It takes roughly 66 days to form a habit. So for the next 9 weeks look at the bright side of your life, and you will rewire your brain.

If the grass looks greener on the other side…

Stop staring.

Stop comparing.

Stop complaining.

And START watering the grass you’re standing on…

Truly, the most powerful weapon against stress on the average day is our ability to choose one thought or response over another. I was reminded of this today when a reader named Sarah sent me the following in an email (I’m sharing this with permission):

“I sat down with my two daughters, ages six and eight, this afternoon to explain to them that we have to move out of our four-bedroom house and into a two-bedroom apartment for a year or two until I can find another job and build our savings back up. It’s a conversation I’ve been avoiding for over a month, as I’ve struggled with the doubts and regrets of not being able to provide a financially stable household for us. But my daughters just looked at each other after I told them, and then my youngest daughter turned to me and asked, ‘Are we all moving into that apartment together?’ ‘Of course,’ I immediately replied. ‘Oh, so no big deal then,’ she said.”

Is that not the most mindful, optimistic response imaginable?

I hope it inspires you to train your mind to see the good in everything, even when it’s hard. The peace and happiness of your life in the long run heavily depends on the quality of your daily thoughts and responses. Optimism is your choice today. It’s not an inborn trait bestowed on a lucky few — it’s a skill that can be learned and honed. Let those two little girls be your guides, and allow this short read to fill in the gaps…

Since there’s no one-size-fits-all, step-by-step guide to being more optimistic, I’ve compiled a short list of habits that we’ve successfully implemented with our course students, coaching clients, and live event attendees over the past 15 years. Here are some key things they now do differently, often on a daily basis, that you can implement in your own life:

1. Optimists make optimal use of the available options.

Most people get irritated by those who seem “too optimistic,” but this is often just an unfortunate misinterpretation of the difference between an optimist and an idealist. An optimist is really just a positive realist who is neither naive, nor in denial, nor blind to the realities of life.

An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all the available options no matter how narrow the supply. As a result, optimistic people are able to better see the bigger picture. They can more accurately visualize and mange the present possibilities. For comparison’s sake: An idealist focuses only on the absolute best aspects of situations, a pessimist sees no positive possibilities at all, and an optimist strives to see all the possibilities so they can find the best possible option among them.

So when picking lemons off a lemon tree, an idealist reaches for the ripest looking lemon and expects it to be the tastiest, a pessimist settles for whichever one is closest, while an optimist picks all the lemons in sight and makes lemonade. (Note: Angel and I further discuss this habit of optimism in our New York Times bestseller, “Getting Back to Happy”.)

2. Optimists give themselves grace and acceptance.

As a child you impressed and inspired yourself on a daily basis. You ran, jumped, swung, sang, and danced openly without a care in the world — without worrying about what everyone else thought of you. You didn’t need anyone else’s constant approval, because deep down you knew you were amazing.

But as you grew into adulthood the pressure from peers, popular media, and society as a whole began to wear on you. You started comparing yourself to everyone around you. You judged and measured your body, your lifestyle, your career, and your relationships against other people’s lives. And when you realized that many of these people have things that you do not, bitterness set in and you gradually stopped appreciating all the great things you do have in your life.

Optimists defend themselves against this self-dislike in two primary ways. First, they get back to trusting their own intuition when it comes to their daily activities. They stop asking for everyone else’s approval and simply do what they know in their heart feels right. Second, optimists don’t judge themselves against a set of unrealistic, third-party ideals. They let go of the ideals and instead hold on to the belief that they are always good enough just the way they are, even as they grow into stronger, wiser versions of themselves.

3. Optimists disconnect contentment from long-term achievement.

In order to be optimistic you have to be generally content with your life. In order to find this contentment, you have to look within yourself. Happiness after all is mostly an inside job.

If you constantly look for happiness outside yourself, by tying it to a specific achievement you must reach for example, you have two big problems:

1. You may never succeed. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and absolutely needs to be fixed ASAP, but you continuously fall short of fixing it, you will start yourself on a downward spiral where every time you fail to fix it you feel even worse. Eventually you will be unable to succeed simply because you no longer believe in your ability to do so.
2. You may succeed and decide you want even more. – If you feel like something is wrong with you and absolutely needs to be fixed, and you succeed at fixing it, you will likely find something new about yourself that needs fixing too. Maybe you’ve lost 20 pounds, but now you want tighter abs. Maybe you’ve paid down your debt, but now you want a bank account with a million dollars in it. You get the idea. It’s a never-ending cycle for your entire life. You never reach it, because you’re always looking for happiness from external achievements. You don’t find the happiness from within so you look to other sources.

Optimists set boundaries and disconnect long-term achievement from daily contentment and happiness — they give themselves permission to enjoy each moment without the need for anything more. This isn’t to say that they are complacent. They still set goals, build habits, help others, and grow, but they learn to indulge joyously in the journey, not the destination.

4. Optimists keep good company (and become good company).

In the long run you are only as good as the company you keep, and misery loves company. So do yourself a favor and dodge other people’s negativity as often as you can. Remember that optimism is a learned habit and it is positively contagious. Surround yourself with positive, emotionally supportive friends and family — people who could infect you with their optimism, so you can then pay it forward…

How can you pay it forward?

Be kind and positive right now, right here, in your own life, in whatever way you can. Just be kind and positive. There’s so much going on that we cannot solve — so many people we can’t help. But your kindness and optimism can make a significant difference, in your own life above all, and in the lives you touch. (Note: Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the Relationships chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)

5. Optimists embrace life’s ups and downs.

Just because you’re an optimist doesn’t mean you’re not going to have bad days. You will have plenty of bad days, that’s reality. Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. A foundation of realism keeps things in perspective and helps prevent things from being blown out of proportion.

Expecting life to be wonderful all the time is wanting to swim in an ocean in which waves only rise up and never come crashing down. However, when you recognize that the rising and crashing waves are part of the exact same ocean, you are able to let go and be at peace with the reality of these ups and downs. It becomes clear that life’s ups require life’s downs.

Bottom line: Prepare for the downs but capitalize on the ups; the former makes you sensible and the latter makes you an optimist. (Read “Learned Optimism”.)

6. Optimists use positive language and gestures.

It’s not always what happens that determines your mood, but how you express what happens that counts. For instance, when an optimist experiences a bout of success she might say, “That’s just as I had anticipated; I studied hard and my diligence paid off,” while a pessimist might say, “Wow, was I lucky to get such a good grade on that test,” not giving herself any credit and literally snatching her own defeat from the hands of victory.

If an optimist encounters a do-it-yourself project she can’t figure out, she’s likely to say something like, “Either the instructions I’m following are unclear, or this project is going to require a bit more effort than I thought… or maybe I’m just having a rough moment here.” In other words, an optimist uses positive self-talk to keep the struggle outside herself (“the instructions”), specific (“more effort”), and temporary (“a rough moment”), while the pessimist would likely get down on herself and interpret the same struggle as internal, widespread, and everlasting.

Go ahead and follow in the optimist’s footsteps by speaking to yourself in a more positive way regardless of whether you succeed or fail, and you’ll gradually become more optimistic.

Physical body language is also important. Your smile actually influences your mood in a positive way. When you feel down, your brain tells your face that you’re sad, and your facial muscles respond by putting on a frown, which in turn conveys a message back to your brain that says, “Yep, we’re feeling unhappy.” On the average day (when nothing extreme is happening) you can flip the switch on this internal reaction by adjusting your facial muscles into a smile so they don’t correspond to what you’re feeling. This is a clever way of sending a different message back to your brain: “Hey, life is still pretty good and I’m doing OK.” And you’ll actually begin to feel a little better, gradually.

Now it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to declare this day a worthy one! So let’s start the rest of the day off right with renewed energy and an attitude that things will keep flourishing and getting better. Let’s be hopeful, optimistic, and focused on taking consistent positive action…

And before you go, please leave Angel and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay and it’s ideas for creating optimism. Your feedback is important to us.

Which one of the points above resonated the most today?

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston Churchill

Optimism.

It can turn a situation that looks negative or bleak into an opportunity or something to learn from.

It can replace the draining thoughts of pessimism with something that will create more positive energy and enthusiasm again.

And it can help you to jump over obstacles, to keep moving when you fall or stumble and to not give up just because you have had a couple of temporary setbacks.

So not just adding more of it to your own life but to the lives of the people in your world too is a good idea.

Because in the long run you tend to get what you give.

And in the short run, well, you get to enjoy the smiles when you create and spread that positivity. Plus, you’ll boost your own self-esteem when you feel you are doing the right thing.

Here are 10 simple tips that can help you to get started with that.

1. Play music with positive energy.

Uplifting music is of course a great way to boost your own mood and open up new perspectives again.

You can do the same for people around you. Put on a really positive song when you are hanging out. Or send them an uplifting playlist for Spotify or a similar service.

2. Just be there for someone.

Listen and lend the optimistic and grounded perspective to someone in your life in need of it.

At first I find it best to just the let other person vent, to let him or her get issue at hand out into the light. So I am just there fully and listening.

Oftentimes this might be enough. Because just being there will help him or her to let the emotional tension out and to analyze the issue and to find a solution or to let it go.

If she or he gets stuck in negative thinking or in making a mountain out of a molehill then it can be helpful to add your own perspective to ground him or her and to help shift perspective on the situation.

To make him or her see that if you zoom out then things aren’t that bad really. And together the two of you might be able to find a solution or a first step that he or she can put into action.

3. Take 30-60 seconds to give a genuine compliment.

Think about one thing that makes the other person tick. A small or bigger passion. Or something good that people too often take for granted about him or her.

And then give a compliment about that. It often means more than you might guess.

4. Smile.

A smile puts you and the people around you into a better and more relaxed headspace.

It works even when you don’t feel that much like smiling.

If you like, do a brief experiment. Force a smile for 30 seconds or a minute if you are feeling a bit negative and see what happens to your mood.

5. Hide a secret note.

Take 60 seconds out of your day to write and hide a note with a compliment. Or some encouraging words. Or make it a note of thankfulness.

Hide it under their pillow, in the lunch box or wallet or perhaps the book he or she is reading at this time.

6. Help someone to wind down.

Being busy with work or school can over time add a lot of tension and stress. And that can certainly get in the way of optimistic and constructive thinking.

So help someone in your life to wind down.

Suggest going for a picnic. Just have fun and perhaps go for swim in the nearby lake or ocean. Then lie together in silence on the blanket and watch the clouds go by for a while.

A break like this can do wonders for the mood and perspective for the both of you.

7. Cook or bring their favorite food.

If she’s having a bad day then cook her favorite meal. Or get her favorite takeout food.

Or maybe just a small treat, like a piece of the chocolate or the special cupcake she loves the most.

8. Hug.

A hug is, perhaps often even more than a smile, something that can make someone feel a little better and a bit safer again. Use it when appropriate of course.

But don’t underestimate the effect of it and how that little nudge can turn someone’s thoughts around towards something brighter and more positive again.

9. Share what you’ve found or made.

It could delicious fruit that you’ve picked. Or the jam, cookies or bread you made. Or fish you’ve smoked or the beef you made jerky out of.

Such a simple but loving gift can really mean a lot and add positive energy to someone’s whole week or month.

10. Pay it forward.

If someone in your life adds a bit of optimism and positive energy to your life then don’t just return it somewhere down the line.

Pay it forward to someone else too.

And together build a growing upward spiral of optimism, encouragement and kindness.