TREAT Yourself: Five Positive Thoughts for Challenging Times

When life gets tough, it's important to remember to TREAT ourselves! TREAT is an acronym referring to five positive thoughts that can help you cope with challenging times and navigate the complexities of life.

1. TRUST

Trusting yourself is one of the most helpful things you can do in your life. It can help build your confidence, allow others to trust you more, and make the process of decision making much easier. To trust yourself, all you need is to make a little effort, create self-love, and find the ability to look inward.

The concept of trust is important in many aspects of life, including healthcare. Trust may even have therapeutic value, enhancing the efficacy of prescribed treatments. Have faith in healing processes, trust healthcare workers, trust authorities, and above all, trust in your own resilience. Trust that challenges will pass and you will survive whatever comes your way.

2. REFLECT on Yourself

Self-reflection is the habit of deliberately paying attention to your own thoughts, emotions, decisions, and behaviors. It's a way of assessing yourself, and it can help you process your thoughts and feelings.

One of the best and most powerful ways to reflect is through 'Journaling'. When we keep our thoughts floating around in our heads, we only confuse or frustrate ourselves more. Getting your thoughts on paper can help you understand why you're feeling a certain way and make those feelings a little easier to navigate.

If you're not interested in using pen and paper, there are plenty of journaling apps available that promise privacy and security. Daybook is one such app that provides a great writing environment, lets you add photos, and even guides you if you don't know how to start writing.

3. EMBRACE Change

Change is inevitable in our lives. Everything is constantly changing — the environment, the weather, the economy, technology, society, culture, etc. We often live in times of great uncertainty.

Being afraid of change does nothing, but learning to accept it can be rewarding. It helps us grow into stronger individuals who can handle unpredictable adversity. Always keep a positive mind when faced with change.

Perhaps challenging times are just nature's way of getting us to assess ourselves and identify what needs to change in our lives. Let's look forward with a positive mindset!

4. AVAIL Yourself of Opportunities

Even in difficult times, there are often hidden opportunities. It's important to try to take a positive approach and look at the bright side, mainly the general opportunities that become available during times of change or crisis.

Use extra time as a possibility to engage in self-fulfilling activities. It can be a great opportunity to spend quality time with our loved ones. It's a time for individual reevaluation, an opportunity to rethink life priorities, and gain a new perspective on work, career, social relations, and lifestyle.

Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and finding new ways of connecting to and helping people. If we keep looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer a challenging situation lasts, the larger the opportunities become for actually making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions.

5. Be THANKFUL

Being thankful during hard times is not a natural response, but it should be! When you love what you already have, it fills you with enthusiasm and energy, and as a result, you end up creating more abundance with that positive energy. Starting a daily practice of gratitude can help you recognize the positive in your life instead of focusing on the negative.

Journaling is a great method to practice gratitude on a daily basis. Being thankful and grateful for all the good things you have can actually make you happier.

"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." — Eckhart Tolle

Ryan Fehr, a world-renowned expert on gratitude, says, "Research shows that gratitude can help us cope with traumatic events, regulate our negative emotions, and improve our well-being. More importantly, gratitude can have a positive effect on our friends and family, too. It's a small way to have a meaningful impact."

Let's try to find happiness in small things and move forward with a positive outlook, which may lead us to a better normal.