Ironically, I was thinking about writing a post about beating Monday Morning Blues this morning (because I have Monday Morning Blues) 😓 and then I had technical problems so I couldn't start work. I work from home and need my landline to work, but the landline was just beeping the engaged tone at me, so my boss told me just to do some online courses. It's like fate came knocking at my door.😇

I ended up taking a short online course that was called 'Accentuate the Positive' and it definitely gave me some powerful food for thought on a stressful and blue Monday morning. It was all about the daily exercises that you can use to help develop life skills and beat negative habits to improve mental health.

The main two exercises it talked about were 'Positive Visualisation' and 'Affirmations'.

'Positive Visualisation' I thought was pretty interesting. It talked about the fact that 90% of the things we worry about, don't actually end up happening. To stop yourself from worrying about the worse case scenario, instead you should go into a dark room and play out the scenario in your head, focusing on the scenario going as well as possible, and then freeze framing at the end with the perfect outcome.

It also talked about how if you have a day that goes particularly badly, instead of worrying about all the things you should have done, just sit down and replay the situation and in your visualisation you should act the way you wish you had, and visualize the positive outcome. Then next time you are in a similar situation, you just remember the visualisation and the behaviour that led to the positive outcome, and try and implement that. You can't change what happened, but you can learn and change the future.

I had an argument with my partner yesterday, so I can definitely use the visualisation technique to replay the scenario with different behaviour that led to a positive outcome, and try and use that to help me in similar situations in the future.

Psychologist Susan Jeffers defines a positive affirmation as "a positive statement that something is already happening", so for example you can say things like "I am learning to behave responsibly", "I am loosing weight", "I am becoming a kinder and more loving partner".

I have actually heard about positive affirmations in the past, because my boss told me that she would recite things to herself in the mirror and while driving her car, to make herself believe the great things that she was saying about herself in order to have the confidence and command attention when she is in a meeting or at work. I remember thinking at the time that it was something that I should do, but as usual I forgot.

Today I will make the commitment to myself to write some positive affirmations, and put them on sticky notes on the desk and the mirror in my office. Other ideas for where you can place your positive affirmations once written are that you can leave them as a voicemail to yourself, you can also record yourself saying them and listen to them in the car, or while walking the dog. You can also try the movie classic of reciting them to yourself in the mirror: