Stress and negativity are killers. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could remove negativity and the sources of all the stress in our lives just melted away? Sometimes stress is inevitable, but removing negativity might be more simple than you think.
With just a few simple changes in your day, negativity can be just an occasional minor annoyance, as opposed to a ruling force surrounding us. Just 5 or 10 minutes throughout your day, can make ALL the difference in the world.
When it comes to stress it can leave you feeling as if you have no control over half of your life. And, in a way that is true. But, there are still ways to affect those negative aspects, such as how you choose to engage with them, and how you react to them. Here’s how to eliminate negativity from your life.
9 Ways To Remove Negativity From Your Life
1. Create healthy relationships
Relationships make the world go round, whether they are friends, family, romantic, or professional. It is incredibly important to create healthy, positive relationships.
You never know what someone else is going through and their energies can come off in ways that we perceive as negative. The most simple way to do create a healthy relationship is to not react to other people’s energies. You just simply need to be you, and be positive, and let whatever happens with others wash over you. You will naturally attract people with energies like yours.
2. Spend less time with toxic people
Remove negativity with less toxicity! This bit might be a little tricky. We all have a friend or family member that tends to be a bit of a challenge, but you love them anyway…you know what I mean?
While these people may be a big part of your life, it is important for your health to limit time and communication with someone who truly stresses you out. It could be as simple as not calling that person so often, or hiding their posts on social media. But sometimes it is also necessary to be as extreme to cut ties. Only you can know the answer to how to handle it, and it may take a few tries to find the answer.
3. Meditate
Spending even just 5 minutes in a nice quite space and mind frame can do amazing things to remove negativity from your life!! And, science has proven it!
When you meditate, you can spend focused energy on letting go of negative energy and feelings to create more space for the wonderfulness that is in your life.
Related: 9 Ways To De-Stress Your Life
4. Set Boundaries
Setting boundaries is going to be the best thing you can do in your life! This is a wonderful compromise for those that have certain toxic people in your life that it doesn’t make sense to say “bye bye” to…for instance a family member.
Family is particularly difficult. You love them, and genuinely want to be there for them, but maybe they whine about everything, or dump all their problems on you, or just don’t respect your space or rules. One or two times…maybe it’s excusable under a certain circumstance, but all the time isn’t acceptable at all.
With these people you need to stand up for what you want. Be firm, and tell them how you feel and what you think the solution is. Say it nicely and calmly but with no emotion (people react to emotion, because you really feel it)
For instance, because I see this at least once a month on my favorite mamas group, you have a grandparent coming over to visit a grandchild. Maybe you don’t raise your child the same way and with all the same rules that your parents raised you. Let’s say the Grandparent doesn’t respect that your rules aren’t the same as their rules. Now you feel disrespected and that your child isn’t as well off with rules that aren’t yours. Calmly explain why your rules are your rules, and that to not follow them is disrespectful.
What you may find is that, it most likely wasn’t their intention to be disrespectful, and they didn’t even realize they were doing it. Of course other, less desirable outcomes are possible, but sometimes that is the risk we take (and it is ok if it goes that way!!).
5. Learn To Say No
Learning to say no is a wonderful and beautiful thing. This follows in the footsteps of setting boundaries. People in general tend to take on too many tasks, which in turn can make us feel resentful and negative. When we fill in ALL our time with the extras and leave no time for ourselves, it’s difficult to keep a positive, healthy attitude.
6. Love the small things
It truly is the small things in life that create the most meaning. Tiny things in your day that are comforting and bring you joy.
You can use this trick as part of your daily meditation! Start at the beginning of the month. Every day, go through your day and find something small that brings you peace or joy. Pick something new ever day. By the time a month is over, You have 30 things that make you feel joyful.
When I first started this meditation about 10 years ago, one of mine at the time was enjoying my morning coffee while listening to my dog crunch on his food. I had a big beautiful Greyhound named Mike. He had such a big personality, that was oddly human-like, and even the way he ate his food reflected his personality. It’s something to this day that still makes my heart happy
7. Make yourself a priority/ Watch your self talk
No one can take care of you like you can. And, I know this is everywhere, but I’m going to say it too. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will either.
On the note of taking care of your self, this also includes your internal speech. How you talk to or about yourself. Do you make jokes about yourself, but sort of mean it when you say it? STOP THAT!
Stop calling yourself fat, or lazy, or a bad mom, or whatever it is that you say about yourself that is even remotely negative. Give yourself a break. Perfect doesn’t exist. We are all human, and somedays you just can’t do it all.
Check out this book by Masuru Emoto. He studies energy and how it affects water. He exposed water to energy and emotions such as anger, joy, love, sadness, etc. Froze the water and took pictures of the crystals. The results are mind blowing! One look at this book and you’ll never say ugly things to yourself again because the human body is primarily composed of water.
8. Exercise to remove negativity!
In the words of Elle Woods “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy!”
That’s probably the goofiest thing I can come up with for this example, but it’s the first thing that popped in my head. However, it’s true.
Endorphins do relieve stress and generally make you feel more happy and satisfied. If you’re not a workout-loving person, then maybe at the VERY least you don’t have guilt from not exercising (anyone else know someone that feels unnecessary guilt such as that?)
9. Spend time with the people you love
Filling your day with experiences that bring you joy is the key to suffocating negativity. Think of all your favorite people in your life and make a true effort to spend more quality time with them. If they don’t live close by then get on the phone, maybe even video chat, and catch up with them.
Negativity is sometimes unavoidable in life, and it will rule us if we don’t keep an eye on it. With just a few changes in our own behavior, even just 10 minutes a day of fixing small habits or redirecting energy, negative energy can become an occasional minor annoyance as opposed to a ruling force.
What would your life look like if you remove negativity in your live by at least half? What would that mean to you?