How to Live a Positive Life

1. Stop doing things that make you unhappy. Too often we spend time and energy doing things that make us. Too often we don't make the connection between what we’re doing and our unhappiness. Look at your life carefully. Are you doing things that make you unhappy? When you find yourself at your lowest points, is there anything you can pinpoint that has caused negativity to occur? When you take a close look, you’ll probably spot patterns you might have missed before. Determine the things that make you unhappy—and stop doing them.

2. Surround yourself with people who lift you up. Just like you must choose not to do things that make you unhappy, you must also choose not to be around negative people. Sadly, too many people surround themselves with individuals who don't bring them up. If people in your life are bringing you down—yes, even family members or significant others—you have to find a way to separate yourself from these people. If you want to live a truly positive life, you must be surrounded by positive influences. 

3. Learn how to love yourself. If you want to live a positive life, you must love who you are. The only way to go about learning to love yourself is to invest time in it. It might sound silly to some, but finding true love for yourself and really knowing what matters to you is essential for living a positive life. Before you can love anyone or anything else fully, you must first love yourself. Don't ever think about self-love or soul searching as a waste of time; the time you spend learning to love yourself is incredibly valuable.

4. Spend time doing what you love to do. Once you've rid your life of activities that make you unhappy, you'll suddenly have more free. What to do with that all that free time? Spend it doing what you absolutely love to do. Take a moment to think about the times you were the happiest. What were you doing during those times? It doesn't matter if it's a silly thing or something other people don't quite get. What matters is this: if something makes you genuinely happy, you should spend time doing it. A lot of time. 

5. Revise the way you look at the world. The way you see the world around you is a choice. You can choose to look for the good or you can choose to focus on the bad. It's completely up to you. Once you realize how much control you have over your perspective, you’ll see that it doesn’t make much sense to focus on the negative. Focusing on what’s going wrong only brings you down. Change your point of view and your whole life will change too. 

6. Open your mind to ideas of living a positive life. There are a lot of awesome people out there in the world living positive lives and, really, why shouldn't you consider their ideas of what it means to live a positive life? If someone has been successfully living a positive life, it's at least worth considering how he or she got to a place of positive. Every idea might not work for you, but having an open mind really helps lead to a positive life. 

7. Stop stressing about your past. Many of us spend way too much time thinking about, revisiting, and going backward to the past. Doing these things is pointless and painful and will only cause you (and others) a great deal of unhappiness. Hard as it is to admit sometimes, the past is over. Going back to it or fretting about it or beating yourself up over it does absolutely nothing. What's done is done. The sooner you learn from it and move on, the better. 

8. Don't seek happiness in things or people. Don’t look for positive outlets outside of yourself. Often when we’re feeling unhappy, we look outside ourselves for a solution, for a quick burst of happiness. It might be tempting to rely on other people for your happiness or turn to habits like shopping, eating, or drinking to quell your negative state of mind, but those outside things never do the trick. You must seek happiness and positivity within yourself. It really is the only way to truly live a positive life. 

9. Know you have the power to change your own life. Over and over again many of us think the worst two words: "I can't..." The second you let yourself think that way about changing your life, you're set up for failure. If you don't believe you can change your life, then it's going to be pretty hard to actually change it. Believing in yourself sounds so cliché, but there's a reason that concept has stuck around for so long. Without believing in your power, you'll paralyze yourself and living a positive life will be impossible.

10. Refuse to give up on what matters most. A lot of people look down on those trying to better their lives. Perhaps it is jealousy or fear or just plain ignorance, but for whatever reason, people may judge you for striving to be positive. People may criticize you or attempt to stand in your way. Don't let them. Don't let anyone or anything come between you and living the life you want to be living. Remember that, no matter what, this is your life. If you want to live it positively, don't let anyone or anything stand in your way. 

Living a positive life takes a lot of hard to work, especially if you're struggling with negativity. But know this: even if you do one thing on this list, your life will improve. And you owe it to yourself to at least try. If you want to live a positive life, do it. All of the work will be worth every ounce of effort you put in because nothing is better than loving the life you're living.