lead to greater personal satisfaction.

Put your personal strengths to work

• Have you ever conducted a personal inventory of your strengths and weaknesses? It can be scary, though it can also be quite insightful. More so, what if you knew exactly what your strengths were – would you be able (and/or willing) to utilise them towards creating greater flow for yourself at work or play.

Enjoy the experience

• To achieve optimal positivity and flow there are a number of key elements that must present themselves, and that you must have input into and control over.
• The most important eight elements are:

1. The presence of a challenging task which requires skill to achieve – the concept of pushing oneself.
2. The ability to concentrate on the task.
3. The identification of clear goals associated with the accomplishment of that task.
4. The opportunity to gain immediate feedback on progress.
5. The sense of complete involvement (willing rather than forced).
6. A feeling of control over the execution of the task.
7. An awareness of the formation and strong functioning of people working together rather than just you working on achieving task accomplishment.
8. A sensation of being lost in the moment, as if time was standing still and this moment would last forever.

Interestingly, research shows that the more challenging a task is (within reason) and the more skill is required to achieve a positive outcome, the more happy, strong and active a person will become.

Their concentration is greater and the sense of creativity and satisfaction is heightened.

In essence, the person is experiencing feelings of positivity … and flow.

And, as will be clear, a positive approach to life leads to confidence … an individual’s confidence in creating an environment that will support their movement towards achieving their true potential.

Confidence is the building block of success.

However, getting the right level of confidence is the challenge – enough to believe in yourself and draw the admiration of others, but not so much as to fall into the trap of over-extending yourself and ‘falling’.

We all need to be realistic about our level of confidence and be prepared to work on getting it right just as much as we do on being positive. One without the other may help you look good, but it won’t help you become genuinely brilliant and successful.

Your level of confidence … how positive you are … can be seen in how you act in public or at work, when talking with others. It manifests through your body language, the words you use, what you say, how you dress, and so on.

There are four things you can do to achieve this:

1. Look at what has already been achieved – create a table with your achievements listed, perhaps in chronological order.
2. Think about what’s important to you in your life and where you would like to ‘end up’. This will involve setting targets that are achievable and manageable for you and reflect what you discovered in your SWOT analysis (above).
3. Begin to ‘manage your mind’. Take stock of your self (or internal) talk. Are you using positive words and statements that assist and reward your efforts … or negative ones that hold you back from enjoying your achievements? Consider how effective it would be to use visual imagery to enhance your positive self-talk.
4. Commit yourself to the success you have identified as important. Write your targeted achievements down, and continue to manage them over time. Assess the potential risks that could jeopardise your progress and decide on ways to manage those risks.

By taking it slowly but surely you will experience successes – small but ongoing wins – that reinforce your commitment, your growing confidence, and your ability to get and stay positive.

What is possible is what you believe is possible. In our experience we have witnessed far too many people living ‘ordinary’ lives simply because they weren’t prepared, or able, to take three initial and all-important steps …

• to identify what is possible
• to take action to achieve what has been identified
• to think positively to then perform positively, and with the confidence to the initially identified outcome.

How about you … how positive are you, how confident are you in embracing your goals and dreams?

If you want to learn more about how you can become the confident and positive person that  knows success is yours for the asking, contact us on admin@9pillarlifestyle.com.au or Click Here to organize a 30-minute discovery chat.