Writing About Uplifting Thoughts Might Shift Your Focus

I’ve talked before about the benefits of writing. Writing about pain (or even writing a letter to your pain) can help to get anger, frustration and other negative emotions out of your system. But it’s good to try to balance that out. Writing about uplifting thoughts might help you to shift your focus from your pain or chronic illness to nicer things in life.

It’s so easy to get bogged down in life by negativity. Life can feel so depressing at times and when you add in your current situation with your pain or illness, everything can seem very dark. If we only focus on that darkness, we can become consumed by it. If we fall into a dark hole, it can become more and more difficult to climb back out. That’s why we sometimes need to try to shift our focus to things that will lift us up. Keeping an uplifting journal every day might help you to do that.

Could Writing Uplifting Thoughts Help Your Pain?

I’m not going to pretend that writing about uplifting thoughts will rid you of your pain or the symptoms of your illness. However, when we’re down, it’s more difficult to cope with health problems. If we focus on something uplifting for even just a short time, it can boost our spirits and make us feel more positive, so it might help us to cope better.

What Uplifting Thoughts Could You Write About?

On the bad days, it’s hard to think of the more positive things in life. But it’s important that we try to do that because those are the things that could help us get out of that dark place.

Three things come to my mind when writing about uplifting thoughts: gratitude, achievements and anything that makes you smile.

Gratitude

What are you grateful for?

When you’re living with pain or illness, it often feels as though there isn’t much to be grateful for. But if we make a point of thinking about it, we can normally find many.

Here are a few things I could write under the gratitude heading:

• My husband
• Having a comfortable bed
• Central heating
• Electricity
• Our freezer is stocked for the winter
• I have warm clothes
• Beautiful scenery where I live
• Hot shower
• Having broadband so I can keep in touch with people
• My neighbour baked me a gluten free cake
• I have chocolate

Achievements

What have you achieved today?

People often think achievements need to be big like managing to run ten miles or climb a mountain. But when you live with pain or illness, achievements are smaller. But they matter just as much – small achievements are actually big achievements.

Here are some examples of things I could write:

• Managed to clean my teeth
• Brushed my hair
• Put on my socks myself
• Remembered to take food out of the freezer for dinner
• Took my dog out for a short walk – really short, but big achievement
• Read a chapter of my book
• Made a cuppa for me and hubby
• Tidied two drawers in my bedroom
• Washed the dishes
• Completed an online grocery order

Found a Smile

What’s made you smile today?

When you’re feeling awful due to pain or a chronic illness, it can be hard to find a reason to smile. A few months ago, I was feeling really down because my pain had been misbehaving for so long. My husband always tries to make me laugh and at one point I said, ‘Don’t try to make me laugh, because I don’t want to.’ He was shocked to hear me say that and so was I. But that’s how I was feeling at the time. However, when we laugh or smile, we generate those feel-good endorphins. They help us. So when the opportunity to laugh or smile comes along, grasp it. Don’t dismiss it.

Just like gratitude and achievements, it’s often the small, simple things that can make people smile.

Here are a few simple examples of things that make me smile:

• My husband’s silly jokes
• Kip (my dog) when she tries to talk – seriously, she does!
• When my friend pops up on messenger to chat
• Watching old episodes of Friends
• Funny pet videos on Youtube
• Gorgeous clouds in the sky
• Watching garden birds
• Looking at stars glistening on a frosty night
• Seeing Spring bulbs pop up through the hard ground
• Grocery order is delivered with more chocolate

How to Write About Your Good Thoughts

You could write about something uplifting once a day, perhaps before you go to sleep but several times a day would work even better. Writing a single word might be enough to spark a memory later. Or you could write a short snippet or even a few sentences.

You could use a journal or a diary to write about your uplifting thoughts but there are other ways to do this. You could write on your phone or computer or even write post-it notes and stick them onto a door. But one of my favourite ways is to keep your thoughts in a jar. Write your uplifting thoughts on small pieces of paper, then fold them up and put them into a jar.

On a down day, you can read through all your thoughts and hopefully, they will lift your spirits. Perhaps they’ll remind you that there are good things in your life and that it is possible to achieve things or give you a reason to smile again.

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Will you try to keep an uplifting thoughts journal or jar this year? What kind of things would you write about?