How to Stay Positive at Work

As schedules become hectic and workloads grow heavier, many employees are finding it difficult to stay positive at work. There are many different factors that influence your energy and mindset at work which can make challenging to stay positive. And while it may not seem like such a big deal, allowing yourself to drop in a negative spiral has many effects on your performance and growth.

Many workers agree that most of the stress and negativity that influence their mentality comes from the workplace. When you have worked a while and your role requires you to take on more responsibilities, you will eventually find yourself go from that enthusiastic employee who always looks forward to another day at work, to the exhausted worker who is more excited to clock out than anything else. When you find yourself in this phase and you let it take over, you will start to feel more exhausted at work, thinking that it’s the job that’s draining you. This then becomes a cycle that causes most workers to jump from one job to another every so often, that they end up depriving themselves of many chances to grow and become more successful. This kind of thinking can give off negative energy in your work environment, leaving plenty of other people feeling the same way.

Work is not always fun. There will be good and exciting days, then there will be more boring and sometimes upsetting days, but that does not mean you have to hate what you do for a living. It is possible to have a career that you are not 100% passionate about but still be successful. Keeping yourself positive at work gives many benefits that will not only further your career, but also other areas of your life. Here’s a list of some tips to help you adopt a more positive mindset at work and begin living a less stressful life!

Start your day right

Staying positive at work begins before you actually start working. Those first few minutes after you open your eyes from a night’s sleep are crucial because it determines most of what your day would be like. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed puts you in a bad mood and can throw off your whole day, and this is something that research has proven many times in the past.

Starting your day and making sure you are in a good mood will help you adopt a positive mindset, will give you a head start in reaching your full potential, instead of complaining and ranting about how horrible your morning was. Making sure you come into work with a positive energy which also allows you to help your colleagues begin their workdays with positive mindsets. While it is impossible to change the way people think, it is possible to influence it with the energy that you give out.

Wake up each morning aiming to achieve positivity within the first hour by making sure you are in a better headspace. Whether it’s a perfect coffee, a scrumptious breakfast, a breath of fresh air, your morning jog, or simply those sweet tunes you just added to your playlist – make sure that you find something that makes you genuinely happy and add it to your routine to make your mornings a step happier.

Be grateful

Gratitude works wonders on people and their personalities. When you focus on what you have and become grateful for it, you have no room for negativity in your life. This is often referred to as the Abundance Mindset in many books and studies. Focusing your energy on cherishing what you have instead of thinking that you do not have enough, will lift your mood and make your tasks at work a lot easier.

Keep yourself positive at work by being thankful for the little things – including the fact that you are employed. Many people take their jobs for granted and always want more, making themselves feel miserable because they are not where they want to be yet. Growth takes time, and with a negative mindset, it takes much longer. Take things one step at a time and be thankful for each step of the way. Finding things to be grateful for at work will help you appreciate your situation and allow you to block out any negativity coming from your workplace. It will also boost your performance and help you reach your goals faster.

Job crafting

Job crafting is when you make small changes to how you work to increase positivity. These small changes mean changing the way you approach your job to help you achieve your goals more efficiently. This is a strategy that you can use to make your job more interesting and turn it into something that would work best for you.

Figure out how to make your tasks more interesting by incorporating things that you enjoy doing. Let’s say you are working a desk job, and you enjoy expressing your artistic side. Do not let those documents and spreadsheets get the best of you – add a pop of colour to your spreadsheets, organize your files along with visuals, and ask your boss for more creative tasks to help you keep that positive mindset at work. Doing what you are required to, in ways that you want to do them, will definitely boost your confidence and your mood at work.

Filter the people you hang with

As humans, it is in our nature to build relationships and group ourselves for survival. This begins at school and is often carried on in our workplaces. You will always find yourself mixing with a specific circle of people, based on many factors. These factors include age, position, lifestyle, educational background, and much more.

To keep a healthy and positive mindset at work, you must learn to filter the people you spend time with. Toxic people will have no intentions to help you succeed and will only cloud your mood with all the negative energy they bring to the workplace. Surround yourself with people who have the same goals as you and are dedicated to keeping themselves happy at work too. This way, you will be able to feed off each other’s energy, blocking off negative vibes, and having more time to focus on your success.

SMILE!

Smiling, though cliché, helps you adopt a positive mood more than anything else. Smiling helps you feel calmer during stressful situations as it can trick your body by activating and releasing mood-boosting neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. So, yes, even if you are flashing a fake smile, it still helps you feel better.

Aside from that, smiling also helps to avoid looking tired and worn down, making you feel a lot better about yourself. When you feel better about yourself, you become more confident in what you do. This increases your performance at work, helping you achieve greater results in shorter periods of time.

In time, you would also feel better overall when you get the hang of smiling a lot. It boosts your immune system because when you are smiling, you become more relaxed and your body functions better than when you are not. It is also very contagious, and as you keep yourself positive at work, you will also want your colleagues to share the feeling to create a happier environment.