5 Tips to Start a Positive Change in Your Life

Note: This article is by Marc Chernoff, who provides 5 tips for positive life change.

I also remind myself that it's important to live through hard times so we can learn from them.

It can be difficult to understand this truth at first, and this is natural if we know that most of us are afraid to see ourselves for what we are and fear our feelings more than anything, and we all talk about how wonderful life is—love and passion.

On the other hand, we subconsciously fear these things in our daily lives, and we try to avoid these wonderful feelings. The reason is that the love of life and passion can be painful at times, and none of us want to feel pain.

We have been taught since childhood that pain is bad and harmful, yet it is not possible to live a real life, experience true love, and work with passion if we fear our true feelings. Pain must be felt; it is as necessary as feeling love and enthusiasm, and the feeling of pain aims to awaken us from our heedlessness. Still, we avoid it.

We must accept pain with open arms, just as we accept positive feelings, and the reason is that you cannot know your strengths except when life imposes difficult circumstances on you that force you to be strong; it is related to our ability to deal with difficulties and circumstances that go beyond what we wish.

These are the most important qualities in the end, and you should accept pain with an open heart, bear it, and deal with the painful aspects of life, love, and work, thus developing yourself to reach your full potential.

While there is no one-size-fits-all advice for turning the pain we feel during difficult times into opportunities to develop and grow, there are some important principles that apply to nearly all people facing difficult circumstances.

Tips to Start a Positive Change in Your Life

What I am going to share is not based on general principles but rather practical tips that will help you get started and provide support for yourself when you need it:

1. Focus on what you want, not what you fear

One of the women I was coaching told me, “I am so tired and sick of all this worry and negative thoughts and stress. My mind is often full of thoughts that drain my energy. I feel pain in my body, and I don't want to live my life this way anymore; I don't want to feel that I live in constant tension and fatigue, and I do not want to adapt to this situation anymore.”

After these words, this woman went on to tell me that all her life she had been expecting negative things to happen, and this was the way she lived her life. If any of these things my client had said applied to you, it was time to change your mindset.

Our mental strength is so amazing that it can make us feel as positive as it can make us feel so down at any moment. That is, the way we think changes everything, and when I coach people who are struggling with the greatest difficulties they face, I deliberately try to shift their focus from what they don't want to what they want.

I constantly remind them that what they focus on is becoming more apparent in their lives. Hence, they should focus on the positive, strive to be happy when circumstances are difficult, and explain that their ability to achieve happiness in difficult circumstances is the key to changing everything in their lives.

You may not be responsible for everything that happened to you before or for everything that happens to you now, but you should be responsible for letting go of the negative mindset caused by these circumstances.

The point is to think better so that you can live a better life, and in order to do that, you must understand that no matter what you are going through, you can decide how you react to it, and your reaction in turn determines everything that happens to you later.

The most powerful way to overcome anxiety, negative thinking, and stress is your ability to choose to focus on the present moment rather than thinking about the past or worrying about the future, and you must train your mind to turn any situation into an opportunity for self-development, even if the reality is much worse than you expected. This is not fancy talk; you can without a doubt change the way you think, and what's even more amazing is that once you change your mindset, you control the way you live your life.

2. Stop making judgments about the present based on negative past experiences

Our self-talk affects our view of life more than we imagine. When we start out with a new experience and form a view of life, we see things that fit that view, even when we have most of the data that proves us wrong.

One of the clients likened her problems in her relationship with her husband and the tension she is currently experiencing to an old tale in which a group of blind men touch an elephant for the first time in their lives so that they know what it looks like. Each of them touches a different area of ​​the elephant; however, each one can only touch one area.

One felt its foot, another its trunk, and another its tusk, and so on, and then the men compared their observations and soon found out that they were very different about the description of the elephant, and much tension and debate ensued.

Something similar happens during our vast and different past experiences; some of us have been hurt, some have lost loved ones, some have been let down by people they trusted the most, while others have lost their only livelihood source.

Some of us have been subjected to injustice in different forms, and when we enter a new experience in life that causes us to recall our painful past ones, we see things in the present in the shadows of the past experience, meaning that our past experiences narrow our view of life.

When past experiences narrow our current view of life, it acts as a psychological defense mechanism (a term in psychology that refers to the strategies the subconscious mind uses to protect us from stress caused by negative thoughts and feelings).

Every day of our lives, we encounter a certain degree of uncertainty, and defense mechanisms activate in the face of unknown situations. Our minds try to spare us the feeling that we are in a strange situation. By interpreting the current situation on the basis of the information we gained from past experiences, we end up unconsciously trying to explain everything in the present through past experiences, all so that we avoid feeling that we are in an unknown situation.

But often, our past experiences and traumas are irrelevant to what is happening with us in the present. So this defense mechanism is more harmful to us and the people we love than it is helpful.

If you want to put this advice into practice, here are some questions to answer when you're feeling stressed and having painful flashbacks:

• What view do I dictate to myself now by linking the past to the present?
• Is what I tell myself definitely true or am I wrong?
• How do I feel and how do I act when I think this way?
• What feelings and things would I see and experience if I abandoned this view?

Do your best to dismiss this perspective; focus deeply on the present moment; don't just look at it superficially; and be precise in your remarks without preconceived notions. As we said before, it's about adopting a better mindset so you can live a better life.

3. Stop interpreting events negatively

Replacing your negative mindset with a positive one does not mean that you get rid of all your negative thoughts and perspectives; it is almost impossible. Negative thinking usually arises automatically and in an uncontrollable way. It also does not mean turning your negative thoughts and views into positive and wrong ones as well.

It means actively reshaping your negative thoughts and views. You become fully grounded in reality, free from unnecessary exaggeration, and focused only on the next positive step you can take in the moment.

To get started in an effective way, evaluate your ideas and get rid of the negative meanings that you give to stressful situations, for example:

3.1. You are waiting for someone

they’re late, so you say to yourself, "They must not be interested in meeting me," when they’re actually stuck in traffic.

3.2. You perform a task

but you're having a hard time, saying to yourself, "If I can't do that, then I'm not smart enough," when all you actually need is some practice.

3.3. You take some medical examinations

but the doctor is late in notifying you of the result, so you say to yourself, “The doctor did not tell me the result, so the result is bad,” when in reality the lab is just overcrowded and busy, so your result is not ready yet.

Creating negative meanings and interpretations like this based on your narrow expectations only leads to adopting frustrating delusions. We do not mean that you should refrain from expecting anything from yourself or others, such as honesty, diligence, etc. Just make sure that the patterns governing your expectations don't subconsciously lead you to irrational negativity.

Remember that negative thinking prevents us from observing and experiencing positive and neutral outcomes in life, even when it happens to us, much like having an obstacle prevents us from seeing anything but information that confirms our negative biases.

So do your best to notice and eliminate these negative patterns of thinking. Being able to distinguish between negativity that is not based on reality and what is actually happening is a very important step in living a happier life.

4. Let go of what you cannot change

One of the most important moments in your life is when you find enough courage and determination to let go of the things you cannot change.

When you are faced with a situation that you cannot change, the challenge is your ability to change yourself—that is, to take advantage of this situation as an opportunity for self-development—and this changes everything.

Of course, when we are facing a difficult time, there is a natural tendency for us as humans to stick to our attitudes, extrapolating the future on the basis that it will be similar to this current negative situation, but what happens is that our expectations are wrong more often when we are going through a difficult time than they are when we are going through good times.

We all experience this condition when we gradually begin to feel sad after we were so happy, and the reason is that we do not cling to moments of happiness as much as we cling to suffering, depression, and fear. In the latter case, we assume that the future will be similar to our present situation, with its negative consequences.

Our negative expectations come true as long as we are unable to move beyond our painful past, the offense, and what we went through. The reason is that you will look at your future based on your past and will never be able to get rid of your unrealistic judgments, and you will continue to justify and feed your wrong negative view.

Be sure that this advice does not mean reluctantly telling yourself, “Everything will get better with time” or “Time solves everything." You need to put in much more effort than just hoping that the future will be better in order to recover and move forward.

You need to focus on the present so that you know where to go through the actions you are taking, in the sense that how you think of the past is not the only thing that matters; rather, you need to make a decisive decision to move forward, drawing on your experiences.

Note that most people make their lives miserable because they are unable to accept life for what it is. So don't make this mistake and give up your need to control people and outcomes. Of course, that doesn't mean you should care about anything but yourself; simply accept the fact that you control nothing but yourself.

5. Stick to positive daily habits

About a decade ago, when I focused heavily on weightlifting and fitness, I gradually learned that you can't be completely dedicated to any goal if your mindset is trying to avoid any uncomfortable situation.

To get rid of this problem, I wrote two simple questions in the form of two notes, one of which I hung on the bathroom mirror and the other inside the gym locker, and this is what I wrote:

• How many daily exercises did you miss because you were convinced you were tired, even though you weren't?
• How many times did you skip the rest of the exercise? Because you are bored or do not have enough patience?

If we ask these two questions to all people who practice sports, we will realize through the answers that we rarely find someone who adheres to the daily habits that help them achieve their dream. Weak will is the main reason for failure to achieve goals, especially when things get tough; the only way to get rid of this weakness is daily practice.

Too often, we think that inner strength has to do with how we respond to very difficult circumstances. There is no doubt that extremely difficult circumstances test our inner courage, determination, and strength, but what about normal everyday circumstances?

The will to stick to daily habits is just like muscles; you need training to get stronger, and you need to work hard to develop the ability to commit over time because if you do not commit to doing simple actions daily, you will inevitably fail in the face of difficult and exceptional circumstances. If you want some practical examples, here are the following:

• When you feel like going to sleep, go to the gym, and stick to completing the whole workout when you feel like stopping.
• Decide to put all your effort into a task until you get a perfect result when it is tempting to accept a mediocre result.
• When it is easier to remain seated in a business meeting, gather your courage and ask the question that is on your mind.

These little things make you trust yourself and your ability to stick to your goal. Strong will emerges from most small daily successes, and we all need that kind of strength. But it comes with effort, and if you want to gain that strength, you have to stick to daily habits.

It is your daily positive habits that strengthen your resolve and push you forward towards your long-term goals.