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Step 1
Eat more of the right foods and avoid things that rob your brain of the ability to self-regulate! Staying positive requires a lot of self-regulation. Self-regulation requires your brain's pre-frontal cortex to be functioning and in good working order. You need neurotransmitters to carry the right messages to the right areas of your brain. The neurotransmitters most often associated with self-regulation are dopamine and adrenaline systems. You can activate and excite these things in your brain with food and vitamins. Of course, you can also use other mood enhancers like pharmaceuticals, alcohol and other things to impact your mood, but for a long-lasting, and somewhat more predictable effect, stick with food and vitamins. Foods that can give you the best results are those rich in the B-complex family. Some of these, and other food sources for good self-regulation performance include: nuts and seeds, whole grains, oats, beans, wheat and wheat bran, egg yolks, leafy green vegetables, certain vegetable oils, cantaloupe, citrus fruits, beets, wheat germ, meats, dairy products, fish (especially cold-water fish, such as mackerel, salmon, herring, sardines, black cod, anchovies and albacore tuna), and cod liver oil.
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Step 2
Supplement your brain and your body with other things that can also elevate mood and enhance self-regulation. Supplements that can have positive affects on mood and self-regulation are: vitamin C, inositol, L-tyrosine, pycnogenol (also grape seed extract and anti-oxidents in general), tryptophan, GABA, St. John's Wort, Vitamin E and Folic Acid. Phenylalanine is closely related to self-regulation and brain function as well, and can be found as a 50 percent component in all aspartame products. Be careful, though, phenylalanine is a hidden danger, as overconsumption triggers neurotoxic effects in brain cells. One or two diet products containing aspartame is enough for anyone in a single day.
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Step 3
Try to be comfortable, quiet and pleasantly warm for about 20 to 30 minutes at least 3 times a day. If you're feeling swept away by a negative tide, try to remove yourself from the immediate source and go to a place that is warm and quiet, and where additional noise or attention-getting stimulation is at a minimum. We're not talking about a desensitization tank necessarily, but just to a place where you can feel the sun on your skin and where the warmth will feel like it is radiating across your body. This may also make you feel sleepy, but often sleep is the best remedy for a body overtaxed and overstimulated by stress and a barrage of negativity.
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Step 4
Start your day, every day, with 10 to 15 minutes of focused thought about something that makes you feel good. This can be a meditation, an exercise, a hug from the person you love most, or even a visualization about the best thing that happened to you yesterday. Try to repeat this exercise at the end of each day. If you can do this in a place that is warm, comfortable, and where there is very little stimulation of any kind, you'll have better results. The idea here is that you need a few minutes to set a baseline in your brain for mood and expectations. If your day immediately begins with a barrage of crazy demands and depressing situations, you'll be off to a bad start that will likely follow you around all day. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes in a de-sensitized situation to return to that base point too, so if things start spinning out of control, try to find your "happy place" for a few minutes without trying to make the mood change happen. You need to give your brain about that long to let it use what is hanging around in the synapses that are causing and sustaining your negative mood. Once they dissipate, you'll be much more successful at smiling again, and finding the rainbow on just about any cloudy day.
