Why Your Mindset Matters Now
Winning each day's battle is vital to your success since you can only control what you're doing in the present moment. When you have hope in the future, you have power and purpose in the present. Maintaining positivity, hope for your future, and cultivating lasting relationships is vital for your thriving in life.
By Carter Thompson — August 29, 2022
We've all heard the adage "Rome wasn't built in a day," which is a fitting testament to the fact that it takes time to cultivate greatness. However, the Romans laid bricks every hour, and everyone accumulated this intentional and quality work to build the great Roman Empire that stood for over a millennium. Winning each day's battle is vital to your success since you can only control what you're doing in the present moment. When you have hope in the future, you have power and purpose in the present. Maintaining positivity, hope for your future, and cultivating lasting relationships is vital for your thriving in life.
You can first change your mindset from negative to positive, from scarcity to abundance, from disconnected to grateful. A positive outlook on life elevates your mood, lifts others around you, and allows everyone to work towards innovative solutions. Default positive thinking even changes the chemical connections your brain makes for everything you do in life. The stress hormone cortisol decreases when you think positively and feel happy or optimistic, and the brain also produces the happy hormone serotonin. Serotonin creates feelings of well-being, happiness, calm, lower anxiety, more focus, and more emotional stability (Whitaker).
Neutral thoughts, or stating the concrete facts of a situation without bias, are not inherently wrong because recognizing the problems and variables at hand allows you to make educated decisions for the next step forward. Even negative thoughts are necessary to enable us to evaluate our life with its ups and downs to experience true satisfaction and have a balanced human experience (Myers). It's vital to recognize and feel the continuum of our emotions to their fullest depth. Constant positivity has its risks, but there's a difference between feeling and dwelling in a negative mental state. Some may say a negative bias (motivation to complete a task to avoid a loss versus to gain something) trains others to perform with better results and is very effective in work environments (The Decision Lab).
However, it seems that's about as far as the benefits of negativity reach, and constantly living in this mental state of scarcity and ungratefulness will significantly inhibit your ability to enjoy your life to the fullest. Negativity forces you to analyze your position in life. It drags you and others down as well. Switching your default to gratitude and looking at the positive will improve your life experience.
Once you're looking on the bright side of things, you can cultivate hope for the future. Hope is vital for your mental health in all aspects of your life. When you lose your hope for a better future, you lose your power to fight in the present for the future and life you desire to cultivate. It's easy to get caught up in saying "I'm good" or "getting by" through the storms of life each day. If this becomes your lifestyle—satisfying the minimum requirements—then you may find yourself looking back on past years and decades of your life and wondering where your life went and what you even accomplished.
The ebb and flow between storms of life and peaceful moments in your life will always be there. These storms come in all strengths and durations, but the storms will always pass. There will always be stormy moments followed by peaceful moments, and this seems like a very gloomy forecast for life, but absorbing this truth will give you lots of strength to fight at the moment. You'll have more passion and grit to overcome life's challenges since you know that the intensities of the storms of life cannot last forever, and peace is on the horizon. Do not lose hope for a better future. Otherwise, you will lose your power to fight in the present for your beautiful life on this earth that is 100% worth living! However, it all starts now because that's all you can control, and cultivating greatness is a choice.
Focusing and improving yourself is fantastic, but that can only get you so far. An African Proverb says, "If we stand tall, it is because we stand on the shoulders of many ancestors" (Leung-Tat). So, no matter who you are, many people in your life came before you, cared for you, and loved you. It's because of these people that you are granted a life that even has a chance of success. Recognize the people who came before you and support you through the fruits of their labor. Take a moment to thank them, whether that's a call, text, memorial visit—if you're lucky enough, a hug or handshake. Also, surround yourself with people who accept you for who you are, who make you laugh, and who bring out your most authentic and greatest self. Enjoy your time with these people, and make it a point to hold space for them as you catch up. After all, you are "30 times more likely to laugh if we are with others than if we are alone," says cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott, and laughter is a beautiful thing (Scott).
Take a moment to acknowledge how you felt when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Did you have hope for the future in the middle of 2020? Where was your motivation as a result? Was all news bad news to you? This is what it's like to live without hope for the future. It left many without any purpose during the quarantine days. Realizing the value in the present and working to be the person today that you want to be tomorrow cultivates a beautiful life that you enjoy every day. After all, what was the journey for if you don't stop and smell the roses along the way?
Works Cited
Leung-Tat, Amir. "Calling Our Ancestors." The People's Heart,
www.thepeoplesheart.org/ubuntu/calling-our-ancestors/ . Accessed 23 Aug. 2022.
Myers, Joe. "Why Negative Thoughts Are Actually Good for Well-Being." World
World Economic Forum, 30 Mar. 2016,www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/why-negative-thoughts-are-good-for-well-being/. Accessed 23 Aug. 2022.
Scott, Sophie. "Why We Laugh." TED, TED Conferences, 2015,
www.ted.com/talks/sophie_scott_why_we_laugh?language=en . Accessed 23 Aug. 2022.
Whitaker, Lou, Dr. "How Does Thinking Positive Thoughts Affect Neuroplasticity?"
Meteor Education, www.meteoreducation.com/how-does-thinking-positive-thoughts-affect-neuroplasticity . Accessed 23 Aug. 2022.
"Why Is the News Always so Depressing? The Negativity Bias, Explained." The Decision
Lab, www.thedecisionlab.com/biases/negativity-bias . Accessed 23 Aug. 2022.
Carter Thompson
Carter is currently seeking his undergraduate degree in Exercise Science under the Pre-Physical Therapy Program at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He will go on to complete his Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree at an accredited university with the end goal of applying industry-leading recovery treatments as a Physical Therapist for either Division I or professional athletic teams.
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