1. Love yourself - understand and accept who you are, embrace your strengths and flaws, as well. Give yourself compliments and acknowledge your success every day. If you have negative thoughts - as everyone has - try to rationalize and find a more optimistic and realistic prospective. Stop being so judgmental and harsh on yourself.
2. Take care of your health - If you are kind to your body, you will feel better physically and mentally. Exercise, yoga, breathing exercises and mindfulness meditations are good tools. When our minds are clearer, we have more energy.
3. Be curious – A mind that is curious to know and do more is a positive mind. Curiosity is the motivation that makes people think in an optimistic way and fill their time with positive experiences.
4. Welcome change – analyse your situation and know when to move on. Some people become negative because they are not capable to see what should and could be changed easily.
5. Stop complaining – picking up from the previous point: stop complaining about your boss or colleagues, stop complaining that you are not happy at work and start to think of options that are available to you. When you have options there is no room for pessimism or desperation.
6. Choose people carefully – surround yourself with people that you love and that you care for and be kind to them. Spending time with negative people drags you into a negative place.
7. Do a simple time management course.
8. If you are a procrastinator, do the worst job first. Getting it out of the way will feel great.
9. Make a list and prioritise — this will bring focus to your day.
10. Be realistic. Set practical daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals and celebrate achieving them.
11. Put away your distractions (read: social media) and just get on with it. Then reward yourself for a task well done.
12. Don’t substiute caffeine for sleep. Get enough rest.
Credit: Dubai-based clinical psychologist Dr Valeria Risoli and Abu Dhabi-based life coach Lisa Laws
