A few years ago, I was taking a continuing ed course by Dan Tomosulo on Positive Psychology. He talked about how on average it takes 5 “positive” thoughts to counteract one “negative” one. FIVE!
The amount of negative in the world right now is so overwhelming it seems impossible to come up with enough positives to outweigh it all.
I talked with my partner about this to try to brainstorm ways to bring more positivity into our lives. We came up with a positive bedtime routine that has grown over the years and has had a huge impact. It's something we both look forward to ending our day with and we’ve even started to incorporate it into our bedtime routine with our kiddo. I want to share it with you all. I hope it will help bring more positivity into your lives too.
Compliments: We each give ourselves 3 compliments and give 3 compliments to everyone else. At first this was super tough. We all struggled a bit with hearing compliments from others and struggled with giving compliments to ourselves even more. As time went on we started looking for things during the day that we could say during compliments that night. This little bit of extra mindfulness throughout the day helped us feel excited for our accomplishments and pay more attention to them.
Grateful: We each say something we are grateful for. It can be anything from a good meal to good friends to something silly that happened during the day.
Looking forward to: Something coming up in the future that we are looking forward to. Sometimes we are looking forward to something specific and sometimes we are just looking forward to a new day together.
Glad: We use glad as a chance to reframe something kind of icky or stressful. For example; “I’m glad I had to do a bunch of laundry today because now I have clean clothes.” “I’m glad things are tough right now, because I’m learning how strong I am.”
Body Love: We each pick a part of our body that we like and a part of everyone else’s body that we like and then say why. “I love my tummy because it's a comfy place for my loved ones to rest their head when we are snuggling.”
Gratitude to you: We take the time to notice something each person is doing for themselves and say we are glad they are taking time to care for themselves. “I have gratitude that you are going to therapy and working on yourself.”
Gratitude to the universe: We take the time to thank the universe (you can thank whoever your higher power is) for something we’ve been blessed with.
Excited: This is another reframe, something we are not really looking forward to but want to shift into excitement. “I’m excited to get my car inspected because that's one thing off the to-do list.”
Believe: Something we hope for for the future. “I believe that one day I will get my doctorate and make an impact in my community.
I know this seems like a lot of things. Feel free to take what works for you and tweak it. If you have more ideas on things to do, I’d love to hear them! We all need more positivity in our lives as we step in to the new year!
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