How can we keep our spirits up, even when stress and doubts creep into our daily lives? It’s not always easy to avoid being contaminated by the negativity around us. So how do you keep smiling? Here are 10 tips you can apply.

1 – Stay away from negative information to keep your spirits up

We don’t always realize it, but we spend a lot of our time listening to negative information, both on TV and on social networks.

Yes, we spend hours posting and posting, with no control over what we see. And, unfortunately, most of the information conveyed in the media and on social networks is negative. Indeed, the news highlights the problems, differences and suffering of the world and of others.

And that’s where we lose our smile, because by dint of seeing only that, we end up believing that the world is like that.

So, to keep our spirits up, we urgently need to stop allowing ourselves to be contaminated by negative information. How can we do this?

We have to stop feeding ourselves with information.

You don’t have to keep abreast of everything that’s bad.

In fact, you have to take care of yourself and your happiness. So feed yourself with good information, messages and images that make you feel good.

2 – Getting away from negative people

Just as we don’t realize that we spend too much time watching and listening to negative information in the media and on social networks, we don’t realize that we lose a lot of our morale by listening to negative people.

At work, at family gatherings, among our friends or neighbors. In fact, negative people are everywhere.

How can you recognize them? Observe yourself after every moment you spend with people: do you feel good or stressed?

If you feel good, then the person you’ve been chatting to is good for you. And the opposite is true. In fact, if you feel stressed, chances are that the person you’ve just been chatting with is negative.

So how do you get away from negative people and keep your spirits up?

By avoiding them as much as possible, by trying to shorten conversations when they become too negative, and by taking time out after each conversation to breathe and feed yourself with positive thoughts to balance things out.

3 – Get away from your own negative thoughts

We’ve just talked about what’s going on outside us, but we’re even less aware of what’s going on inside us. In fact, we have a lot of negative thoughts, a lot of judgments and harsh criticisms of ourselves and our daily lives.

We don’t hear them, because we’re busy all day and so we don’t pay attention to what’s being said in our minds. But an unconscious part of us hears all this negative talk and that’s why we regularly feel sad, depressed, without knowing why.

It’s our own negative thoughts going round and round.

So how can we keep our spirits up and get away from our negative thoughts?

The first step is to take a little time each day to sit with ourselves and be silent. In this way, you’ll hear the thoughts of the moment that are going round and round. Are they positive? Are they negative?

Then take a little time to put positive thoughts, the ones you like. Either they’re in response to the negative thoughts of the moment.

For example, if you’re saying to yourself right now “I’m terrible”, your positive thought could be “I’m intelligent, creative…”.

Indeed, if we let our mind do its little routine, we lock ourselves into negative thoughts. So make it a habit to feed your mind with positive thoughts every day.

4 – How can we keep our spirits up? By talking to each other better

On a daily basis, we have negative thoughts about ourselves, but we also have harsh words for ourselves.

It’s enough to hear ourselves every time we make a mistake, so we say to ourselves, “I’m stupid, silly…”

How can we keep our spirits up?

So, to put a smile back on our faces, we need to make the decision to talk to each other properly, at all times. In other words, even when we make mistakes.

Pay attention to the way you talk to yourself. Because if you say hurtful things to yourself, how do you expect to keep your spirits up?

After all, do you really believe that you’re here on Earth, that you’ve been given this gift to criticize yourself so harshly?

Remember, you’re here to respect and love yourself with all your heart.

5 – Nurture your hope

It’s not always easy to keep our spirits up when we’re surrounded by information that invites us, on the contrary, to despair.

So don’t rely too much on others and on the outside world to put a smile on your face.

In fact, it’s essential that you take charge of your life and learn to nurture your hope.

But, in practical terms, how do you keep your spirits up and nurture your hope?

It’s a decision you have to make every day. So, when you wake up in the morning, set the intention: Today, my mission is to be happy. Then, all day long, you’ll keep looking for reasons to be happy.

In other words, change the way you look at things: rather than looking for reasons to be afraid and harbour doubts, look for reasons to be happy and nourish your hope.

6 – How can I keep my spirits up? By cultivating gratitude

How can you keep your spirits up and smile again?

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I wholeheartedly invite you to cultivate gratitude, day after day. To do this, every day, take a little time to breathe calmly and list 3 – 5 or 10 things that, in the moment, make you want to say thank you. Thank you to life, thank you to someone in particular.

Too often, our attention is focused on all the reasons why things aren’t going so well in our lives. Yes, we think about it more easily and even talk about it more easily.

Yes, it’s as if talking about what makes us happy is taboo.

So, when you’re alone, take a moment to rebalance your tendency towards the negative and see only the positive!

Because keeping your spirits up means realizing that, yes, maybe not everything in your life is rosy, but it’s not all doom and gloom either.

7 – Taking care of yourself

How can we keep our spirits up on a daily basis if we’re running around all over the place? Yes, how can we keep smiling if we end our days stressed and exhausted?

In fact, we’re forgetting something fundamental in our lives: we’re human beings.

In fact, we live as if we were machines, and every day we try to complete as many tasks as possible in as little time as possible.

Yes, we forget that we have a body, a mind and a soul to take care of.

So I wholeheartedly invite you to refocus on yourself: how does your body feel? How are your mind and soul feeling?

Do they need care, time, rest, food, positive thoughts, reassurance?

In other words, to keep your spirits up and smiling, remember that you’re a human being, not a machine. So take good care of yourself.

8 – Experiment with new things

When our days are all the same, our mood becomes increasingly gloomy. Indeed, our soul needs to have fun to feel joy and make our body lighter.

But when nothing in our day sparks our interest, curiosity or joy, how can we keep smiling?

So I wholeheartedly invite you to start a new habit: doing something new every week.

The only criterion is how much joy it brings you.

After all, we’re not talking about doing something new to enhance your resume or to be like everyone else so you can talk about it at your next family dinner.

This new experience is all about you.

So, what have you been wanting to experiment with for some time now?

If you don’t know, ask the child you used to be: what did you like to do as a child? What did you dream of doing as a child?

Remember, keeping our spirits up is also about taking care of our joie de vivre. So allow yourself to have fun.

9 – How can I keep my spirits up? By making it your goal

If I ask you right now what your goal is, you’re likely to say something other than: my goal is to be happy.

In fact, we think more in terms of the “outside world”: getting a promotion, moving house, meeting someone…

In the end, our attention is totally focused on the outside, and we forget our inner selves.

And yet, our morale doesn’t depend on what’s going on outside us, but on what’s going on inside us.

But we forget.

So, when you ask yourself: “How do I keep my spirits up?”, come back to yourself. What’s going on inside you? What thoughts are going round and round?

You know, aiming to be happy isn’t shameful or selfish; it’s human, necessary, vital even.

It’s human, necessary, even vital. So stop losing yourself in a whole bunch of goals that won’t even necessarily lead you to happiness, and make your happiness your one and only goal.

So, how do we keep our spirits up? By making our morale and our smile our priority every day!

10 – Persevere

There are days with and days without. It’s perfectly normal. So, just because today is a bad day doesn’t mean tomorrow will be.

And just because today’s an off day doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. It just happens. You can’t control everything. Life always throws a wrench in the works.

So stick with it. Yes, every time your spirits dip or your smile disappears, persevere.

And remember, tomorrow is another day.

Find out more:

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover How to stop being sad: 5 ways to stop sadness and smile
Discover How to combat sadness? 6 tips for bringing joy into your life

I recommend this inspiring book:

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin embarks on a journey to find joy in everyday life. Through a series of experiences and reflections, she shares practical ideas on how to create a more stimulating and fulfilling family environment. The book provides us with concrete strategies for keeping our spirits up by encouraging positive habits, embracing simplicity and finding happiness in the small moments of everyday life.

I love her writing style and she has constantly made me rethink my happiness, my home and my life.
I love her candor and honesty and feel like she writes with a total truth that hooks you.
Thank you very much for reading this article.

If you liked it, let me know in the comments.

Take care of yourself