If you look forward to summer as much as we do, it might be because of the huge boost of endorphins you get from the sunshine. Feeling your best and looking your best doesn’t just happen on vacation, it’s a combination of Vitamin D, social time, and spending time outdoors.
When the sun is shining and there’s so much more socializing to do, it’s only natural that you feel a boost of happiness and a wave of confidence. But how good would it be if you could feel that burst of endorphins all year round?
There are a few ways to feel good that only take a couple of minutes. So you can center yourself and feel amazing every single day.
1. Practice your daily gratitude
Do not let this slide. Thinking about just one thing a day that you’re grateful for is proven to boost your mood and make you more thankful for the things you have. You can use the 365 Days of Gratitude Journal to help you become more in tune with the world around you, erase negative associations and focus only on the positives.
Studies have shown that the more grateful you are, the more positive you’ll become.
2. Take a deep breath
One deep calm breath can restore your balance and help you activate your rest and restore mode. There’s a reason that people with anxiety rely on breathing exercises to calm down. Breathing deeply and with purpose helps your body process the world around it, and gives you a moment to reflect on where you are and what you’re doing.
3. Fake a smile
That positive mood doesn’t come from the inside out, it sometimes comes from the outside in. Your thoughts, actions, and behaviors are all linked in a little triangle and dependent on each other. If you act miserable, slumping your shoulders and making a sad face, your thoughts will follow the lead and your behavior will too. If you act positive, smile with a spring in your step, your thoughts and behaviors will follow suit!
Faking a smile really does work!
4. Win at life
There’s a reason we developed the Win At Life system, you’ll feel so much more balanced and happy if you start giving time and space to yourself. Work through the spread every single day and be completely honest with yourself. Have you spent enough time balancing out your life? How would you grade your meals and your workouts? How do you feel? Why do you feel that way? Work on every area of your life and you’ll soon start to feel more positive.
5. Always hunt for positives
When you’re caught up in an event, a situation at work, a break-up, anything that’s typically negative, you can choose to focus on the negatives or move on from them. You can choose to stay trapped in the negative cycle or to start looking for positives, for lessons you could learn, for ways to move forward.
This is the go-getter mindset. You need to accept that bad things happen in life, we’re not here to lie to you. But learning to give yourself the space to search for positives and to move through those negatives is the most important thing you can do for yourself.
You may not have thought about how your brain is wired, but it is predisposed to look for the negative things so that we are aware of threats and stressors in our environment. Balance this out by looking for some good things, and boost your happiness instead.
6. The happy diet
What you eat and drink can massively affect your mood. If you’ve noticed you’ve been feeling a little flat, start keeping a food diary. You can use the Fit Is The Sh*t planner to make a note of your meals and exercise throughout the week to see how that affects your mood and whether you feel a lot better by making a few simple tweaks.
GOOD THINGS
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