In a mindful state , we can better retain information, listen, and be aware of, but not sabotaged by, distractions. This results in more enjoyment of life and better relationships and the ability to relate to others.

The ability to respond, not react. When we have more control over our automatic thoughts, we can choose to respond in a more rational and less emotive way. This improves our relationships and the way we think about the world and preserves more options in any environment.

Improved cognitive function. Better focus, processing speed, memory, concentration, time management, and communication have a positive impact, personally and professionally. Relationships improve as a result of remembering information about friends and family, important events, and being on time.

Increased positive emotions: optimism. With increased awareness comes the ability to notice and reframe thoughts in more helpful ways. Kinder thoughts and compassion shape optimistic mindsets that lead to more positive behavior.

More confidence. With optimism, our relationship with ourselves becomes stronger. Self-esteem and self-efficacy - the belief in our abilities - increase, and we may focus more on our strengths. Self-compassion and empathy increase as a result of practicing mindfulness. Ability to develop positive habits in all areas of life.

The need to form new, better-adapted habits never stops. Self-efficacy, mindfulness, and time management improve our ability to build habits. Improved sleep.

As with physical fitness, mental fitness also contributes to better quality sleep. Sign up to receive the latest content, resources, and tools. Subscribe Now.

Thank you for your interest in BetterUp. How can you exercise your brain? The mind and body are interconnected. Just as mindfulness can relax the muscles of the body, working out can relax the mind and relieve stress and tension. Eat and drink smart. Stay hydrated as your brain needs water for optimal cognitive functioning.

A variety of multi-colored fruits and vegetables daily supports optimal gut health and brain health. Meditate daily. Create a routine that works for you, and commit to it. Just fifteen minutes per day is enough to see significant changes over time. And like training a dog or working out, consistency is key.

If you're new to it, start with a beginners program on an app such as Tripp. Keep a gratitude journal. This can be as simple as a word document on your computer or a physical, hand-written notebook. Update it regularly and keep it visible.

Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" helps to develop more positive emotions and shift our thinking toward optimism. Many studies show a positive correlation between improved health and optimism. The mind really does have an impact on our health overall.

Make noticing new things part of your day. This can be as simple as setting a goal to notice three times when you have gone from sitting to standing throughout the day.

It's a lot harder than it sounds. We are mostly in our unconscious, or automatic mind when we are doing this action. Noticing trains your brain for increased mindfulness. Practice savoring. Savoring is an intervention from Applied Positive Psychology.

It involves slowing down during certain moments over a five-day period. These moments can include hugging a loved one, eating a meal, drinking a cup of coffee, the first breath of fresh air when stepping outside, or how good it feels to crawl into bed after a long day.

Practice noticing your thoughts. Reframe wherever possible. Ask yourself: Is this helpful? Is this kind? Practice body awareness. Sit with your eyes closed or softly focused for five minutes and scan your body.

Place your attention in each body part starting at the top of your head and working your way down to your toes.

Wherever you notice tension, focus and breath consciously until the tension is released. What does it want you to know? Train your attention to remain focused on specific points.

Remind your chimp. Keep a list of enabling thoughts new neural pathways that you would like to believe in a visible location, such as on a post-it note.

Here are some examples of what your life looks like when you are mentally fit: Setting healthy boundaries. You have comfortable boundaries between various parts of your life and within your relationships.

You naturally establish these and feel comfortable re-establishing boundaries when you notice something isn't working for you. Taking time for inner work.

You make a regular practice of getting in touch with your emotions and values and checking in on your goals and alignment with your values. Exploring new ideas and interests. You feel calm, open, and curious. Things that are new or unknown are energizing rather than threatening or exhausting.

Cultivating community. You are building and maintaining relationships that ground you in your values and help you challenge your thinking and beliefs. Community is both nurturing and supports your growth. Expanding your comfort zone. From a stable emotional and social foundation, you lean into growth and stretch yourself with new challenges.

You are resilient in failure and learn from it. Keep your mind engaged by reading, taking classes, exploring new interests, and challenging yourself with puzzles, crosswords, or memory-training exercises.

These activities can also elicit a sense of curiosity. One study found that memory performance was higher for topics that participants were more excited to engage with. Meditation and mindfulness focus on bringing awareness and attention to the present moment, allowing the meditator to observe thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.

Meditation is a relatively simple practice, but can be awkward at first. Practicing gratitude can take different forms, such as keeping a daily gratitude journal, expressing gratitude to others, or taking a moment each day to reflect on the positive aspects of life. Practicing gratitude can significantly benefit physical and psychological health.

What contributes to your sense of balance? Read about The 5 Pillars of a Balanced Life to see how they match your understanding of a balanced life. Topics: Well-Being. WesleyLife introduces enhanced mental-health focus. First CNA Mentors' Symposium Sets the Tone for Quality Care and Clinical Leadership.

Wesley Acres residents make a difference to neighborhood third-graders. The Neuroprotective Aspects of Sleep. MEDtube Sci. PMID: Abraham O, Schleiden L, Albert SM. Over-the-counter medications containing diphenhydramine and doxylamine used by older adults to improve sleep.

Int J Clin Pharm. Gray SL, Anderson ML, Dublin S, et al. Cumulative Use of Strong Anticholinergics and Incident Dementia: A Prospective Cohort Study. JAMA Intern Med.

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Oftentimes, when someone has low mental fitness, they may be unconsciously looking at the world through a filter of negativity, fear, worry or unworthiness, which can deeply impact their emotions, moods, and thoughts.

For example, if someone with low self-esteem receives a compliment, they may not believe or accept the compliment as true. This is why balancing your thoughts is a helpful tool to improve your mental fitness.

By balancing your thoughts, you can learn to see things in a different way by:. Starling Members recognize improvements in job engagement when they have skills to manage mental health conditions. Our digital CBT platform is proven to deliver outcomes for employees who experience the highest levels of workplace stress.

I wanted to be my best self again for myself, my family, and my co-workers but I had no idea where to start. Starling Minds has given me a daily practice to get my mental health in check. Learn more about our Mental Fitness Program and discover how to manage stress, anxiety, and depression in a healthier way.

A practicing clinical psychologist for over 10 years, Dr. Miki is the founder of Starling Minds. His goal is to offer a software service that history has never seen before — one that empowers people anywhere in the world to improve their mental fitness.

Back Share to:. Mental Fitness. What is mental fitness? These are: Emotional: Self-acceptance, self-esteem, resilience, and the ability to manage overwhelming emotions.

Social: Friends and support network as they bring companionship, inclusion and enrichment to our lives. Financial: Low levels of stress due to money issues, feeling in control of your finances, being able to handle financial setbacks, and being on track to achieve your financial and life goals.

Physical: Healthy diet, regular exercise, and enough sleep to reduce your risk of developing chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression. How does Mental Fitness help? How does Mental Fitness work?

What are the benefits of Mental Fitness? Developing the skills for better mental fitness can benefit you and everyone around you. Being more present: In a more present state, we can better retain and process information, listen, and be aware of, without being sabotaged by distractions. Ability to respond instead of reacting: When we have more control over our automatic thoughts, we can choose to respond in a more rational and less emotive way.

Improved cognitive functioning: Better focus, processing speed, memory, concentration, time management, and communication have a positive impact, personally and professionally. Increased Positivity: With increased awareness comes the ability to notice and reframe thoughts in more helpful ways.

This often results in kinder thoughts, compassion, and optimistic mindsets. More confidence: By reframing our thoughts and our beliefs about ourselves, it can lead to more confidence, self-compassion and empathy. Skills building: By doing mental fitness training, you can develop life skills to better manage your mental health including thought balancing, goal setting, mood management, etc.

Improved sleep: As with physical fitness, mental fitness also contributes to better quality sleep. How can you build your mental fitness?

Awareness of your patterns. Behavior strategies Our moods, behaviors, thoughts, and physiology are all connected, so when we make a positive change to one, it can create similar changes in another.

Thought strategies It is important to remember that not every thought we have is true or helpful. Here is a summary of simple ways to improve your mental fitness: Guided imagery — Guided imagery is a relaxation strategy that helps create harmony between the mind and body.

It is a way of focusing your imagination to create calm, peaceful images in your mind. Gratitude — Make it a point to list out the things in your life you are grateful for.

It helps to recall times when you have experienced pleasure, comfort, tenderness, confidence, or other positive emotions. Mindful activities — Do activities that help you take your mind off your daily stressors. Some like cozying up to read a book, cooking, taking a hike, playing games, but the fundamental is the same.

Breathing exercises — Deep breathing is one of the best ways to lower stress in your body. When you breathe deeply, it sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax. The brain then sends this message to your body.

Breathing exercises are a good way to relax, reduce tension, and relieve stress. Cope with negative thoughts — Ruminating on negative thoughts can be hard to break but possible by learning to interrupt them. It could be journaling, meditating, exercising, etc Sleep — Rest is as important to our bodies as eating, drinking and breathing, and is vital for maintaining good mental and physical health.

Sleeping helps us to recover from mental as well as physical exhaustion. Exercise — Regular physical activity improves psychological well-being and can reduce depression and anxiety.

It also helps you prioritize problems, fears, and concerns. Tracking your moods and thoughts can help you recognize triggers and learn ways to better control them. Mental fitness training — Mental fitness does not need to take up a lot of your time.

By spending a few minutes on it every day, you can help you feel better and think more clearly. Remember that relaxation and visualization are just as important in a mental workout as the more energetic activities, such as memory exercises or game-playing.

For a clearer mind, try focusing on one thing at a time. Try something different — Taking up a hobby can bring more balance to your life by allowing you to do something you enjoy because you want to do it, free of the pressure of everyday tasks.

It also keeps your brain active. New experiences can also set you on the path to mental fitness. You can fit new approaches into your daily life in a variety of ways: Try new foods, new ways to accomplish routine tasks, travel to new places, take a new way to work or the grocery store.

Whatever goal you set, reaching it will build confidence and a sense of satisfaction. Play games — One of the best ways to train your brain is to play games that test your reasoning and other portions of your brain in fun ways to keep your mind sharp.

Consider these games: crossword puzzles, board games, Sudoku Read more — Reading is great for your brain. Reading helps you visualize the subject matter on the pages before you, and imagine what voices sound like in the written dialogue. This is a great relaxation technique that can stoke your imagination and ignite so many different parts of the brain.

What is Starling Mental Fitness? Why Starling Mental Fitness? Evidence-based mental health assessments that provide objective symptom scores on anxiety and depression Interactive exercises and bite-sized videos that make it easy to learn cognitive-behavioral strategies A Mental Health toolbox equipped with tools to set goals, track progress, balance thoughts, and regulate moods A confidential, online community that destigmatizes mental health conditions and helps members understand that they are not alone What have been our results?

Tags online CBT. Andrew Miki. Share to:. Keep in touch Subscribe to automatically receive updates, webinar invitations and more. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. More blog posts. Digital Therapy Top Telehealth Trends for Mental Healthcare in Last updated: December 7, Teachers Mental Health NHSA Launches Initiative to Support Mental Health for Head Start Workforce Last updated: June 29, Mental Fitness How Strikes Impact Educators and Students Last updated: July 5, How does mental fitness work?

How mental fitness and physical fitness intertwine. Get your mind to the gym: how to get mentally fit. What is mental fitness, and does it involve lifting weights?

Learn the difference between mental fitness and mental health, and how to build your mental muscles. Mental fitness can be defined as having the skills and practices to improve and sustain your own state of well-being and perform at your best.

It involves developing core psychological resources and becoming aware of how you think, behave, and feel. When you are mentally fit, you lean into challenges and feel able to navigate change and stress, no matter what day-to-day life presents.

Mental fitness enables you to reconnect with what it is that you love in your work and your life. Mental fitness is more than the absence of mental illness.

It's about growth and thinking, feeling, and performing at your best in all areas of your life. Mental fitness is developed by equipping people to treat mental health as something that they can strengthen and improve.

We know that, even if we're not ill, we can increase our fitness and health to achieve a goal or level of performance. Our physical fitness can be integral to our desired way of life.

The same can be true of our mental health. When you are mentally fit, you feel fully functional and confident of your ability to affect your own state.

Despite the frequent connection to mental illness, mental health just refers to a spectrum of states from low to high, and mental health is distinct from mental fitness. Mental health professionals, like counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists, generally treat mental health disorders and mental illness.

Psychological disorders affect how people function in their daily lives. The most common of these anxiety and depression are rooted in emotions — leading to their classification as mood disorders. Because the emotions fear and sadness are consistent and severe, they become debilitating.

The goal is to restore people's mental health to a functional baseline. Mental fitness, though, means much more than living without pain or disability. It is about building strength and improving your well-being. Changing our focus from mental health to mental fitness means asking people about what — and how — they want to be.

What are you training your mind for — that is, what is your mountain? The conversation starts with a new definition of mental health that embraces the idea that people can be more or less mentally fit.

But with support, everyone can be the best, healthiest version of themselves. A new style of work is emerging from the COVID pandemic. It is necessary that we look at ways to help people thrive — both in the workplace and at home.

Taking action to improve mental health helps us weather storms like the current pandemic better. It also enables us to perform better at work. Mental health is another muscle we can strengthen with effort. Strong mental health means you have the skills and people around you to improve and maintain, your well-being.

Resilience is a key component of developing mental fitness. Not only that, when the resilient took a hit to well-being, the size of the rebound was bigger by 1. Overall, the mental fitness of the workplace is faltering.

Languishing is associated with absenteeism and lost productivity. They were 5X more likely to be rated a top performer than those struggling with mental health.

The costs to U. With personalized support, however, the curve can shift significantly to the right. Poor mental and emotional fitness has a pervasive impact. But developing mental fitness creates positive effects in every area of life. In order to understand how mental fitness works, it helps to look at a concept in cognitive science called neuroplasticity.

Our brains carry thoughts along neural pathways. These pathways are like ruts that we create and reinforce over time. This makes it more likely that you will repeat the pattern in the future. Sometimes, these thought patterns can make us react in ways that aren't helpful.

Instead of reacting to the current situation, we take well-worn pathways to past behaviors. As you build mental fitness, you'll have the awareness, strength, and agility to identify options. You can choose another route instead of responding automatically. Automatic thinking comes from our survival brain, the limbic system.

It is constantly scanning the environment for threats and has been throughout evolution. We inherited the limbic system from chimps and it can protect us.

The good news is that we can reprogram our brains. With the same kind of practice that we use to build muscle, we can create neural pathways that better serve us. Physical fitness is often mentioned alongside mental fitness.

If we want to improve our physical fitness, we have many approaches. We can work alone or with a coach. We can focus on strength, speed, or flexibility. We can go for a walk, or we can play competitive sports.

We each have a blend of physical activities that maintain the health and wellness of our body. No matter which approach we choose, the benefits of physical fitness ripple through all areas of life.

The same is true for mental fitness. We are less likely to sustain or cause emotional and relational injury. Many studies have found the positive impact of physical exercise on mental health.

In fact, so many studies have proved this that one researcher did a meta-meta-analysis. Physical fitness promotes mental fitness as well. The mood-boosting effects of exercise combined with doing something new is a great way to build cognitive agility.

Developing optimal health — whether mental or physical — brings less stress and a sense of achievement. How does one develop mental fitness? Just like any other discipline, it takes consistent attention focused on the right areas. Developing a regular mindfulness practice is the surest way to boost mental fitness.

You may choose to meditate, color, practice body awareness, or use an app for support. Just fifteen minutes per day is enough to see significant changes over time. By practicing mindfulness regularly, you build a heightened awareness of your automatic thoughts.

You learn to refocus your attention and disrupt negative thought patterns. This helps you choose behaviors that align with your goals. For optimal cognitive functioning, your brain needs adequate food, water, and sleep.

A lack of any of these essentials can impact your mental fitness and emotional health. Build breaks into your day to take care of these basic needs. Of course, physical exercise is important to mental fitness as well. Just as mindfulness can relax the muscles of the body, working out relaxes the mind.

Exercise relieves stress and tension. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that flow is one of the best ways to improve mental fitness.

In fact, many researchers believe that flow may be the antidote to burnout. Consciously design opportunities for flow into your workplace and your day. We all have our favorite activities for physical fitness.

Why not discover some for mental fitness as well? You can sharpen memory and cognitive function with mental exercises. There are many games, puzzles, and apps that improve cognitive processing ability.

Mindfulness techniques, like body awareness, visualization, and savoring build mental fitness as well. Whether for pleasure or to learn something new, reading is great exercise for your brain. Building new neural pathways takes work. You can help your brain build these new pathways by using external reminders.

Try keeping a list of enabling thoughts new neural pathways in a visible location, such as on a post-it note. A visual reminder helps reinforce the new thought and makes it easier to change course.

Try a few phrases of a new language, dance lessons, picking up a sport, needlepoint, or learning to code. Your new hobby will help form new neural paths, improve your emotional health, and build self-efficacy.

Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" helps to shift our thinking toward optimism. Many studies show a positive correlation between optimism and improved health. Burnout is characterized by exhaustion, reduced efficacy, and disconnection.

This means it poses a major threat to mental fitness. Getting clarity on how your work contributes to the bigger picture can protect against burnout.

She has worked as an editor, fact checker, and copywriter for various digital and print publications. Her most recent position was in academic publishing as a publicity and marketing assistant for the University of Wisconsin Press. Ever find yourself staring into your closet, unable to recall why you're there or what you needed in the first place?

Or do you sometimes jumble perfectly easy sentences or blank at a pivotal moment during a work meeting? If you're young and relatively healthy, what's the deal? Brain blips can be unnerving, but they're completely normal. The good news is they're rarely the sign of a declining mind.

We tend to think of youth as a time of peak mental capacity and that once our child-prodigy days are gone, there's no hope left. But the human brain is most likely at its best during midlife, when life experiences combine with decades' worth of neural connections, resulting in peak intelligence and ability.

As we age, it's natural for neurons to fire more slowly, but stress and anxiety cause people to pathologize perfectly normal experiences—like forgetting an acquaintance's name again. Instead of focusing on the occasional lapse, concentrate on daily habits.

What you do today will play a significant role in whether you operate optimally in the present—and whether you develop more serious cognitive deterioration, like dementia, later in life. When it comes to brain function, everyday behavior matters as much as—if not more than—your DNA. Whether you're 23 or 63, here are five proven ways to gain a mental edge for years to come.

Listening to classical music and doing the crossword every week will bolster your brain, right? Unfortunately, not as much as you think. While these habits are certainly more stimulating than zoning out to another Friends marathon, research suggests that a great way to boost brainpower is through learning something entirely new—either mental such as learning a new language or physical like signing up for a different yoga class or learning how to knit.

As we cultivate an unfamiliar skill, our brains get more flexible and form new neural connections that get stronger over time. According to a study from the University of Texas at Dallas, older adults who learned cognitively demanding activities, like quilting and digital photography, improved their memories.

On the other hand, those who listened to classical music, watched classic movies, or engaged in social activities, didn't have the same gains. Another study from , published in The Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences , suggests that regularly deviating from a mundane routine and getting exposure to a diverse array of activities throughout adulthood can boost cognitive functioning and decelerate the signs of cognitive aging, such as memory loss and declines in information processing.

Take your learning to the next level by using your brain for what it does best: fusing existing and new information. For example, you know how to read and love to read —but now take your favorite cerebral pastime one step further and get more mental bang for your buck so to speak.

Next time you finish a great book, spend a little extra time writing a Goodreads review, blog post, or digital journal entry for your eyes only a Word or Google doc will do. You might be surprised at what you come up with while mulling it over again. Or reach for a pen and your journal: Studies show that writing by hand—rather than typing—improves information processing, as well as the ability to remember what you're writing about.

The brain, as much as the body, is affected by what you eat and drink. Thankfully, good brain nutrition looks a lot like body nutrition. Notable research published in from Rush University and the Harvard School of Public Health found that middle-aged and older adults who adhered to an eating plan called the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay MIND diet were able to decelerate cognitive decline.

They scored the equivalent of seven and a half years younger on cognitive tests after one year of eating that way.

As the name suggests, the MIND diet is a hybrid of the Mediterranean and DASH Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diets. Like the Mediterranean diet, the MIND diet emphasizes nuts , beans, whole grains , poultry, and olive oil.

But unlike the former plan, it calls for consuming leafy greens daily and at least two weekly servings of berries, as both are rich in brain-boosting antioxidants. It shouldn't be news that exercise is good for your mood and overall brain fitness.

Researchers have identified exercise as one of the most critical factors in maintaining a healthy brain. Previous research has found that regular physical activity is linked with an increase in gray matter in the hippocampus, an area of the brain crucial to memory.

Exercise can also reduce stress, boost creativity, and bolster self-esteem. But working out on days when you have, say, a big presentation or a stressful test can give your mind the added sharpness it needs. Take this study, for example: Adults who did aerobic exercise regularly for four weeks—and exercised the morning that they took memory tests—scored higher than regular exercisers who skipped their workout on test day, according to a study from Dartmouth College.

Exercise's stress-thwarting effects may be partially responsible: " Stress is toxic to the brain," Chapman explains. All that said, don't miss out on regular sweat sessions when things aren't especially stressful. Along with its more talked-about physical health benefits, keeping up with a fitness routine is a lifelong way to boost mental well-being and focus.

Fact: Adults need a solid seven to nine hours of sleep every night to reap the full mental and physical health benefits of sleep. Sleep is crucial for the brain—storing short-term and long-term memories, maintaining and improving cognitive dexterity, processing emotions, and strengthening and repairing neural connections—are a few things that happen upstairs while you snooze.

And chronically short-changed sleep, the effects of which can accumulate exponentially over the years, has been linked to mental health concerns from Alzheimer's disease to depression and anxiety.

Do you have trouble falling asleep? Consult a doctor or sleep specialist before turning to sleep aids. Prescription sleeping pills, although safe for occasional use, contain active ingredients that can slow down brain waves, making you feel groggy the next day.

Over-the-counter OTC sleep medications are dicey, too. Most contain diphenhydramine, an ingredient linked to short-term cognitive impairment that hangover-esque feeling. Worse yet, people who used the OTC medications regularly for several years were at an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease later in life, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

To avoid the downsides of sleep deprivation , see a sleep specialist if you struggle to catch enough Zzzs every night. McDonough IM, Haber S, Bischof GN, Park DC. The Synapse Project: Engagement in mentally challenging activities enhances neural efficiency. Restor Neurol Neurosci. Lee S, Charles ST, Almeida DM.

Change is good for the brain: activity diversity and cognitive functioning across adulthood. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. Morris MC, Tangney CC, Wang Y, et al.

MIND diet slows cognitive decline with aging. Alzheimers Dement. Di Liegro CM, Schiera G, Proia P, Di Liegro I. To get more used to treating yourself with kindness, spruce up your mirror bathroom, bedroom, compact, etc. with notes of affirmation. Glancing at these nice, kind words throughout your day might have a real impact on your mood.

That might look like tuning in to conversations and sounds around you as you sip your coffee or going on a mindful walk to notice the colors and patterns you pass by. You can also get super intentional when you eat and focus on the flavors. Plus, maybe notice how doing the dishes or showering feels on your skin.

A little self-love and self-appreciation can go a long way. Hone in on how breathing feels physically and mentally. Follow every inhale with a deep exhale. Pick one word that you want to use as your intention for the day, the week, the month, or the year.

Maybe all you can handle is present, alive, or safe. Come back to your word for a quick reset whenever you need. Those random games you downloaded in ? Trash 'em. Those emails that keep piling up? Step 1: Focus on how you want to feel when you complete that list calm?

Step 2: Figure out what you can do to feel that way and jot it down. Step 3: Conquer that list one feel-good activity at a time. Picture a place, person, or situation that makes you feel extremely calm.

Take a few minutes to let your mind settle there. If you keep getting interrupted, wait until you have more time—or fewer distractions—and try again. Try shutting your phone off for 30 minutes and see what comes up.

Do you feel FOMO or feel kind of Whatever your reaction, investigate those thoughts and emotions for a better understanding of your relationship with your phone. Picture the things running through your brain as leaves on water or cars driving slowly past you, watching as they go by.

Take yourself on an outdoorsy date, which research suggests can increase happiness. Only have time for a five-minute walk through nature? Maybe you have more time and want to try something like plogging. Honestly, eating lunch with a side of fresh air counts as well.

Whatever you feel, try to name it. You might find that you hold a lot of stress in your shoulders or your fists. Try clenching and unclenching your fists.

Notice if you feel a sense of release you should and how else your body reacts to any big emotions. Every time you think something negative about yourself today, try to respond with a compliment. No worries if this is hard for you, but give it your best shot. Really at a loss for words?

Try just documenting any negative thoughts that surface on a sheet of paper and tear up the page. Not today, negativity. At the end of the day, see if you can remember any patterns your coworker made you smile so much your cheeks hurt, for example.

Be especially on the lookout for glimmers : those spontaneous thoughts, moments, or things that fill you with a sense of joy or safety. This is another way to show gratitude for the good times.