Guest Article by Todd Griffin

You may have been overlooking your mental health while doing nothing when a legitimate concern comes up. Unfortunately, living a life full of mental health concerns isn’t easy as it can drain you financially and lessen your chances of fulfilling any ambitions you may have for yourself. Thus, you should start taking care of your mental health as early as now while you’re still sane. To improve your mental health so that you can take on any challenge that life throws at you, here are some key tips on how you can harness the power of positivity for a better and healthier mind:

1. Try to find something good in any bad situation that you might experience in your life.

It’s completely normal to recognize how bad some situations in your life are. But if you focus only on the bad itself, you might end up having a pessimistic outlook later on which won’t do you any favors at all. Thus, even if you’re facing adversity, you should try to treat it not as a burden that might end up in failure but as a challenge that you can win. As the oft-quoted saying goes, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

2. Always hope for the best each day.

How you think your day would end up often affects how it turns out in reality. So if you think that something bad might happen to you on any given day, chances are it might happen for real because you’ve fed your mind with negative thoughts. What you can do instead is to feed your mind with more hopeful thoughts each day. Who knows, your day might turn out to be pleasantly good after all.

3. Engage in activities or hobbies that you haven’t done before.

Sometimes, you may have been getting too fixated on thinking negative thoughts as you don’t have any interests or pastimes that can help you out of your crippling anxiety or depression. Your mind would very much benefit from you taking the initiative to bring some thrill into your life with something you love to do. You should, therefore, start engaging in activities and hobbies that you haven’t tried doing or start to explore new ways of doing the things you once loved. Doing so can get your mind to ward off any negative thoughts you may have since you’re focused on trying to be good at what could be your new favorite things to do.

Conclusion

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study in 2014 wherein they divided their student subjects into two groups: an experimental group was instructed to think positively, and a control group told not to act upon their mental health problems. The experimental group became less prone to anxiety and depression after changing their mindset to a more positive one. You can do the same by following the above-listed key tips on how to improve your mental health with positivity. But if you feel like you can’t do it alone, you can contact a psychologist like TG Psychology who can teach you how to embrace positive thinking to improve your mental health.

Todd Griffin

Todd is the Director and Principal Psychologist at TG Psychology, in Penrith, NSW. He has over 14 years of experience working with adults and young people in both public health and private practice settings. He has treated people from diverse cultural backgrounds, with a variety of emotional health and behavioral issues, including: depression, anxiety, relationship issues, anger, addictions, trauma and grief. He has also facilitated a number of group programs, treating a wide range of issues: from quitting drugs, to social skills training, self-esteem development and deliberate self-harm behaviors.