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To me, being fit isn’t just about the physical aspect of having a toned body or being in a “normal” weight range. To me, fitness is related to overall health. I don’t think a person is truly “fit” until they’re pretty well balanced physically, mentally and emotionally. Having a positive mental attitude is the key to enriching all areas of your life. The tough part? Staying positive.

Negativity always finds a way to creep in doesn’t it? It’s all over the news, it’s in our Facebook feeds, it’s all around us. So what on earth can we do to avoid it? Well, I don’t think it can be avoided completely but there are some things you can do to lessen the impact and even remove some of the negativity that’s in your life.

Tighten your circle. I think we all have those friends or family members who just don’t have a positive bone in their body. They’re the ones who point out the negative things in everything or are always like “woe is me”. While I understand that we all go through things in life that can be devastating, there comes a time when you just need to move on for the sake of your own health and happiness.

• Delete Facebook friends who always post negative things or whose posts bring you down.
• Don’t want to delete them? Then hide their posts. You can always go check out their profile at any time if you want to.

Realize happiness comes from within. It took me a long time to realize that happiness really does come from within. Happiness doesn’t come from having “things” or by simply making a lot of money. Sure, there’s some excitement anytime you get something new but that newness will wear off and you can’t just keep buying stuff – though some people try! Of course having enough money to live comfortably can definitely provide some peace, but I firmly believe that money can’t buy true happiness.

Also, we all have bad things happen to us from time to time that we just have to work through and move past. Deal with the bad things head on, right away and move on. Burying the hurt doesn’t solve anything. It just makes it more difficult to be happy. It sounds so cliche’ but life really is too short to be anything but happy.

You deserve happiness. You can’t find happiness, you have to create it.

Work on personal development. Personal development is crucial to keeping a positive mental attitude. Personal development builds up your own personal value which will make you more valuable in other areas of life. If your mind is right you can tackle anything you want to. So many people fail to lose weight because they just aren’t in the right mindset yet. I promise you that if you work on your personal development, your brain fog will start to clear and you’ll realize what you need to buckle down on to reach your personal goals.

Some ideas? Listening to a few minutes of audio or reading a few pages of a personal development book each day. You can listen to audio while you fold laundry or while you’re in the car or you could take a few minutes to read before falling asleep each night. I started doing this every day thanks to the encouragement of doing so by Beachbody. It really does make a huge difference in your attitude and overall outlook on life (for the better).

Create goals. Creating goals and meeting them gives us a sense of accomplishment that makes us feel good about ourselves. Goals also help to push us to accomplish more than we would otherwise and shouldn’t we want the best for ourselves? Shouldn’t we work to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be? You can do that by first thinking about what you want to accomplish.

Goal Setting Simplified:

1. Write goals down.
2. Create several plans/ways to reach each individual goal.
3. Work those plans!

Workout regularly. Working out won’t solve all of life’s problems, but it really makes a big impact – in a great way. I came off of anti-depressants after suffering from clinical depression for 10 years. I realize this won’t work for everyone and I’m not “prescribing” it but I can guarantee that exercising regularly – whether it’s walking, lifting, jogging, swimming or dancing in your living room – will help improve the way you feel about yourself on the inside and on the outside. Consistency is key though. You won’t meet your physical fitness goals without consistency so you can’t expect to exercise once a week and feel better about everything.

Hang around like-minded people. If you want to be more positive, spend most of your time with positive people. You’d be amazed how quickly that can begin to rub off on you. The same thing goes for negative people though. If you’re surrounded by negative people, then the negativity is gonna be hard to get away from.

Forgive. Forgiveness is about you, not the other person. To me, true forgiveness is about releasing the anger and other negative feelings that you feel so that YOU can move on with YOUR life.

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” – Oprah Winfrey

JUST A BIT MORE INSPIRATION…

 When in doubt, SMILE. It’s contagious!