Build a positive mindset: 8 tips you need to know
I have a unique view on building a positive mindset because, as you’ll read in the steps below, I never force myself to be positive when I don’t feel that way.
Instead, I drop in and work on the mental / emotional / spiritual levels until positive thoughts naturally arise.
Nurturing positive, healing thoughts is important, but the truth is that when we are fully aligned with who we really are and connected to our souls, positive thinking is natural and not something you have to consciously do.
Unhealed painful emotions often lurk beneath negative thoughts, and these painful emotions make it difficult to believe empowering things.
It’s important to take the time to do deeper inner work through journaling to understand yourself, identify limiting beliefs and release painful emotions before changing your thoughts to something more positive.
The intention of Soul Scroll Journals is to help you do this deeper inner work. This creates space to get clear on exactly what you want and connect to the faith that you can create it.
With that, here are eight tips for building a positive mindset so you can achieve your goals.
In the moment:
1. Become aware of your thoughts and create space for them to exist.
Most of the day, we think thoughts — mostly the exact same thoughts all day long — but we're not consciously aware of what they are.
“I feel so stuck.”
“I don’t know what I want / how to achieve my goals.”
“WTF am I even doing with my life?”
These thoughts become such a running dialogue we don’t even know they’re there. Yet they become our reality because focusing on them creates no space for anything else.
Only by becoming aware of your thoughts can you change them.
This allows you to consciously select a positive mindset aligning with the person you want to be, and become that person.
The Listen to Your Heart guided journal helps you rewrite the story you’re telling yourself around what’s wrong with your life and why you don’t have what you want.
With a more positive mindset, you’re free to create this new life.
2. Assess the thought.
Is this something you truly believe, or a random, silly thought to brush away?
You can tell by the amount of emotion attached to it. Does this thought feel painful and true? Or does it feel silly, almost like — Woah! I wonder where that came from?
If it feels random or not attached to a deeper emotion, simply remind yourself of what you’d rather think, and move on with your day.
If the thought is connected to a deeper sense of emotional pain, if it feels really true, or it’s something that’s been bothering you for quite some time, then continue on with the next step.
3. Get curious about the thought.
One of the principles I teach more in-depth in a course called The Big Shift is called the Divide and Conquer strategy.
This is about separating your thoughts from your feelings to deal with each independently. Because while thoughts and feelings are intertwined, they are in fact two separate things, and easier dealt with separately.
To get curious about your thoughts, ask where they come from. Why are you thinking this thought? Is it true?
There’s more to this process I’ll get to in a moment, but using negative thoughts as a way to understand yourself more deeply is a great way to reclaim your power.
This also helps you approach the work of building a positive mindset within the frame that you are good enough.
It’s not like you need to have a positive mindset to be happy enough or good enough so people love you and you get what you want.
You get to have a positive mindset because it reflects the truth of who you really are — an infinite being with infinite potential.
You are stardust sandwiched in skin. Any thought that tells you otherwise is a lie!
Each beautiful daily reading inside the Listen to Your Heart guided journal helps you identify old stories creating patterns of anxiety, sadness and defeat.
I'm really good at articulating all the layers that feel like jumbled confusion inside your mind so you can make sense of them and find peace.
The journal also guides you through the next step.
4. Connect to a new thought.
This is perhaps the most obvious step to building a positive mindset, but it’s actually the frosting on the cake!
Once you’ve done the deeper work to create a strong foundation, this part is natural and easy.
Without doing the deeper inner work however, you will fight your thoughts, resist them, and judge yourself for having them, which ultimately makes it harder to build a positive mindset - and achieve your goals.
That's why these next steps are important.
Important ongoing work to build a positive mindset:
5. Have a daily spiritual practice.
Joy, peace and confidence directly relate to your connection with your soul and spirit.
The more spiritual energy you fill yourself with, the more you focus your attention on what’s infinitely good and true in the world and in yourself, the more naturally a positive mindset will arise.
We started this conversation by talking about the unhealed emotion lying in your energy body that creates negative thinking.
As you fill your body with spiritual healing energy, it releases repressed emotional pain from your body.
This is a very important part of the process. It doesn’t matter what you believe in — God / gods / angels / Universe.
What is important is that you connect to the energy of all that is daily, allowing it to uplift and guide you.
Plus having a daily practice helps you create that all-important awareness to begin noticing negative thoughts of defeat rather than identifying with them.
Glasses, not contacts. (Even though glasses do not make me look cute.)
6. Work to understand the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what you're afraid of, and how life works.
As you do this inner work through practices like journaling, you will understand the sources of your negativity with compassion.
This allows you to build a positive mindset while loving yourself along the way rather than fighting negative thoughts, feeling like they make you less worthy.
This can in itself be a healing, but other times, it’s a start. An experience of creating awareness.
The Listen to Your Heart guided journal guides you through this process step by step.
7. Pre-select positive, empowering beliefs that reflect where you’re going.
You’re busy, running around all day doing a million things. You don’t always have time to stop, drop and journal or sit for a moment in self-inquiry.
That’s exactly why having a game plan is important.
A game plan of not only which thoughts you’re trying to change, but what thoughts your new, more positive mindset includes.
That's why in the Listen to Your Heart guided journal, you'll spend a lot of time choosing new thoughts and stories so when old, negative thoughts rise up, you know exactly what to tell yourself instead.
This allow you to shift out of negative thoughts and painful emotions much more quickly not only because you're prepared with the positive, but also because you've processed your feelings through writing them down.
This creates space for a new, more positive mindset to grow!
Then, as you go about your day, simply notice the negative thoughts and replace with those you’ve already selected as new beliefs to take on.
8. Love yourself the whole way.
You are a human being in process. The more you can love and accept yourself even when you feel sad, depressed, angry or negative, the faster these emotional states will shift and you will return to a state of peace and harmony.
Release any pressure you feel to be positive.
The universe won’t punish you for being human and having a human experience. It’s okay to feel pain.
Of course you want to be happy, and it’s true that it’s much easier to attract good things into your life when you are in a grateful, joyous state, but the way to create that state is to love yourself unconditionally.
That means love yourself no matter how you feel, what you’re thinking, or what’s happening in your life.
Love yourself, don’t judge yourself!
This is the best way to create a positive mindset, build a life that makes you happy, and realize all your biggest goals and dreams in this life!
Ready to transform your mindset? Check out Listen to Your Heart guided journal here.
All the love,
Suzanne Heyn
Founder, Soul Scroll Journals
