By Bonnie Knox, LCPC, CADC

 A Series on Upgrading Your Mental Health!

Our expert therapists and leadership have shared some of their most effective tips on how to upgrade and prioritize your general well-being. Integrating any of these tips into your daily life will take intentionality, practice and patience. Creating a new habit or routine begins by making a commitment and then persevering. Often, it’s one step forward and one step back. Focus on progress and not perfection. The benefit is worth the effort!

Bonnie Knox is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor. She enjoys working with adolescents, adults, and families who seek treatment for mood disorders, anxiety, substance abuse, grief, and/or trauma work.

There are things you can do to feel more optimistic, so start here. Optimism is an attitude characterized by hope. It helps you feel like positive things will happen and things can change for the better. Some benefits are that optimists are healthier, more resilient, and hopeful, as well as not as stressed when bad things happen and are better able to keep their emotions in check. Here are 5 ways to achieve a more optimistic attitude:

1. Try therapy. Therapy guided by a mental health professional can help reframe how you think about challenging situations and feel more hopeful about the future.
2. Practice meditation. Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which thoughts are focused on the present moment rather than the past or future, which can help cultivate positive feelings.
3. Try gratitude. Gratitude can be a gateway to optimism, helping you to see the good things you have now, which can help you expect more good things in the future.
4. Imagine your best possible self. When you take time to imagine things in your life going as well as they possibly can, it can be easier to feel optimistic. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California in Berkeley offers a tutorial on how to try this evidence-based activity.
5. Act like an optimist. One key to optimism’s positive effects is actually what you do, not what you believe. That means you don’t have to ‘be’ optimistic, you have to ‘do’ optimistic.” You can “do optimistic,” for instance, by trying a little longer to solve a problem or opting to view a situation from multiple perspectives or more positive perspectives than you may normally do.

Learn more about Bonnie Knox here.