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The best and simplest way to start your journey towards a positive mindset is to start with the Practice of Gratitude.  Being grateful for what you have has the side effect of making you see your life in a different way, a more positive way, it allows you to see past your problems, your pain, your anger, and see the good in life. 

Gratitude will lead to feeling positive, which leads to confidence, and self-esteem.  They all go hand in hand, so if you want to truly be confident, with high self-esteem, then you do have to become a more positive person.  Otherwise, your mind will continue to see only the negative things in your life, how can you build confidence like that?

Gratitude makes you feel more positive and relaxed and happy. You see your life in a different way, it allows you to see past your problems, your pain, your anger, and see the good in life and in other people.

Also Read:

• 15 Ways the Practice Of Gratitude Made Me A Kinder, Better And More Likeable Person
• Why you should Practise Gratitude if you want to become more Positive and Confident
• My 10 Favourite Tricks For Becoming More Positive And Optimistic
• 13 Things I’ve learned About Self-Belief Being The Key To Success
• The Power of Positive Affirmations for Confidence and Self-esteem

See positivity, confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, mental health, it all goes hand in hand. You cannot really isolate any of them.

How do you feel gratitude everyday?

I suggest you get a little notebook you can keep in your bag, or by the side of your bed.  While it’s good to practise gratitude throughout the day, as a beginner I would start by simply writing down one thing you are grateful for before going to bed.  Although 5 things would be better. They can be anything. I have a little notebook I keep just for this purpose by my bedside. I am often grateful for small things, like having a roof over my head in winter, that I have a nice cosy bed with fluffy pillows, I have electricity for a night light, and that the train arrived today, even if it was late, to take me wherever I needed to go.  

Most days I make a note that I’m grateful for my good health. Even though I suffer terribly from hay fever, I am strong and healthy in every other way, I can climb up or down stairs, I can walk 10km, and I don’t have to take any medication for anything.  I have a great body that is beautiful to me, and that I love, it gets me where I need to go, all it asks is that I give it nutrition, exercise and rest, and that I love it.

Things that I am grateful for:

• My job.
• My boss, as much as we differ on things, he cares about my career and my success.
• My house, I’m proud that I managed to save up enough money for a deposit, it wasn’t easy but I did it.
• Trains, love them or hate them, they get me where I need to go with suitable efficiency.
• My family.  They are amazing and wonderful.
• My boyfriend, the love of my life, who lifts me up and supports me and makes me feel like the most amazing human being on the planet.
• My plants.
• My phone.  It allows me to carry maps, books, calendars, diaries, games, a phone, email, etc, all in one handy gadget.
• The sandwich I had for lunch, it was overpriced and mediocre but it gave me nutrition and my body feels better with it in my stomach.
• The napkin that came with the sandwich.  It kept my fingers and mouth clean so I didn’t get mayonnaise on my clothes.
• My brain and the ability to learn new things.
• My laptop, as it allowed me to type this book.
• Spring mornings and being able to go for a walk in the woods, or by the river, with birds chirping and insects buzzing.  Trees are growing and giving spring blossoms, squirrels are squirrelling away, and dogs out for a walk makes me wish I too was a dog so I too could be as excited about life as they are, they make me smile.
• The random kindness of a stranger that held the door open for me.

So you see, gratitude is easy once you look for the small things.  And it’s the small things that keep us in comfort, makes us feel positive and gives us peace of mind.

There are many people out there without a house of their own, or they have a house, but don’t have a comfy bed, or no bed perhaps. Before my mother had her two knee replacements, she could barely walk due to arthritis, so I’m grateful for the ability to run anywhere I want.

And yes, I’m not blind, I see that my train was late but instead of letting it annoy me I am still grateful it arrived at all, that there was a train to take me to my destination.  The alternative would have been to drive, which would have meant sitting in traffic for hours, which I really hate.  

Once you start listing the small things, even if you are repeating them over and over, that’s OK too.  Some days all I can say thank you for is my bed and my pillows, 5 days in a row.

The point is that you start with one thing and you write it down every night before going to sleep.  As you start listing more and more things, you’ll notice this puts you into a more positive frame of mind before bedtime, and you are less likely to lie there awake for hours, obsessing about every bad thing that has gone wrong in your life and could go wrong in your life for the next 50 years. Because let’s face, late at night, when we are alone and unable to sleep, when our mind is racing at a 100 miles an hour, that’s when we have all these terrible thoughts about the ifs, the coulds, the whys and hows, we over-analyse and we obsess and we grow more and more depressed until we’re lying alone in bed crying about how terrible life is and how awful a person we surely are.

The Practice of Gratitude before bed time is an excellent way to step outside that vicious circle of late night self-loathing.

During the day, I use the app Day One on my phone as a diary and to make notes, write down thoughts, and note down things I’m grateful for.  It’s free and available for iPhones and Android devices.

Gratitude is also one of the easiest, simplest and most powerful ways to get over a bad spell in your life, whether you are suffering from a long term illness, had a bad breakup with a partner of many years, or even suffered the death of a close loved one, practising gratitude for what you still have will make you feel so much better, and will help you through the bad times.  

Can gratitude change your life?

Gratitude makes me feel all warm and fuzzy in my chest, it brings me peace and allows me to relax and breathe and feel more positive no matter how sad or worried or anxious I might be.  When I can relax, when there is peace in my mind, it’s much easier to remind myself that yes, bad things happen to good people, but even bad times come to an end, and in the end I I will be OK.  

Knowing that things will be OK, that life has good things in it, makes me more resilient, I am better able to deal with life’s little dramas. Sometimes life can be overwhelming and we can feel like everything is going wrong, but when you can see the positives in life, it becomes easier.

What do I have to be grateful for?

Perhaps you think you have nothing to be grateful for, maybe you are ill or suffer from debilitating chronic pain.

Well you are wrong, you DO have plenty to be grateful for.  If you are reading this you are likely living in a Western country, you have an internet connection and a device to connect with, like a computer or phone.  You already have more than almost half the world’s 7 billion strong population.

Do you have a roof over your head? YaleGlobalOnline estimates that “Based on national reports, it’s estimated that no less than 150 million people, or about 2 percent of the world’s population, are homeless. However, about 1.6 billion, more than 20 percent of the world’s population, may lack adequate housing.”

Do you have food to eat?  WorldHunger.org says that the number of hungry people in the world is likely 815 million people.

“The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about 815 million people of the 7.6 billion people in the world, or 10.7%, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2016.”

Can you still walk?  Even slowly? Then be thankful, people with Cerebral Palsy can’t.

Do you still have eyes that can see, ears that can hear, fingers that can grip, even weakly.

Do not let bad times define you.  Bad things happen to good people all the time, it doesn’t make you a bad person, so don’t let it change who you are into someone you are not meant to be. Rise above it.  See the joy in life.

Living is the only thing you will do with your life, and you will do it for your entire life, so you might as well make the most of it.

So be grateful for the birds and the bees, the rain and the sunshine, a roof over your head in winter and the windows you can open in summer.  You have so much more than so many of the people on this planet already.  

If you cannot be grateful for what you have, then be grateful for you do NOT have.

I am grateful that:

• I am not homeless.
• I am not alone without friends or family.
• I am not unemployed
• I am not broke.
• I am not ill.
• I am not living in a war-torn country.
• I am not living in a country with a repressive regime or dictator.
• I am not living in North Korea.
• I have never been sexually molested or assaulted.
• I am not hungry.
• I am not blind.
• I am not deaf, or unable to speak.
• I am not illiterate.
• I am not persecuted for my religion.
• I am not forced to wear restrictive clothing or ask a male for permission to go anywhere or do anything.
• I am not in prison.
• I am not a criminal.
• I am not disabled, physically or mentally.
• I am not scarred or disfigured.
• No-one has ever beaten me or thrown acid on me.
• I have not been discriminated against based on my gender or race.
• With the odd exception, none of my loved ones has suffered any of the above.

So you see, I have so many great things to be grateful for. 

However, I would caution you to not think in such negative terms very often.  In fact, use it only once as an exercise to discover what you do have to be grateful for.  After that, please use positive terms in all your thoughts, actions and words. This is a book about positivity after all.