It’s a new year, and one of my main goals is to enter it with a smile and good vibes. I hope to leave toxicity in the past, and strive to be a happier, more positive, and better person this year than I was last year!

Here are five easy ways we can all be more positive this year.

1. Practice Gratitude

Practicing gratitude is like a muscle. The more you do it, the stronger it gets, and the better you feel. But the thing about it is that it’s not just about saying, “yeah I practice gratitude” because you did it a couple times. It’s just like working out, it’s all about maintenance and consistency. If you only do it a few times, the effects will fade away quickly. I recommend incorporating this 2-minute activity into your daily routine and writing down whatever number of things you feel comfortable with.

The reason it’s nice to write it down is that if you’re having a bad day, you can easily open up your journal and review the things you’ve written. Another reason is that it helps you think of new things. If you can see the past few days of things you’ve written, you’ll expand your gratitude horizon and come up with EVEN MORE to be grateful for! Easy peasy.

 It’s a fact that you can’t feel anxiety and gratitude at the same time. So whenever you feel anxious, it helps to refer back to your gratitude journal so you can refresh yourself and shift your perspective.

2. Be Present

With all of the technology nowadays and the fast-paced world we live in, it’s so easy for a day to go by in what feels like a blink of an eye. The best way to slow down time, is to try and be more present and in the moment. This is another thing that is a lot like a muscle. The more you practice, the easier it will become. It will also help you be more positive.

Some of my go-to ways to be more present are to not be on my phone when I am spending quality time with people. It’s funny how we say we miss each other, yet when we’re together we’re all on our phones paying attention to what everyone else is doing rather than soaking up the joy of our quality time with loved ones. The time always goes by too fast, put the phones away and just sit and be together!

Another great way to feel more present is to focus on your five senses. So, you sit where you’re at, and you take a few really deep breaths. This is good because oxygen helps your brain significantly. While sitting down, focus on what you hear, smell, taste, and feel. While looking around, notice the colors, shapes, textures, and lines in the things around you.

These are often the things we miss because we go through life way too fast to ever notice. When you stop and just try to soak up your surroundings and your feelings, you will find yourself feeling a lot more present and engaged in the moment.

3. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

For whatever reason, negative emotions seem a lot more attractive for us than positive ones, yet they are much more draining and toxic. Things like someone cutting you in line, or cutting you off on the road, or someone saying no to something are all so small in the grand scheme of things.

We tend to get so caught up in small BS that we actually try to label as “problems” when in reality, there are kids all around the world who are suffering and starving. There are violence and crime and warfare going on in the world, and we get so upset because we had to wait more than 5 minutes for a drink at Starbucks that we actually let it put us in a bad mood and affect our whole day.

When you realize how small these things are and you stop sweating them so much, you will find yourself a million times happier and less stressed. The more little things you find a problem with, the more unhappy you will be, 100% guaranteed.

The easiest way to do this is to use your feeling of negative emotion as a trigger to ask yourself, “Is this really that big of a deal?” and then deciding how you will react.  Another example of something that the more you do it, the easier it will become. Simply put, LET THAT SH** GO!

4. Love Your Body

What I mean by this is look in the mirror and try to get to the point where you genuinely love your body. You should love your body because it’s the only one you’ve got. I hear way too many people talk about how much they hate how they look because they’re fat, or have stretch marks, or have cellulite, or something else. This is heartbreaking. The body you have is the only one you’ll ever have, and it’s the one that got you to where you are today.

It’s important to have more grace with yourself and more love for yourself. Interestingly enough, the more you love your body, the more you’ll want to take care of it, and think twice before you put something toxic into it. Subconsciously, when we hate our body or think very low of it, it becomes a lot easier to abuse it and put bad things into it.

Eating healthy, exercising, maintaining, and loving your body is so important and so necessary to live an abundant and positive life.

If you’re into reading, check out the book Bare by Susan Hyatt. She talks all about how to love your body and how simply doing so can lead to weight loss and fuller living.

5. Have Fun

Listen to more music, watch more funny movies and videos. Loosen up and live a little. Life’s too short to be boring and uptight. Have some fun, be positive, tell a joke, allow yourself to feel JOY and smile every day!

Happiness breeds more happiness, and when you are the light, you will find yourself inspiring others around you to shed more light as well!