4 Tips For Brightening Up Your Everyday Life

It’s great when things just seem to work out in life, and when we are feeling at our best, isn’t it?

Moments when the sun always seems to be shining, things are going our way, and when it’s a pleasure to get out of bed each morning, serve to remind us of the great and beautiful adventure that life can and should be.

Of course, it’s unfortunately the case that things often aren’t quite this beautiful and uplifting — and everyone is susceptible to falling into a negative groove in life where pessimism and negativity are more prominent than optimism and positivity.

While there will undoubtedly be various ways in which your mood will change from day to day based on the events that are happening in your life, there are nonetheless certain tips and approaches that you can try out, which have the potential to brighten up your experience of everyday life significantly.

Here are just a handful of straightforward and practical tips for brightening up your everyday life.

Literally brighten up your home

Although this may at first seem like a bit of a facetious point, the fact of the matter is that actual amount — and quality — of light that gets into your home on a daily basis can significantly influence your mood, in addition to having a very notable impact on your circadian rhythm.

When it comes to literally brightening up your living space, looking for window cleaning and refitting tips for your home can make a big difference. So, too, can installing better light bulbs, setting up additional lamps, and so on.

When you think about the kind of environment that you naturally find unpleasant and disheartening to be in, there’s a good chance that you are going to find yourself visualising a place that is dimly illuminated, and that feels confined.

Bright, airy spaces tend to have the opposite effect. They almost inevitably end up moving our thoughts in more upbeat directions, and invite us to engage with the world, and with life, in a more proactive and positive manner.

Take the time at regular intervals to talk yourself into a more positive frame of mind

Although it can often feel like the moods you’re in, and the state of mind you’re in, are things that just happen “to” you, and that you have little if any control over, the reality is actually quite different.

Your initial emotional response to many different experiences in life will be caused in no small part by your habitual beliefs, expectations, and the way that you make sense of the world around you — even on a largely unconscious level. By training yourself into new habits of perception, you can significantly alter your default reaction in a wide range of situations, going forward.

Just as importantly, taking the time to talk yourself into a more positive frame of mind can often help you to significantly change how you feel in the moment — and can put you on a more positive trajectory, instead of leaving you feeling as though your whole day has been inevitably ruined.

Maybe you had an unpleasant interaction with someone in public, and find yourself feeling low, and stewing about it for hours afterwards. Your unspoken beliefs about the situation may include things like “I’m an unlikable person, that’s why other people treat me this way,” or “I obviously seem weak and helpless, so I get picked on.”

Naturally, that kind of interpretation can make you feel pretty bad about things as a whole. But by questioning those assumptions in your own mind, and reframing things, it’s quite likely that you’ll be able to completely change how you feel.

It could be that questions such as “is it possible that this person just has terrible emotional control is the real issue here? That it’s not even really about me at all?” Could make a real and rapid difference in how you feel.

Identify activities that reliably help you to feel better — and then do them whether you feel like it or not

If you’re in a bit of a low mood, it’s quite likely that you’ll find yourself feeling little, if any motivation to do much of anything at all, other than sitting in one place.

But if something happens to force you to get up and engage in some other activity, there’s a good chance that you’ll find that your whole mood and your overall perceptions of things can change very significantly, just by changing what it is you’re doing.

We all naturally have certain activities that reliably help to put us in a better mood — whether or not we actually feel like engaging in those activities up front.

It might be that you always have a smile on your face after completing a workout, or having a phone call with a loved one, or maybe your mood automatically brightens when you go for a brisk stroll somewhere green.

Putting in some effort to try different things and to notice which activities reliably help to make you feel better — and then engaging in those activities regularly, whether you feel like it or not in the moment, can be a game changer.

Fit more social outings and interactions into your life

Some people are naturally much more extroverted, while others are more introverted — but even for introverts, social interaction is important in order to maintain a good overall sense of wellbeing in life, and a balanced perspective on things, too.

By fitting more social outings and interactions into your life, there’s a good chance that you will come across many more moments for a bit of fun and laughter, and will end up forging many more uplifting memories as a result.

Spending time socialising with other people, in-person, can also be very helpful in getting you out of your own head a bit, and helping you to turn some of your attention outwards to achieve a healthier balance.