+ Thinking

We all get stuck in those downward spirals of negative thinking. I know I do. One thing disrupts my day and bam! the negativity kicks in. Or, I want to evaluate situations in my life realistically, so I tend to focus on the missing pieces. I used to believe I was a fairly positive person…until I began to evaluate myself. I knew I wanted to be a more positive thinking person. Anytime I was around someone with an upbeat look at life, I would find myself trying to figure them out like a puzzle. I would study them to see if I could connect the pieces in my life to give me what they had.

It wasn’t until I went through a very negative life event that I gained some of those pieces. The desire to be different than what I knew was there…I needed the knowledge and tools to get to where I wanted to be.

I read somewhere that our brains physiologically can not turn/flip a negative into a positive. For example, when I say, “I don’t want to be negative in my thinking” all my brain hear’s is “I want to be negative in my thinking”. So instead, approach the thought from a positive outlook and you get “I want to be a positive thinker”. Learning this has completely changed the way I talk to myself and others. I have horrid habits that I still work on daily, but I try and stop myself when I say “quit being mean” to my kids and rephrase to “let’s be kind to each other”…easier said than done, right?

When I was more naive to the concept of positive thinking, I often wondered if happier people were just faking it. My thoughts were usually, “how can a person be so happy all the time?” or “ugh…why do they have to find the good in every situation, can’t I just revel in my tantrum for a bit?”. What I found was that my negative mindset stemmed from just that…internal negativity. I was overall unhappy with who I was and where I was in life. Therapy and taking control of my decisions helped me get to a more healthy place (physically and emotionally), which effected all areas in my world. My outlook on life changed. I experienced hope that I thought had been completely wiped out.

Once my foundation was favorable, I caught a glimpse into what those people I had studied for so long possessed.

Living in a place of thriving and not surviving gave me the ability to feel. I had lived in the fight-or-flight response for so long that I had lost the ability for my body to recognize good feelings to a degree. Good things had happened in life and the surge of emotions that came with it made me feel alive, but they were fleeting. When they left, I was left with a pretty hollow version of who I once was.

Positive psychology tells us, “We’ve all come across the ‘fight-or-flight’ response which accompanies negative emotions. This automatic response mechanism has the effect of narrowing down our thoughts and behaviours to very specific, self-protecting actions; in the case of anger it’s to fight, and in the case of fear, to run”.

Learning how to undo the runner in me has been challenging and exhausting. I lived in fear for so long, I really didn’t know how it felt to live any differently. In some ways, it was like I had to learn things like a toddler would all over again. I know that sounds silly and it’s too complex to discuss here in this short post, but it’s true to an extent.

So, to take control and have a more positive outlook in your life, what should you do?

For me, I had to start by evaluating the negative. It was so hard and I lost a lot…more than I ever could’ve imagined, but totally worth it. What is bringing you down? What strong holds you on those days you wake up and say to yourself, “I’m going to make today a good day” and then bam! that strong force takes you down. Identifying the underlying negative things/people/relationships/jobs…are essential in the beginning stages of a more positive life…at least, for me it was.

If you give more than 50 percent positive thoughts and feelings instead of negative, you have reached a tipping point. Even if you just give 51 percent good thoughts and good feelings, you have tipped the scales of your life! -The Power