Most of our discomfort and anger comes from focusing on problems.
If you have a bad day, you are facing a lot of difficulty it is easy to get pulled down, hard to motivate yourself to do anything.
What often happens is that you end up staring at the wall (or television) and hope (pray) that the problem will go away.
It almost never does.
Focus on the solution
A solution is innately positive. It gives you back the control over your life and lets you resolve the troubles.
By looking for solutions and opportunities in every situation problems will evaporate and you will start to feel happier and happier.
How to change your mindset
Most of us have trouble focusing on solutions. I used to say that I needed to "define" the problem to be able to solve it, my mistake was that I focused too much energy on thinking about my troubles and was emotionally wasted when it came to finding solutions.
By not going in depth into the problem and instead start thinking about how you can use the situation you will save yourself a lot of negative emotion.
These 3 steps are what helped me turn my mindset around and become a more positive person.
1. Breathe and relax, tell yourself that you are responsible for the situation
By telling yourself that you are responsible, that you got yourself into the situation and that if nothing else you are responsible for your own response you will be able to calm down.
This is a lot easier said than done, but by getting mad about the situation won't help, it will only serve to tire you out.
2. Visualize your ideal outcome.
Close your eyes and visualize what you want to happen. Often we get angry at a situation and want it to go away, without knowing exactly what we want to happen. All that we achieve is that we go around angry or sad for hours, even days.
Visualize what you want to happen so that you know what you are striving after.
3. Start trying to find a solution, what could you do to make the solution better.
Once you know what you ideal outcome is, start thinking about ways to get from you are now to that solution.
By following these three steps you can neutralize the negative feelings and start working on solutions to the problems that might make you sad or angry.
Action Exercise
Resolve to become a solution oriented person. Make the decision to face every situation as positive, it is a chance to learn, to improve and to use to further your success.
Follow the three steps above and you will see your life change before you. You will become a more positive person and will have a lot more energy to go after your goals.