One of my clients just reminded me why it is that focusing on the positive has such a major impact on how you eat and how happy you are, and I wanted to share my thoughts while they’re still fresh in my mind:

1) You’re creating new grooves. OK, OK, so our brains aren’t records (I hope you’re old enough to know what records — LPs — are if you’re reading this blog, but if not, try Wikipedia’s history section) :) but our brains do in fact work in similar ways. Neural pathways are built based on what we do over and over again, so focusing on the positive things you’re doing/the good foods you’re eating/the great new habits you’re forming is literally training you to think more positively as you go.

2) You skip out on the negative self-talk. Yep, you know what I mean when I refer to negative self-talk. I’m talking about that niggling little voice inside your head (which I refer to as the VOD — Voice of Death) that reminds us that we’ve just screwed up and never, ever are going to do this diet right and therefore should give up and crawl under a rock with a case of doughnuts or your favorite poison in hand. The VOD is silly, misguided, not to be listened to and often a second level of our internal “conscience” that we developed when we were learning our eating (and basic behavioral) habits as a child. We are not “bad,” “sloppy,” “incapable” or whatever else that voice is telling you. In a particular moment, you might do something sloppy or “bad” (whatever that means) or not performing to the best of your ability, but there is always room for change, and one action (particularly not something food-related) doesn’t make you suddenly a worse person.

I often ponder where this inner voice comes from, and psychologists have a number of different theories. Mine is that it might have been a parent or teacher or grandparent or some other pivotal person in our lives, and they said things in the heat of the moment that happened to stick with us because we were so young and negative words have such a major impact. Or maybe it isn’t from any specific interaction with another person who misspoke. It might also be that we simply witnessed someone else beat up on him- or herself as a child and internalized the process because we thought that’s how it’s supposed to work. (Note: That’s NOT how it’s supposed to work.)

Our inner voice should be somewhat balanced — encouraging when we need it and firm when our gut tells us something isn’t right, but not unconstructive and blaming. In fact, when all goes to plan, our inner voice really should be pretty calm and happy. Watch a small child experience the world, deal with frustrations and then move on after a good cry, and bear in mind that most of the layers that we build into our minds as we get older are often unhelpful, unconstructive and cause us grief. (I’m not saying my 14-month-old son is a genius :) but I can say that I have learned plenty from how he interacts with the world. We adults often complicate plenty of things needlessly. When we’re sad, we ought to cry and get it over with, but instead some of us bottle up the pain, eat to space out, say harmful things to others in hopes of displacing the discomfort and so on — anything but what really needs to happen.)

Before I go too far off on a tangent here, I’ll officially reel myself in, but if you give this further thought and listen to your inner voice the next time a tough situation crops up, I hope you tell it to shut up if it tells you to do something unhealthy!

3) You’re creating a new “chain of command” for the next time a tough situation arises. You bet life isn’t always going to go smoothly, but figuring out what you did right on even the worst day of eating is going to help you when you next experience the same stress level. This sounds similar to point 1, but there’s more to being happy than thinking positively (and sometimes thinking realistically and thinking positively are two different things). When you sit down and make a conscious effort to think about what went right in your day, you are also helping your subconscious come up with positive ways of responding to tough situations.

To give an example of how this works, shortly before I decided to make over my life and health a few years back, I was quite depressed and had developed some reactions to stress that were very unhealthy. Without getting into the exact circumstances, let me just say that I can precisely pinpoint when I developed these reactions and why, and it was due to an external source of stress that I was not handling well. I had gotten so jumpy that the slightest thing would send me into a panic, adrenaline racing, heart pumping, and I’d get my back up because I had grown to expect an attack. Once I started on the path to health and happiness (two separate, yet very interrelated things!), I found that even though I felt better and was beginning to enjoy the much less intense emotions of eating right (yes, you read that right — when you eat healthfully, your moods typically stabilize dramatically), I still reacted to even tiny, petty little problems with that kneejerk panic.

And then I began focusing on how I handled some situations well or at least better than the last time. Amazingly, within a short time, I found that I was no longer repeating the panicked behavior anymore almost ever. I mention my own example because I know how it feels to be trapped in a bad pattern all too well. (And I can’t come up with a good way to depersonalize a client’s similar problems enough to post it here, so you get to hear more about me than perhaps you wish!) :) And yet I’m proof that that doesn’t have to be the way you react forever.

But don’t just take my word for it. Try it yourself. The next time you find yourself stressing out about not eating “perfectly” (and what does that mean, anyhow?), take some time to think about what you’re doing right in a day or a week (choose the length of time it takes to find several positives). Even if your positives are “only” walking past the bakery section of the grocery and not buying anything. Even if you still had a less-than-optimal meal. If this article resonates with you intensely, try to make it a daily practice to recap all the things you’ve done well.