It goes without saying that cultivating and promoting optimism are core values at Nice News: Beyond brightening up your inbox, positivity plays a significant role in well-being. The benefits of positive thinking range from improved cardiovascular health to better coping skills and more. And in additional uplifting news, it’s 100% possible to foster an optimistic outlook, even for those who tend toward a “glass half-empty” way of thinking. By consistently practicing science-backed exercises and techniques, anyone can make positive thinking a habit and shift their perspective for the better.
Most of us have at some point been plagued by negative self-talk. Unfortunately, for many people, that critical inner monologue actually interferes with happiness on a daily basis. Per the Mayo Clinic, examples of negative self-talk include catastrophizing minor incidents, filtering out the good and focusing on the bad, and ruminating on things you should have done.
Thankfully, there are several practical ways to combat our inner critics. One of them is by imagining that the person saying or experiencing those negative thoughts is your best friend or family member, and responding to yourself the way you would to them.
“We’re talking about using the same kind and gentle language and approaches that we do with the other people we love in our lives with ourselves,” clinical psychologist Joy Harden Bradford explained to NPR. “Because we’re also people that we hopefully love, right?”
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves,” writer Victor Hugo declared, joining the ranks of generations of great thinkers who have espoused the virtues of this all-important emotion. Yet what, exactly, is love?
Trying to define love is no easy task, as it can take many forms, and everyone experiences it differently. Plato said, “‘Love’ is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.” The ancient Greeks even had different words to describe the many expressions of love, including storge, the love or natural affection for family; ludus, the flirtatious, playful love of youth; philia, the platonic love between friends; philautia, the love of self; eros, a sensual and passionate love of romance; pragma, a mature, enduring love; and agape, an unconditional, divine love.
Artists, philosophers, and psychologists from time immemorial have found different ways to describe the experience of love. In writing about her love for actor Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn said, “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything.” But no matter what we call it, love — in all its many forms of expression — is a fundamental human emotion that connects us all and reminds us that we are not alone.