When you’re struggling to stay positive so you don’t get sucked into a vortex of negativity knowing how to feel better about yourself can allow you to shift your mood in a moment. Not sometime in the future, not when you finally achieve some milestone, not when you’re sharing your life with someone special — knowing how to feel good about yourself is a life skill every person needs to have.

All your feelings are temporary, however, when you feel badly it’s easy to let the fear that your negative feelings will last forever take over. Rest assured this is simply a false worry. Happiness, joy, and peace can seem ephemeral, while sadness, heartache, and loneliness can feel everlasting.

You have more control over how you feel than you imagine, and learning to transform your negative feelings quickly and easily allows you to bounce back from setbacks and keep a positive mindset.

If you’re struggling to stay positive follow these steps for how to feel better about yourself and change your mood in an instant!

7 Tools For Feeling Better About Yourself Right Now

1. Brighten Someone Else’s Day

Have you heard that the best way to feel better when you’re down is to do something nice for someone else? If you want more love in your life, find ways to spread love to others.

Who do you know that needs some love right now?

Who can you reach out to with a text or a phone call?

Maybe you can leave a basket on your porch for delivery workers with some treats for them to take and brighten their day?

Or maybe send a letter or a card to someone you care about to let them know you’re thinking about them? Or send a quick text for an immediate response.

Here’s how to feel better about yourself and your situation. Reach out to others in need and you’ll give yourself an instant lift. Putting your focus on helping someone takes the energy away from your problems and puts you into a service mindset.

Everyone is here to be of service in some way. Some people give back in tangible ways, and remember you can be of service by simply listening or doing something nice for a person who isn’t expecting it.

Service is its own reward. When you give to a person in need you’re doing your part to lift them up, and by doing so you’ll lift your spirit as well.

2. Create Connection With Those You Love

Whether you’re living by yourself or with others are you focused on creating connection or separation? Part of feeling down is feeling disconnected from yourself and others. Humans are social creatures who need to feel a sense of belonging. Taking time to connect with those close to you, or with those who you’ve not spoken to in a while, will bring a sense of belonging that shifts how you feel about yourself quickly and easily.

Feeling disconnected from those you are close to can create loneliness and isolation.

Here’s how to feel better about yourself by implementing a simple practice before going to sleep every night to create connection (you can adapt this to your liking):

After turning out the light place both hands over your heart and connect to the love you have for yourself. Then visualize each person you love and imagine sending love from your heart to theirs.

The more you share love with others the more love you’ll have for yourself. It’s like lighting a candle with another candle, the original flame is not diminished.

Sending love each night to the people you love is a way to connect you to your tribe so you feel better about your place in the world. You’ll fortify your own sense of belonging.

3. Focus On Gratitude

Every study on happiness points to gratitude as one of the biggest keys to living a happy life. Take time each day to concentrate on the positive aspects of your life. Ask yourself what’s going well and brings you joy.

Don’t wait for things to change before starting a practice of gratitude. Start where you are right now because being grateful for everything you have will bring more opportunities to improve your life.

One idea is to say out loud 5 things you’re grateful for every night before bed (or write them down in a gratitude journal). If you have children this can become a fun nighttime ritual that you do with each of them, or as a family.

Change your perspective of problematic situations and people by making a list of what you’re grateful for about these seemingly difficult situations. Ask yourself what you can learn from the situation. Can you shift your mindset to believe everything is happening for you and not to you?

Gratitude is a practice of appreciation. Throughout your day find time to let the people you interact with know what you appreciate about them. Sharing your appreciation and gratitude with others can deepen your relationship with them.

Want to know how to feel better about yourself right now? Practice gratitude and share your appreciation with all the people in your life from acquaintances to family members, and everyone in between. You’ll feel better about yourself in the process.

4. Celebrate Your Successes

Do you end each day thinking about all the things you haven’t done, saying to yourself, “I didn’t …” “I should’ve …” or “I could’ve …?” Your inner dialog with yourself is the determining factor in how you feel about yourself and your life.

Giving attention to your shortcomings sucks your energy leaving no fuel to make any changes in your life. Even worse, speaking negatively to yourself just before going to sleep allows those negative thoughts to seep into your subconscious creating a cycle of feeling badly about yourself.

Instead, fill your tank at the end of the day by celebrating your successes for the day. These need not be lifetime accomplishments, successes are relative to that day. If you have a cold making toast and tea for yourself is a success. Getting your laundry done is a success you can always recognize. These successes can come straight from your To Do List.

On the days you’re feeling good about yourself, start making a list of lifetime accomplishments. These are achievements from throughout your life and are age appropriate. Be sure to start the list with learning to walk and to talk because not everyone gets to do that.

Your lifetime accomplishments become fuel on the days when you’re struggling to stay positive. Looking back on your triumphs inspires and motivates you to accomplish more.

Want to know how to feel better about yourself and your accomplishments?

Focus on your achievements instead of your letdowns and write down 5 successes for each day. Soon you’ll find that your positive mindset has you feeling so good about yourself that your friends and co-workers ask how they can get some of what you’re having.

5. Practice Compassion For Yourself And Others

Judgment of self and others creates a feeling of disconnection and steals your happiness. The truth is everyone is human and therefore flawed in some way. Only machines are perfect, all humans make mistakes. Everyone is deserving of compassion for their flaws and is still worthy of love — even you.

Can you practice putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and finding understanding for their choices and their behaviors? Imagine that whatever annoying or frustrating behavior they’re exhibiting see it as a strategy for them to feel loved and safe. How would that change your judgment of them and the situation?

The biggest mistake you can make in all your relationships is to assume that the two of you will have the same strategies. Or to judge people because their strategies are not like your own. Finding compassion for those strategies or behaviors that you disagree with will melt your judgment and fill your heart with love.

The key to a successful relationship is remembering that the other person is not you. You will have different strategies for dealing with the same events and situations. Communicating with compassion and kindness is essential to finding a way to reconnect and repair with the people that you love.

This does not include excusing bad behavior but rather finding understanding of why someone behaves the way they do will transform your judgment into compassion.

Do you find you’re often riddled with regret and self-doubt? Finding compassion for yourself allows you to heal and create positive change in every area of your life.

Accepting your past mistakes because you didn’t know better will allow you to feel better about yourself and release your self-judgment. When you know better, you’ll do better and make better choices.

6. Laugh Your Troubles Away

Laughter produces endorphins, which naturally make you feel good. Even just putting a smile on your face will trigger the endorphin response.

If you’re feeling down and wondering how to feel better about yourself right now, find something that makes you smile or laugh and let your body’s natural processes melt away your troubles.

Watch your favorite comedy, read a funny book, or find funny videos on YouTube. Discovering sources of humor in life around you will immediately transform negative emotions.

You don’t even have to be sincere about smiling or laughing. If you put a fake smile on your face or practice a laugh you’ll still get the benefits.

To deepen your laughter practice retell a story about a disappointing event while laughing. Find a friend or do this with yourself in a mirror. Retell the events of a recent problematic situation but laugh out loud while telling the story. The endorphin rush that you produce will transform your feelings about that past event.

You can simply cycle through the three sounds of laughter: Ha-Ha-Ha, Ho-Ho-Ho, Hee-Hee-Hee!

To discover how to feel better about yourself right now, laugh and smile at your troubles. What’s the difference between a story being funny or being tragic? An endorphin rush is the delineating factor, you don’t have to take everything seriously. Lightening up will lighten your load and you’ll be filled with more joy.

7. Affirm Your New Reality

Do you know you have an inner dialog with yourself all day long? This conversation in your head is affirming your reality.

If you’re telling yourself all day long:

• “I can’t find the love I want.”
• “I’m disappointed again.”
• “The world is a scary place.”

Then it’s no wonder that you’re feeling anxious, fearful, and worried. To change your experiences change your inner dialog.

Bringing conscious choice to your inner dialog allows you to create and shape your experiences. Feeling good about yourself right now can be as easy as identifying your negative self-talk and replacing it with positive affirmations.

Let’s make your desires an effective affirmation by following these practices:

• State them in the positive.
• Don’t use negatives (never what you don’t want).
• Only affirm your desires (what you’re moving towards).

Write or say your affirmations as if they’re happening right now. You don’t want to affirm something that you hope for or wish to accomplish in the future. You’ll just be creating more hoping and wishing, instead affirm it as if it’s already happening.

Use in-process language to affirm large goals. If you’re affirming something that’s a big change in your life, your subconscious may reject the affirmation. Instead use language like, “I’m excited to learn…” or “I’m developing new skills to …” This will put you in the mindset of moving toward your goals.

Put emotion into your affirmations. When you’re affirming how bad things are in your life, you feel all of the negative emotions attached to that. You can put more juice in your positive affirmations by saying them with energy and emotion and by using powerful emotional words when you write or say them.

If you want to quickly experience how to feel better about yourself right now then practice affirming your desires. You’ll find that it’s much easier to believe that you can create what you want when you already believe that you deserve it.

With all the uncertainty in the world don’t let your negative thoughts and feelings rob you of the happiness that you deserve.

Pick a few of these tips to make a commitment to for 40 days without skipping. You’ll be feeling more present, more connected, and more empowered to live a happy fulfilling life no matter what’s going on around you.

Are you going through a rough time, experienced loss, or had a major setback? We’re here to help! You don’t have to suffer alone, schedule a complimentary Soulmate Strategy Session with us to discuss your custom plan to create a life full of love and joy.