One of my biggest focusses since the start of the pandemic particularly has been on wellbeing. For myself and for my children. At least once a month, I am planning a series of posts with activities to support wellbeing, resilience, mindfulness and a host of other skills to improve or support wellbeing. Some of my previous posts also come into the realms of this, for example Wildlife Yoga or the Slow Nature Sunday posts.
This week I want to start exploring positive thinking. Positive thinking is a powerful tool that can
- help to improve your health,
- help you to to manage stress,
- help you to overcome challenges
- help you to make better choices.
By challenging your thinking you can control your emotions and actions and improve your overall mindset.
Often the first thing when we look at positive thinking is positive self talk. (Also called silencing the the itty bitty s****y committee) Or silencing those voices in your head that tell you you can’t manage something or that something is out of your reach. In some cases people refer to the thought, “You are what you think.” If you subscribe to this then if you continually think of negative thoughts, then you bring negativity into you life. The reverse is true if you think positively then you invite positive things in.
By beginning to think more positively everyone can learn to believe in themselves and work towards their own potential. When we verbally affirm our dreams and goals we are rewiring our brains towards positivity. Positive affirmations have been shown to raise the levels of feel good hormones and support the making of new positive neuron clusters in our brains.
I have created a downloadable set of affirmation cards to support positive thinking which are downloadable here for free. The first step in developing resilient mindful children.
You can use these, yourselves or with your children or even create your own or have the children create their own. Use things that resonate with you and the children.
There are also a number of packs and extension packs in the weekly theme packs to support kindness and mindfulness.
It is also important to remember we are our children’s inner voice. How we speak to them is how they will learn to speak to themselves. By us learning to be more positive in our self talk, this will naturally pass on to our children.