Being Positive Is A Choice

Each morning I wake up and say to myself, “You have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.”

I choose to be in a good mood.

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

It’s too easy to forget, but we have so much more control than we think over our health, physical and mental, over our life. We get into this spiralling world, watch the (depressing) news, we let the world dictate what we think of ourselves, of life in general.

When we say “mind over matter”, it is so much more than a cliché. We control our own mindset. It’s about the choices that we make daily. But like with any choice, it doesn’t mean that it’s always easy.

If you’ve been folding the same sheets the same way for years, it will form a crease where it’s always been folded. If you’re trying to change the way you fold those sheets, it will take time for the old creases to disappear and for the new ones to form naturally.

A smoker will never succeed to quit smoking until he or she puts their mind to it. Neither will an alcoholic be able to quit drinking or a drug addict able to beat the habit… unless they genuinely want to. You can lead a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. Their own mind has to be stronger than the addiction or their surroundings. They must want to take over their physical and emotional demons and work at defeating them, through their struggles.

Your brain has been programmed a certain way for years. If you want to start thinking more positively, it’s something that you must want to do. It’s something that you will have to work hard at and it will take time for this new way of thinking to become second nature. Like any changes in life, a change in mindset, forming new habits, won’t happen on its own. And it won’t happen overnight. But rest assured, it can be done. And only YOU can do it.

Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk in the outside influences, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good or bad mood.

The bottom line: How you live life hasn’t been dictated upon you. In fact, it’s almost entirely your choice. You control your mindset. No one else does.