How to cultivate a positive mindset

Olivia Remes is a mental health and wellbeing researcher at the University of Cambridge and author of This is how you grow after injury. and life coach. Her research covers everything from assessing the prevalence of poor mental health in high-risk environments such as the construction industry, to what helps disadvantaged women reduce their risk of anxiety. Here, she recommends three science-backed strategies for creating a healthier mindset: one that will increase your happiness, increase self-control and motivation, and help you achieve your goals.

1. Do small things every day that exercise self-control.

Research by my team at the University of Cambridge, as well as workshops and discussions with hundreds of people over many years, has consistently shown that a key component of well-being is self-control. Having self-control is associated with a feeling of calm and ease, as well as greater sense of satisfaction with life. But what is self-control? Every time you try to think, behave, or act in a certain way, you are using self-control. Not giving up when something seems difficult or not stopping when you feel the urge are exercises in self-control. And self-control is like a muscle: the more you exercise or use it, the stronger it becomes.

There is plenty of research to support this idea. For example, in one study, researchers asked 69 people to perform self-control tasks at the beginning of the experiment, such as squeezing their hand and not thinking about a polar bear for 5 minutes (after being asked not to think about a polar bear, it is very difficult to think about anything else – try it!). In the same way, squeezing a handle soon becomes tired and your hands want to relax, but if you continue to squeeze despite being tired, then you are using self-control to do so.

After these initial tasks, participants were divided into four groups and asked to complete two weeks of exercise it required self-control. The first group was asked to maintain optimal posture as often as possible, the second group was asked to try to change their mood, and the rest had to keep detailed records of their diet. The last group didn't have to do anything. After the two-week period, everyone was asked to repeat the self-control tasks from the beginning of the experiment.

Participants who completed daily self-control exercises for two weeks were better able to cope with tedious tasks from the start of the experiment compared to participants in the control group. In other words, those who engaged in consistent activities, even for a short period of time, ultimately had greater self-control ability.

This suggests that whenever you do something repeatedly—even if it's difficult at first—the consistent effort you make can increase your overall self-control, and that greater inner strength can spill over into other, unrelated areas of your life.

2. Don't allow daydreaming

Try not to daydream. Research shows that we can spend more than a third of our day thinking about things unrelated to the task at hand. Daydreaming has some benefits, but Harvard researchers have shown that Mind wandering is also a key cause of unhappiness. To get this result, they used smartphones to monitor the thoughts and happiness levels of 2,250 adults and found that people's minds wandered during almost any activity they were engaged in. Mind wandering also made participants feel less happy. Even when participants' thoughts turned to pleasant topics, they did not necessarily report that they felt happier than they continued with their current activities. However, when participants thought about something neutral or unpleasant, they felt significantly more unhappy. It turns out that thinking about something else instead of the current task can become an obstacle to happiness.

Daydreaming can lead to rumination and make you focus on goals that you have not yet achieved. He may also have negative impact on your reading comprehensionand this can prevent you from staying focused. Knowing the negative aspects of mind wandering can help us because knowledge is power: when you are aware of the problem, you can take steps to solve it. So the next time you catch your mind wandering, redirect it back to what you need to do. Not only will this help you complete your to-do list, but it will also increase your happiness.

3. Write the script of your life

When you think about resolutions this year, the key question is to ask yourself: If you wrote scenario of your lifeWhat would you like to say in your life story? What habits would you like to have, what would you like to achieve in your career? What would your relationship look like?

Then rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in these and other areas of your life that are most important to you. A score of 10 means you are very satisfied with where you are now in this area of ​​your life, while a score of 1 means you feel very unsatisfied. If you score low in one of these areas, think about what step you could take to move up just 1 point. This is the key point. It's not about big changes, which can often be overwhelming, stressful and scary. It's about small, sustainable changes. Be specific about these changes. For example, it's better to say, “I'm going to exercise 20 minutes in the morning” or “I'd like to get a specific promotion at work,” rather than having a vague goal like “I'd like to exercise more” or “I want to be more successful.”

The key to successfully improving aspects of your life scenario is that you take this small step. We think that we need to wait until we feel more motivated to achieve our goals or complete certain tasks, but in fact, according to some studies, we humans we are bad at predicting our future emotions. We may think that we will feel more motivated or energized to take action later and so we put off that first step today, but then when “later” comes we realize that we could still feel unmotivated to perform this activity. Instead of waiting for motivation to appear and assuming that motivation leads to action, the opposite happens. Motivation follows action.

So start small. Create and tackle smaller goals first and this will make it easier to achieve the bigger goals in your life.

As stated Helen Thomson