Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilerin/ / CC BY 2.0

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice”
Wayne Dyer

“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else”
Winston Churchill

If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that positivity is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more positive attitude and there are some pitfalls. So today I’d like to share a few mistakes that I have made in this area and that I think are fairly common.

1. Thinking 100 percent positivity.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when you adopt a positive attitude then it’s just on. Like when you flick a light switch. And that would be nice and simple, wouldn’t it?

But in my experience you improve gradually with a few bigger leaps from time to time. For example, today I stay positive for about 80 percent of the time. Four years ago or so, I was probably positive for about 30 percent of the time.

So I have made big improvements in this area. But it has taken years and lots of exploring and work to have a more consistently positive attitude. And the work continues. Mental fitness is like physical fitness. If you let things slide then you get out of shape and then you can’t do the things you used to do.

I think it is very important to be aware that nothing will ever be perfect. Striving for perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you are good enough.

Even though you may be positive 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you aren’t OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level. And so your self esteem stays low even though your results may be very good.

So I think it’s better to just focus on gradually being more consistent instead trying to be perfect.

2. Thinking it’s just about your thoughts.

One good way to become a more positive person is to ask questions that empower you instead of making you feel like a victim. If you are in negative situation you can for instance ask yourself: what is the hidden opportunity in this situation?

So one part of a positive attitude is about learning to think in more helpful way.

But it’s not just about your thoughts.

I have found that one of the best ways to turn around a negative mood or just to remain positive and strong is to work out. After you are done it sometimes feels like you are different person. Doubt and worries just seem to fall away or at least become a lot smaller.

This nice thing about this is that it works kinda automatically.

Because sometimes you just can’t pump up your own enthusiasm or motivation. Or see things from a positive perspective. When working out you don’t have to think or push through such inner resistance. You go and you work out. And most of the time it works like pushing a stress and tension release button in yourself.

Being in pretty good shape and working out a couple of times a week is to me one of the most fundamental and effective things you can do to improve your attitude and life.

You may discover that if you improve this area of your life then many of the tips for how to think in more positive way become a bit superfluous.

3. Can’t let go of the benefits of your current attitude.

At some point you have to make up your mind. Will you go for the benefits of adopting more positive attitude? Or will you stay with benefits of a negative attitude?

Because there are benefits to both of them. It’s not like a negative attitude is something that is just stupid and something people do without any reason. A negative attitude can for example give you this:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out.
• No risks. When you are negative you can find explanations for why nothing will work. And so you don’t have to take action and have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• A feeling of being smarter and right. A common attitude of very negative people seems to be – and it was in my case – that you think you are smarter than other people. They do, fumble and fail. While you can judge and analyse life and them from a safe distance. It’s not hard to feel smarter than most people when you are always on the sidelines. But it’s not clever. In the end it’s just sad.

So there are a few benefits and quite a bit of pleasurable feelings to be drawn from a negative attitude. But I have found that a positive attitude – although it may sometimes be harder to keep up – is more helpful and just makes life a lot more exciting and fresh.

To be able to have a more consistent positive attitude you will probably have to let go of the negative attitude and those benefits or you’ll get stuck at a certain level. You can find some of the best reasons to adopt the positive attitude and how to do it in this article.

4. Swimming in a sea of negativity.

If you are trying to change your attitude then it’s not very helpful to live in a world where forces try to drag you back to your old mindset each day. It makes it very hard to change.

What you allow into your mind will have a big effect on you. So be selective. If you’re hanging out with negative people all the time then that can really drag you down. It’s not easy to stay optimistic when pessimism is the default mode in your world.

Another part of this is getting hooked on the news and prophecies of the sky falling. The sky is probably not falling.

Consider spending less time with negative voices. Cut back on – or cut out – seeing negative people. Cut back on watching the news or even more spectacularly negative TV-shows. But don’t forget to replace that old stuff you cut out with something more positive instead. If you have a vacuum in your life then you are more likely to revert back to your old habits.

You can for instance replace reading the newspaper in the morning with listening to personal development CDs, watching something fun or just having a good conversation with someone.

5. Confusing positivity with trying to please everyone.

Positivity isn’t about being nice and trying to please everyone. Or accepting everything that people do to you.

Being nice is wonderful thing. But letting people walk all over you and accepting it with a smile and a positive attitude won’t help you.

We do to a large extent choose how we want to be treated. How you expect people to treat you can have a big effect on how you allow yourself to act and how people around you view and treat you. If you start creating a role for yourself where you always let people do what they want to you then you may create some pretty destructive and negative things.

• You may create an identity for yourself where you get used to always taking whatever anyone doles out. You create a kind of victim identity where you may look happy on the outside but don’t feel so good on the inside. But since you have gotten used to it after a while you may accept it and think that: this is just who I am.
• You may create a concept in the minds of the people around you that it’s OK to treat you this way. Either because you seem so positive despite what they are doing so they think it’s OK. Or just because you aren’t saying no and some people may take advantage of that.

Look, you can’t please everyone. I think both Eleanor Roosevelt and Buddha have mentioned something along the lines that whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing. And that’s OK. That’s normal.

Going around trying to please everyone at your own expense isn’t healthy though. Or even a realistic thing to attempt. It eats away at you both mentally and physically.

So be nice. Be positive. But make sure you set your own standards, rules and limits too. Combine the positive attitude and smiles with assertiveness and with being proactive. And remember that you might as well do what you want because there will always be critics.

”Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
Benjamin Franklin

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard

“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.”
George F. Burns

Worries. They can circle around and around in your head.

Becoming louder and louder as they sap your strength and make you feel you weaker.

It’s no fun.

So what can you do about it?

Here are five timeless thoughts to help you overcome or at least lessen the worries in your life. I hope you find something helpful.

1. 80-90 percent of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
Winston Churchill

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman

This is a big one but one that is easy to forget about. Most things you fear will happen never happen.

They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say.

But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

2. Don’t make mountains out of molehills.

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
Arthur Somers Roche

“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.”
Dean Smith

It’s very easy to fall into the habit of making mountains out of molehills. You think and think about a small problem until it becomes something that you believe may ruin your life.

So why do we do it? Why don’t strive to make things easy and simple?

Well, one reason I believe is protection from pain. By making the problem huge can you can invent a helpful excuse to convince yourself to not take action.

Another reason is that the ego wants more. It wants to feel better or worse than someone else.

By making things more complicated than they need to be you can make them feel very important. And since you are involved in these important things, since you have these BIG problems, well, then you have to be important too, right? Plus, by doing so you can get attention and comfort from other people.

So how do you get out of the habit of making mountains of molehills? Three tips:

Zoom out.

Ask questions that widen your current perspective. Questions like: “Does someone have it worse on the planet?”

The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you out of your current attitude pretty quickly. This question changes the perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one and helps me to lighten up about my situation and to be grateful about my life.

Bring awareness to you own thought patterns.

Ask yourself questions like: “Honestly, am I overcomplicating this?” and “What is the simplest and most straightforward solution to my problem that I may be avoiding to protect myself from pain?”

Realize that much of this is in your head.

Your relationships to what you want to achieve are – just like your relationships to people – to a large extent just in your head.

Think that something is easy and simple instead of “heavy” and complicated and your perception of that external thing you want to achieve tends to change too. Experiment and find healthy and effective relationships to what you want to achieve instead of just seeing something like many people may do.

3. Let go of that familiarity and certainty.

“Worry is like a rocking chair–it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.”
Unknown

”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
George Bernard Shaw

Whatever you have been doing perhaps for decades feels familiar and comfortable. Even if it may be something destructive as worrying.

Taking a leap of faith and going into the unknown, making a change that may turn out to be positive, can feel scarier and more uncomfortable than what you are used to. Even if what you are used to is worse in the long run.

But at some point you have to make up your mind to start letting go of that old familiar part of yourself. You have to fill up the space all that worrying used take up with new thinking.

It may feel uncomfortable. It is not so intimately familiar as your past thoughts.

It can be scary and exciting at the same time because now you are not just someone who sees themselves as a worrier and that uses some techniques to lessen that.

You are instead making a deep change to who you are, to how you view yourself. You are letting go of something that has been a big part of you and are leaving it at the side of the road.

One great tip that I have learned for making it easier to let go is to first accept it. Then to let it go. When you accept something instead of resisting it you stop feeding more energy into your problem and making it even bigger. A bit counterintuitive.

This is useful when it comes to letting go. If you first accept what you want to let go you aren’t so emotionally attached to it and still feeding it with your focus and energy.

And so it becomes less powerful and easier to just drop. As long as you resist it then it will be hard to let it go.

Another helpful hint for letting go is found in tip #1 in this article. All that worrying in your past may not have been very accurate at all. So perhaps it’s a smart choice to let go of that habit?

4. Focus on a solution.

“There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”
Harold Stephen

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
Robert Frost

”You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”
Pat Schroeder

To move out of worry it’s very helpful to just start moving and taking action to solve what you are concerned about.

Two tips that have helped me to take action more consistently are:

Using a morning routine.

This is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the tone for your day.

So start with with taking a small step towards one of your biggest goals or most important dreams very early in your day and make that a part of your daily morning routine.

Focusing on and taking responsibility for the process, not the potential results.

I use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up and doing my workout. The results have come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action when I know that is all I need to focus on.

Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”.

Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and likely to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and that puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

5. Tomorrow will come anyway. Live and fully enjoy the here and now.

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

It may sometimes seem that by worrying we can lessen the sorrow of tomorrow. But it never works. It only sucks the life out of today and this moment.

To be able to live a better life today and to be able to take that action to prevent the possible sorrow it’s important to learn to live in the present moment. Because it’s there that you can do things in the best possible way with your focus fully on what you are doing.

My favorite technique for pulling myself back to this moment is simply this:

Focus on what’s right in front of you.

Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at what’s right in front of you right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel.

Be still right there and just take in the world around you.

Sometime during the spring, when I first heard about using fasting from time to time to lose fat I thought it sounded a bit odd.

But then I thought about how people in all kinds of religions have been fasting for thousands of years.

I read a bit about it online and it seemed to be a pretty popular topic on various fitness blogs. Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training – the program I use every week and that helped me to lose 26 pounds – is a fan for example. So I got curious.

So I read a book called Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon (the guy above in the photo). It’s a pretty short and concise ebook at 91 pages.

In it Brad dispels many myths about fasting. He counters the arguments people may use to not try it out – like slowed down metabolism, fear of losing muscle, fear of becoming just too hungry – with facts and research (the book has over 50 references from different scientific studies).

The main idea of this way of losing fat is to fast for 24 hours once or twice per week. This will create a calorie deficit and you will use more energy than you put into your body. And so you lose weight. That’s it.

My Four Week Challenge

First, a quick note on fasting. As Brad writes in the intro to the book: “The information within this book is meant for healthy adult individuals. You should consult with your physician to make sure it is appropriate for your individual circumstances.”

Now, since I had gained back a few of those 26 pounds I lost earlier this year I thought I’d give it try. So I have fasted for two 24 hour periods during the last four weeks. The results? I lost 4 kilos/9 pounds.

I did no cardio exercises – I usually do the bodyweight exercises from the Turbulence Training program – during these four weeks to see how much I could lose without that training. I did however do two 25 minute workouts with free weights per week to maintain my muscle mass and just lose the fat. I did not lose any strength during the four weeks.

So how was it?

Well, pretty unobtrusive and I guess that is the point of this way of eating. You don’t have to prepare special meals. Or constantly think about what you are eating. You just stop eating. Then you just eat again as if nothing happened. It’s a pretty relaxed and very simple way of eating to lose weight.

I had hunger pangs when I usually eat but they dissipated again pretty quickly as I kept busy with work and other stuff. An interesting side effect of fasting is that productivity goes up. When you don’t have to cook food, eat and wash the dishes you can get quite a bit more done during your day of fasting.

I did however notice that it did become harder to focus for maybe four hours before the fast was done. My mind was foggier. I could still work and do some light stuff but for example writing a blog post would be hard.

But the thing is, this way of eating is very flexible. Taking your fasting day on a day when you for example have an important test in school is nothing you need to do. You can take your fast any day of the week, when it fits you and your schedule.

Besides dispelling the myths about fasting and changing how you think about food and fasting Brad also goes into the benefits of fasting from time to time – like decreased insulin levels and increased insulin sensitivity and growth hormone levels – and gives you a how to guide to live the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle with a helpful frequently asked questions section.

Anything to improve?

So I really liked the book and the intermittent fasting. But were there any negatives about it all? Well, nothing major, but I found a few things.

• Plain standard design. Eat Stop Eat is designed with the plain standard white background and black text. That’s totally OK but I hope that perhaps more ebook authors follow the example of for instance Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and add a little more to the design to spruce things up.
• Few food tips. One of the upsides of intermittent fasting is that you don’t have to fret about every meal to get a calorie deficit. However, I would have liked to see a little more about some recommended food and tips for when you are eating so you don’t compensate the calories lost by overeating.

UPDATE: The Special Discount Offer is Now Over.

But you can still get just the the ebook or more more expanded options such as the Advanced package that contains all the items below plus additional audio files.

• The Eat Stop Eat ebook.
• How Much Protein – Brad’s latest ebook – 121 pages – on protein and how much you actually need each day to build muscle.
• The 10 day Diet Solution – Brad’s 25 page ebook on how to overhaul your diet in 10 days, how to erase bad eating habits in less than two weeks and how to avoid the biggest causes of overeating.

Brad offers a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee with no questions asked so there is no risk for you.

Click here to get you own copy of Eat Stop Eat

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.”
Richard Bach

“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”
John W. Gardner

One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives.

In this headspace you feel sorry for yourself, the world seems to be against you and you get stuck. Little to no action is taken and you get lost in a funk of sadness and self-pity.

So how can you move out of that mindset? In this article I’d like to share a few things that have helped me.

1. Know the benefits of a victim mentality.

There are a few benefits of the victim mentality:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. On the other hand, it may not last for that long as people get tired of it.
• You don’t have to take risks. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and then you don’t have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• Don’t have to take the sometimes heavy responsibility. Taking responsibility for you own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to not take personal responsibility.
• It makes you feel right. When you feel like the victim and like everyone else – or just someone else – is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings.

In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that and to choose to take a different path.

It also makes it easier to make rational decisions about what to do. Yes, I know that I can avoid risk and the hard work of taking action by feeling like a victim.

But I also know that there are even more positive results if I choose to take the other route, if I make the better choice to take a chance and start moving forward.

2. Be OK with not being the victim.

So to break out of that mentality you have to give up the benefits above.

You might also experience a sort of emptiness within when you let go of victim thinking.

You may have spent hours each week with thinking and talking about how wrong things have gone for you in life. Or how people have wronged you and how you could get some revenge or triumph over them.

Now you have to fill your life with new thinking that may feel uncomfortable because it is not so intimately familiar as the victim thinking your have been engaging in for years.

3. Take responsibility for your life.

Why do people often have self-esteem problems?

I’d say that one of the big reasons is that they don’t take responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered.

This damages many vital parts in your life. Stuff like relationships, ambitions and achievements.

That hurt will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. There is really no way around it.

And the difference is really remarkable. Just try it out. You feel so much better about yourself even if you only take personal responsibility for your own life for a day.

This is also a way to stop relying on external validation like praise from other people to feel good about yourself.

Instead you start building a stability within and a sort of inner spring that fuels your life with positive emotions no matter what other people say or do around you.

4. Gratitude.

When I feel that I am putting myself in victim role I like to ask myself this question:

“Does someone have it worse on the planet?”

The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. I understand that I have much to be grateful for in my life.

This question changes my perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one. It helps me to lighten up about my situation.

After I have changed my perspective I usually ask another question like:

“What is the hidden opportunity within this situation?”

That is very helpful to keep your focus on how to solve a problem or get something good out a current situation. Rather than asking yourself “why?” over and over and thereby focusing on making yourself feel worse and worse.

5. Forgive.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking that forgiveness is just about something you “should do”. But forgiving can in a practical way be extremely beneficial for you.

One of the best reasons to forgive can be found in this quote by Catherine Ponder:

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

As long as you don’t forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what s/he did over and over again.

The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and – as a result of your inner turmoil – most often in other people around you too.

When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony.

6. Turn your focus outward and help someone out.

The questions in tip #4 are useful. Another question I use when I get into the victim headspace is simply:

“How can I give value right now?”

Asking that question and making that shift in what you focus on really helps, even if you may not feel totally like doing it.

So I figure out how I can give someone else value, how I can help someone out.

And thing is that the way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself.

For example, judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

A bit counter intuitive perhaps, but that has been my experience. The more you love other people, the more your love yourself.

7. Give yourself a break.

Getting out of a victim mentality can be hard. Some days you will slip. That’s OK. Be OK with that.

And be nice to yourself. If you have to be perfect then one little slip is made into a big problem and may cause you to spiral down into a very negative place for many days.

It is more helpful to just give yourself a break and use the tips above to move yourself into a positive and empowered headspace once again.

“Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside”

“The image is one thing and the human being is another…It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”

If you haven’t lived under a rock since you were born I am guessing you know who Elvis Presley was.

So let’s just move on to a few of my favourite pearls of wisdom from the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

1. Put a stop to the downward spiral.

“When things go wrong don’t go with them”

As humans we always have a choice. We can interpret the reality around us as we choose. Two people may have the same things happen in their lives. One becomes negative and apathetic. The other one chooses to see what happened as an opportunity.

Now, I admit, it’s not always easy to not react negatively to things that happen. But what you do after that initial reaction – go down a downward spiral or look for what you can use – is in my experience something you can have a large control over.

There may however be some inner resistance to do so. Complaining and falling into a victim role can protect you from having to take chances and to avoid doing some hard work. It can also – for a while at least – get you the attention, comfort and validation from other people.

But in the long run it keeps you trapped right where you are.

So what do you do?

• Ask yourself better questions. I write about this quite a bit. That’s because it has worked very well for me. Asking myself questions like: “What’s awesome about this situation?” and “Where is the hidden opportunity in this situation?” helps me to reframe what happened and I can pretty much always come up with some good answers that helps me to start taking action towards positive results. Sure, sometimes I don’t feel like asking the questions. Then I just do it anyway. Just because I don’t feel like it doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.
• Understand yourself. Understand the patterns in your mind. Think back to your past and understand where the patterns lead and why you are using them. Whenever you find yourself in some difficult situation say to yourself that you will not take a negative path because you already know where it leads. Then tell yourself that you instead will ask useful questions, make a plan or something that will help you.

You can read more about adopting a positive attitude in 8 Awesome Reasons to Blast Negativity Out of Your Life, and How to Do It.

2. Understand through experience.

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of criticizing things because, well, you feel like it’s wrong. But do you really understand what you are criticising?

From my own experience I have found that one tends to become less critical of things when you have experienced it for yourself and have an understanding. Instead of just knowledge about it.

It’s easy to be the armchair general, knowing what is always right. Especially in hindsight. It makes you feel good and like you are right.

But in the end the credit does not belong to this person. It belongs to the person who is out there actually doing things.

3. Face the truth.

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

Although I write a lot about positive thinking and how it can be very helpful there is also the risk of overdoing it. So be a bit careful so you don’t get trapped in a bubble of positivity. The bubble of positivity is when you lie in your bed going “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!”. While your bed is on fire.

Don’t use positivity to repress and stop thinking about real, practical challenges in your life. If you are having real problems with money, relationships, work etc. don’t repress them with positive thinking until everything spirals out of control and comes crashing down on you like 30 story building. It’s always better to try and deal with a problem in the early stages.

So be positive, but use common sense. Face the truth but see it through a positive lens that allows you to take action – like described in the first section of this article – instead of getting stuck in a sad funk.