If you’re someone who is a pessimist it’s time to stop and be an optimist. Take it from someone who used to be negative, being positive makes a huge difference in your life. When you’re positive you have a better outlook on life, you’re happier, you’re healthier, and you’re able to handle difficult situations better. It can be challenging to be positive but, if you start to look at things in different ways your negative attitude will change.

When you’re negative you tend to dwell on the bad things in life, which leads to a downward spiral of negative thoughts. Eventually, these negative thoughts accumulate to making you believe that your entire life is worthless, and nothing enjoyable will happen in your life. Those thoughts aren’t true; it’s just how you see your life, and you have the ability to change your perception. I strongly believe that what is meant to happen will happen. This mindset helps me to stay positive because when something unfortunate happens, I just tell myself that it happened for a reason and something good will come. If you’re able to get past the bad things in life, you’ll have a more positive outlook on your life. Without the bad in life, there would be no good; since good and bad are subjective and relative, the bad is needed to make the good times better.

Being negative can add to your stress and anxiety which is harmful to your body. Working out, meditating, relaxing, and breathing exercises are all good ways of relieving stress and help you be more positive. Working out releases dopamine in your body, making you happier and less negative. Positivity helps you handle stress and anxiety better.

It’s pretty obvious that being positive makes you happier. You’ll have better self-esteem, be more ambitious, and be more inclined to not only set goals, but to achieve them. Only you can control your happiness, and that starts with a positive attitude. Negativity puts you in sad or angry moods, making it much more difficult to be happy. Being negative is constantly affecting your mood and how you feel about yourself; however, it affects those around you too. When you’re negative around others, your negativity rubs off on them and puts them in a negative mood as well. Same goes for being positive. Your positivity can affect others and put them in a better mood.

If you are positive, you’ll be able to handle negative situations better. Say you have a job interview and then don’t get the job. Instead of thinking of the negative, try to think of the positive: you were able to get an interview, which is a great learning opportunity and practice for your next one; and there were some people who didn’t land an interview. There is good in the bad, you just have to look for it.

If you can see and understand how being positive can change everything for the better, you have the ability to make the change. It can be hard to change a negative attitude, but if you just try to look at everything differently it’ll be easy to be positive.