Wellbeing News
Glass half full, or half empty?
I hope this finds everyone well recovering from exam week, and settling into the season of winter.
In this Wellbeing column, I’d like to ask the age old question; Is your glass half-full or half-empty?
If you decide to read this article, I’d really like you to answer this question to yourself first.
Positive Thinking and Self-Talk:
Positive thinking does not mean that you stick your head in the sand and ignore the sometimes unpleasant reality around you. Rather, it means you approach the unpleasantness of life in a more positive and productive way. You expect the best of a bad situation rather than the worst.
Positive thinking often starts with self-talk, that endless chatter of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These thoughts can be positive or negative. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, you're more likely to feel pessimistic. If they're mostly positive, you're more likely to feel optimistic. Our thought life directly impacts how we feel.
Why bother with positive thinking in this bleak old world? (yes, I intentionally made that question feel negative).
Well, you'll not only likely live longer, your quality of life will likely be much better too. Researchers have discovered a range of benefits to positive thinking, including:
- Lower rates of depression
- Lower levels of distress and pain
- Greater resistance to illnesses
- Better psychological and physical well-being
- Better coping skills during hardships
- Increased life span
How can you identify negative thinking? If it's been your default in life for a really long time, this can be hard to do. Here are some tips for what feeds negative thinking:
Filtering: You magnify the negative and ignore the positive.
Personalising: Automatically blaming yourself.
Catastrophising: Expecting the worst to happen.
Blaming: Looking to blame others.
Perfectionism: Setting unrealisitic standards for yourself.
Now that you've identified it, how can you change it?
Well, it takes time, but it can be done by creating new habits and in the process you'll be creating new, neural pathways in your brain that will eventually become your new, "default."
Here are some simple suggestions for doing that:
Identify areas to change: Choose a part of your life that you are always negative about and start to identify the positives.
Think before you react: When something triggers a negative response in you, stop, reflect and ask yourself why you feel this way.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness."
Viktor Frankl.
Regular Exercise: Research has demonstrated a very clear link between exercise and positive thinking and reduced stress.
Positive Peeps: Spend time with positive, optimistic people.
Practice Positive Self-Talk: Don't say anything to yourself that you would say to another person directly. Imagine if you had a friend that spoke to you the way you speak to yourself? You'd drop that friendship like a hot potato in no time at all.
Anyways, I hope you all have a tremendous ‘post exam’ week and please don't forget to take good care of yourself and be kind and generous towards yourself. As Brene Brown would say, "speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love."
Wellbeing can be contacted at JMSS on george.vlamakis@jmss.vic.edu.au
~ George Vlamakis (Head of Wellbeing)
george.vlamakis@jmss.vic.edu.au