Illuminate Your Life With Joy and Wisdom

Joy is the cornerstone of optimism, warming hearts and propelling us toward a brighter tomorrow. Let compassion fuel your flame, with gratitude fanning its flame.

Sunny is a curious yet creative young boy who delights in dancing and finds sound in everything around him. Recently he decided to stop running because it became too tedious, becoming instead interested in discus throw.

The Power of Positive Thinking

Positive thinking is an incredible power that can help you build unshakeable resilience, lower stress levels, increase confidence and foster creativity – as well as being an invaluable aid to meeting personal goals.

Think positively and you will see challenges as opportunities rather than hurdles, while your positive mindset allows you to reframe problems as temporary setbacks that will eventually improve. Additionally, positive thinking enables you to recognize when negative thought patterns such as perfectionism or catastrophizing may be leading to self-defeating behaviors that ultimately sabotage you.

Positive thinking will encourage you to take more risks and to seize new opportunities, reducing stress levels, lowering blood pressure, and strengthening immunity systems. Positive thinking has even been proven to extend lifespan – this may be why those who think positively tend to experience lower rates of depression and anxiety, less cardiovascular disease risk factors, stronger resistance to colds and better ability to navigate life’s challenging moments (Cherry 2019A).

The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude may sound like an overused platitude, but its benefits are immense and undeniable. Practice of gratitude helps people refocus their energy on what they already possess instead of focussing on what is lacking, providing respite from negative emotions.

Practice gratitude can bring many health and self-esteem benefits. One study demonstrated this effect: people who regularly practiced gratitude had lower blood pressure. Furthermore, those who express their appreciation to others experience higher self-esteem levels and have greater patience than those who don’t express it publicly.

Gratitude can also help build resilience against hardship. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl was able to maintain gratitude and an optimistic outlook despite the horrors he experienced, knowing that even dark moments contain lessons and gifts for him to take from them. By practicing gratitude regularly, we can learn from our difficulties while increasing empathy toward ourselves and others.

The Power of Love

Love has the unique power to transform everything. From turning a hawk into a white dove, to inspiring someone to sing or even turning real death into Disney death; love is an incredible force which provides strength but can also bind and control.

This week, Sunny began writing in his journal again to help him process his feelings and thoughts. He wanted out of running for the Defenders because it makes him less himself; additionally he found new interest in dancing which was shared with his father but which wasn’t considered appropriate by either of them.

Ask yourself what love (or loving kindness) would do in this situation and then wait for answers to come flooding in – they might not come immediately but, with practice, you will eventually uncover them.

The Power of Optimism

Psychologists once believed optimism and pessimism were fixed personality traits that one either possessed or did not. Now it is believed that you can learn to become more optimistic.

This is particularly apparent when faced with challenges or difficulty. When things don’t go their way, optimists tend to take steps rather than complain or avoidance the issue altogether. They recognize what they can and cannot control; focusing their energy on changing what they can and accepting what can’t; thus decreasing stress levels and helping them move forward more easily.

To increase the chances of an optimistic outlook, surround yourself with people who support and encourage you. Tune into positive social media accounts/blogs/books that focus on inspiration; this will help release negative self-talk and experience more inner peace. Also try not taking other people’s actions personally – once you realize everyone has their own story and that life doesn’t exist to break you down, becoming resilient will become much simpler.