Steps to a Happy Life (conclusion)

Steps to a Happy Life with Positive Attitude

Parting Words on the Positive Attitude Habit

When you start feeling like the idea of being a positive person is daunting, tell yourself this: “If someone who really used to struggle with a negative attitude, turned her life around with these five steps, then I can too!”

If anyone had told me a few years ago that I would be writing an article about developing a positive attitude and living a happy life, I would have laughed right in their face. I would have said, “Why in the world would someone want me to write about positivity?”

But here I am, writing this post, believing in these words, and knowing that every single day I am getting closer and closer to living the happy life I’ve secretly dreamed of living. If I can do it, you can do it. Believe in yourself and remember the most important lesson of all… a positive outlook is a choice. Choose to be positive. Choose to be happy. Life is short.

 

 

Steps to a Happy Life (part 4)

Steps to a Happy Life with Positive Attitude

Step 4: Reinforce Positivity in Yourself

Once I started thinking more positively and adapted to a more positive attitude, I realized I had to reinforce these thoughts and behaviors in myself so they would stick. As with any sort of training, practice makes perfect, and, yes, you can practice being positive.

The best and easiest way to do this is to be positive when it comes to who you are. Tell yourself you’re awesome. Tell yourself you look good. Tell yourself that you love and accept yourself completely. Tell yourself you did an awesome job at work or raising your kids or whatever it is you do.

 

 

Be honest with yourself, but do your best to look for the good. And, whatever you do, don’t focus on the negative. Nothing good can come of telling yourself that your butt’s too big or your latest career goal wasn’t met.

It’s okay to not like everything about yourself (yet), but don’t spend energy dwelling on the negative. Remind yourself of the good in you. We all have positive attributes and it’s up to you to remind yourself of them every day.

Steps to a Happy Life (part 3)

Steps to a Happy Life with Positive Attitude

Step 3: Look For the Positive in Life
There is the positive aspect in everything. In every person, in every situation, there is something good. Most of the time it’s not all that obvious. We have to look. And sometimes we have to look hard.

The old me just sat back and allowed things to happen by default. If I saw negative, I went with that feeling. I didn’t want to look harder or think too much about the good. I found it much, much easier to sit back and just accept what I saw.

Now, when I’m faced with a difficult or challenging situation, I think to myself, “What is good about this?” No matter how terrible the situation might seem, I always can find something good if I take the time to think about it. Cancer diagnosis? Leads you to appreciate life more fully. Disaster? Look at all the people that run to aid the ones impacted –- people care.

Everything –- good and bad -– is a learning experience. So, at the very least, you can learn from bad experiences. However, there’s usually even more to it than that. If you really take the time to look, you will usually find something good, something really positive, about every person or situation.

Steps to a Happy Life (part 2)

Steps to a Happy Life with Positive Attitude

Step 2: Rid Your Life of Negativity

If you want to live a positive, joyful and happy life, you cannot –- absolutely CANNOT -– be surrounded by negative people who are not encouraging your happiness. Negative people attract other negative people.

When I decided to make the change to live a more positive life, I had to rid my life of all of the negative people in it. This, as you can imagine, wasn’t easy. Getting rid of people hurts -– even when you know they aren’t good for you or your current lifestyle.

Not only did I have to get rid of the negative people, but I also had to get rid of the negative things too. I had to stop doing certain things that were causing negativity in my life. I had to take a step back and examine which behaviors were good for me and which were not.

I learned to focus on the positive things I was doing and let go of the negative ones. This process was not easy and to be honest, is still ongoing, but I know this: having negativity in your life prevents you from living a truly positive existence and from being truly happy.

The Value of Family Photos

I was talking to a lady the other day who had a very sad story to tell. Orphaned as a child, she had no photographs at all of her childhood. In later years, her ex-husband destroyed all of her photographs from her teenage and young adult years. As a photographer, this really brought home to me the value of family photographs, whether taken professionally or just casual family snapshots. I’m lucky in that we have a wealth of family photographs to look back on, but that isn’t always the case.

What concerns me in this digital age is that there are many more photographs taken than ever before, but most of them never see the light of day. They’re stored on computer hard drives or even left on the camera or phone, but we all know how fast technology goes out of date, and how quickly computers can fail without warning. Pictures can so easily be lost forever.

My advice is to back your pictures up!! Better still, get them printed – a hard copy is so much more stable!! And take heed of the story that started this blog – get multiple copies and distribute them round the family. One last word of advice – if you’re the family photographer, make sure that you get to be on some of the pictures too. They don’t have to be masterpieces, but why not supplement your own family snapshots by booking a professional family photo shoot once in a while. Family photographs are one of the few things that increase in value as time goes by.

I just thought I’d take this opportunity to share a couple of family shots from my own childhood….

Here is my Grandpa with my Mom when they were photographed for the newspaper, talking about the clocks they brought back from Germany:

 

This is me and my Grandpa at his house in Bells, Texas:

This is me and my Grandpa at my Great Grandma's funeral:

My Grandpa died many years ago. These photos help to bring back my memories of times spent with him. They also showcase the style of the time.

Call 214-789-7090 today to schedule your family for a session - Capture those memories before it's too late!