Everyone has a little voice in their head that likes to point out the bad side of stuff. Especially when it’s early September and school is looming fast on the horizon. Thinking positively is simply a matter of identifying when that voice is speaking and giving it something more productive to say. It puts a whole new perspective on life!

Be on red alert for negative thoughts. Every time your little voice uses worlds like ‘never’, ‘not’ no one’ or ‘nothing’.  I’ll never get my hair down how I want it,’ I did not work hard enough at school this week’ ‘nothing is going right,’ or ‘there’s nothing good about school’ check yourself. Saying things like this make a situation seem much worse or much more important than it really is. If something is genuinely going a bit wrong be specific about that thing.

Be specific about what is going right too. Think about ‘ I can’t get my hair in a neat pony tail, but I can do cute plaits,’  ‘I didn’t work hard enough for my English test, but I nailed those equations in maths class,’ ‘no one laughed at my joke, but they were interested in my Paris and Nicole goss,’ and so on…

Keep an ear out for that little voice putting you under pressure. When it says things like ‘I must get this absolutely right’, you put yourself under too much pressure. Instead, get your voice to say, ‘I am confident that I can do this as well as any person can’. And ‘I will do the best I can’.

Don’t let your little voice stress you out about other people either. Every time it tries to trick you into all-or-nothing thinking you should stick a sock in your internal voice’s mouth. Don’t listen to ‘my best friend should be free to come to my house on Saturday’. Instead get your voice to say, ‘I would have like it if my best friend had come over on Saturday but if she’s busy, that’s cool, she’s still my friend.’

Above all, remember your little voice is precisely that – yours! It belongs to you so you can control it. By getting it to say productive instead of destructive things you can become a positive thinker. You wouldn’t put up with mean comments from a friends so why put up with them from yourself?