As you have learned from previous articles on the subject – and if you are following along with our Positive Thinking Challenge – thinking positively every day has many benefits. It helps with your emotional and physical health, from improving your daily life and relieving stress, to actually helping with your physical health and wellbeing.

If you want to learn how to think more positively every day, here are some tips to get started.

Have More Confidence in Your Own Abilities

More often than not, a lot of your negative thoughts are related to fears you have about your own abilities, and not at all rational. Are a lot of your negative thoughts during the day related to how you think you are failing, or in ways you don’t think you will ever succeed? These are the thoughts that are related to your own self-confidence. Start acting with confidence, understanding your best skills, and really playing them up. Focus on your best abilities and qualities, instead of becoming drowned in the skills you think you don’t have.

Act with Intention

It is also important that you act with intention, which will also help you to reframe your thoughts into more positive ones. When you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it, it automatically gives you more confidence about what you can accomplish. This is going to help you feel good about yourself and what you got done, which alone helps a lot with your positive attitude throughout the day.

Find Your Triggers for Negative Thinking

When you have days where it is difficult to get past certain negative thoughts, try to find reasons for those thoughts. Was it from an unexpected event? Do you have an anxiety disorder that leads to irrational fears? Is there someone in your life causing these negative thoughts? What influence does the news or social media have on your mindset?

These and many other things can be triggers for your negative thinking. When you find triggers, you are able to better to handle those situations, so that you can avoid them and hopefully develop a more positive mindset.

Look for the Humor

Sometimes, bad things happen in your life that create a negative narrative, and you just have to laugh it off. When your car breaks down on the way to work, or you have an embarrassing moment you can’t stop thinking about, just move on, understand you can’t take it back, and laugh it out.