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A high stress level is detrimental to your physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Changing your attitude can help you to lower your stress level. A bad attitude is a recipe for a bad existence. You have to believe in yourself, and you have to be your own biggest cheerleader in order to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Here are three tips to changing your attitude and reducing your stress level:
#1: Change Your Internal Dialogue
That little voice inside your head can sometimes be your worst enemy. Often times, your stress level is the result of your negative internal dialogue. You keep telling yourself that you are unworthy of a job, or too unattractive to get a date, or that you’ll never be able to fit in that dream dress you’ve been eyeing in your favorite clothing catalogue. You let your negative thoughts overrun your life. Your negative internal dialogue can turn into your self-fulfilling prophecy. You may think that you cannot control the thoughts that you have, but in reality, with practice, you can master your thought process, and metaphorically turn your half-empty glass into a half-full glass. When you catch yourself having a negative thought, challenge it. For example, if you are saying to yourself, “I’ll never lose weight,” stop yourself, and deliberately change that negative to a positive: “I will be able to lose weight, and I’m beautiful as I am today.”
#2: Force Your Glass to be Half-Full
Optimism isn’t necessarily something you are born with – a pessimist can teach him or herself to be an optimist. This skill goes hand-in-hand with revamping your internal dialogue. The difference is that this practice involves the way you talk out loud about yourself when you are talking with others. You are afraid to be confident and to come across as arrogant in front of others, so you downplay your positive qualities and attributes. You put yourself down and you constantly apologize, even when you haven’t done anything to warrant your apologies. Believe it or not, people like confident people. You may be trying not to alienate other people by being assertive and self-assured, but your fears are without merit. Every time you catch yourself speaking about yourself in a negative way, write down what you said in a journal. Each day, review your negative statements. Challenge these statements. This exercise will help your attitude to change because it will increase your self-awareness of the problem.
#3: Get the Ball Rolling
Changing your attitude can absolutely reduce your stress level. However, changing your attitude can be a precarious challenge in and of itself. Often times, we feel anxiety and sadness because we have unfulfilled goals and aspirations – we’ve allowed our dreams to fall by the wayside. Start living your life the way you always dreamt of living it. I’m not saying you have to climb Mount Rushmore, go skydiving, write a novel, and learn how to juggle all within the week, but you should start – immediately – mapping out your goals. Put your goals into a prioritized list. Don’t start with the most “doable” item on your list either – start with the goal that is the most important to you, no matter how challenging it will be to accomplish the goal. Stop putting your life on hold, and start believing in the power of you!
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