10 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Business Life Avoid the stumbling blocks of negativity, a psychologist advises. Make active choices to be positive, reach for opportunity and then you'll ride the escalator to success.
By Sherrie Campbell Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There's no greater success sucker in life than negativity. Work inevitably brings challenging experiences, whether it's having to spend time around negative people or being in a bad situation.
Negativity can limit your potential to becoming something great in your career and keep you from living a purposeful, hopeful and fulfilling business life.
If you stay miserable in your work life, you'll have greater amounts of stress, increased health problems and less opportunity to grow your business: You won't be able to see past the negativity to the opportunity.
To become more positive, make a conscious decision to change your thinking and accept that work brings difficulty and negative moments. Your choice should be to live effectively within the challenging times.
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1. Accept the challenge.
No amount of positive thinking can take a challenge away but there are positive ways to look at it. Don't let anxious emotions swallow you.
You need to not rid yourself of these emotions or become overly attached to them. Painful times in business come and go as part of the natural flow of things. Trust that each challenge in business is there to help you grow. Do your best to live effectively when challenged.
2. Be self-reliant.
When people act in a self-centered fashion, they can become negative toward themselves and others.
Perceiving your business life as being all about you makes it tempting to believe that you deserve more than what you have. An attitude of entitlement sets you up for unrealistic expectations -- that others in the work world should cater to your needs and wants.
This type of attitude makes you difficult to work with. For a more successful and fulfilling work life, be able to depend upon yourself to get your needs met.
3. See opportunity.
When you view your business life as only what you don't have, you cannot appreciate what you've achieved thus far.
Learn to see and appreciate all that you have achieved and be grateful. There's nothing more draining than being around someone who is constantly complaining about their business. Train yourself to see everything as an opportunity.
Make the mental shift from negativity to gratefulness. This attitude gets noticed. It will make you more attractive to work with. And from this, more possibilities open up.
4. Shed the seriousity.
Laugh more, especially at yourself. Life gets busy, schedules are full. Your business life can become task oriented or routine driven. If you stop laughing and act mechanically, you're living life under a black cloud. Yet you're responsible for your personal and professional relationships.
Work isn't always about performing tasks. Take moments to change your routine, enjoy breaks and go on vacations.
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5. Help others.
If you live your business life as if you're the center of the universe, you will struggle. If the whole point of your company is to only think about yourself, you won't achieve long-term success.
Helping and supporting others to become happier and more successful versions of themselves is a pathway to your own increased fulfillment and success.
6. Have a purpose.
Setting goals and striving for something bigger in your business life can help you lead a more abundant life.
Everyone is here to work and to be in action. Happiness is a byproduct of achieving.
Without action, there's no room for anything but depression and negativity. By staying busy, moving toward business objectives, being creative and innovative, you will wake up with a purpose that keeps you motivated in your quest to achieve bigger-picture goals.
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7. Choose your attitude.
Change always starts from within. In business, you can be your best ally or worst enemy. Work is never going to be without challenge. Even when you feel that nothing is going the way you want, you can choose to search for the silver lining.
Learn to change the language you speak to yourself with. You're perhaps hardest on yourself when things in business don't go well. A stream of negative, self-defeating inner talk corrodes your focus on goals and dreams. Be nice to yourself and keep pressing forward.
8. Adopt positive company.
Emotions are contagious and so you become more like the people you spend your time with. If your co-worker circles are full of emotional vampires, histrionics or self-centered people, you will unconsciously resemble them.
It's difficult to stay motivated at work when people around you are not supportive and don't demonstrate goal-oriented behaviors. When you surround yourself with positive, motivated people, you'll ride the escalator to success.
9. Work hard.
Turn stress into positive action and motivation. All stress can be worked through. Don't let it paralyze your movement. When you focus on moving through workplace stress, it dissipates more quickly.
10. Shed the victim mentality.
You cannot grow in your business if you see yourselves as a victim. Each person is responsible for his or her thoughts, attitude and work ethics.
Take full responsibility for your views and yourself amid the good and the bad. If you consistently believe bad things happen to you, you are handicapping yourself in the drive for success.
To increase your feelings of success, make positive choices in favor of yourself. Love yourself. Take positive actions in your business and manage your thoughts.
Thoughts become words and words lead to actions, and actions become habits. Pay attention to gratitude, prosperity, abundance, love, hard work, goals, exercise, eating healthfully and obtaining sufficient sleep. Let these become your habits.
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