How Reflecting on the Positives Can Improve our Lives | JGS Insurance 

How Reflecting on the Positives Can Improve our Lives

By Ross Rutman, Assistant Vice President – Habitational Group

If life can seem pretty hard at times, that’s because it is. However, although the negative things can start to tally up, most of us have good things in our lives. Although the good cannot simply undo the bad, taking some time to reflect on the positive things in our lives can help us derive some pleasure from knowing that there is good in the world. This process of engaging with the positive can have positive psychological effects.

A Sense of Positivity Can Put Our Problems in Perspective

Most bad things that happen to us probably won’t have a silver lining, and if they do, it will probably be with the benefit of hindsight. However, many of the problems that we’re facing today are problems that we will overcome and look back on with a sense of achievement. We survived because we were strong enough to get through it. Whatever we are facing, viewing it in the context of our whole lives helps us realize that however bad it seems, it isn’t going to go on forever. It also allows us to think pragmatically about how we’re going to make life better in the future.

Positivity and Gratitude Can Make Us Nicer to People

When we feel like we deserve more than what we have and that we’ve constantly been let down by people around us, it becomes very easy to indiscriminately take that out on the people that we encounter. However, no one person is an island. Remember what you have and be grateful to the people around you who supported you and made the good things in your life possible. This makes it a lot easier to be nice to the people that you have to deal with and to treat them with kindness.

Positivity and Gratitude Make Us Happier

If we feel cheated by the world or let down by people, most of the time this is going to keep us down in the dumps. Even when good things happen, we will often be comparing them to fictional alternatives where things go according to plan. Rather, keep in mind the things in our lives that make us happy as this will put us in a much happier state most of the time.