Good and Bad Energy

I’m a big believer in a concept that I call good and bad energy. Another way to look at it could be positive and negative energy. This is starting to sound a bit too new-agey for me, although looking at it practically makes it easier for me to just roll with it by pushing past the new age filter and write about the topic.

I think it’s a pretty simple concept and I highly doubt I’m breaking new ground here. In my experience, when I’m feeling good, positive, happy, and upbeat, things just tend to go better and more smoothly. I find that being well rested helps this a lot. The fact I allowed myself an extra hour of sleep this morning could be one reason I decided to write about this topic today ☺

Conversely, when I’m feeling not so good, positive, happy, and upbeat, things tend to not go so well and things feel like more of a struggle, even small things.

So I guess the simple answer is to always stay feeling good, positive, happy, and upbeat, right? Simple, however not really realistic or easy, at least in my experience!

I do find that trying to focus on the positive, when at all possible, goes a very long way. My experience has been that it’s very easy to focus on the negative and that’s what society as a whole, especially through mass media, tends to push us toward the negative, rather than the positive.

It also seems to me like people are usually more comfortable connecting on a negative topics, rather than a positive topics, e.g. how crappy the weather is, how someone from a sports team screwed up and isn’t worth what they’re paid, how someone with more perceived power (car mechanic) has wronged someone with less perceived power (car owner), and on and on.

Maybe some of this is harmless venting and healthy in some way or maybe I’m not bumping into the right people enough! I’m not quite sure. I also respect the fact that each of us have our own life experiences that shape how we interact with ourselves and the larger world.

I do know that, even though it may seem Pollyannish (is that a word?!) to some, I try and avoid or redirect these conversations to something more positive when possible and usually feel better as a result.

I do know that I feel better when I’m in the groove of focusing on positive, rather than negative aspects, so that’s what I choose to try and do. This doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the negative things going on around me or unprepared to react to them. This would be ignoring a very primal instinct of self-preservation that I’m very closely tuned in to. Trying to focus on the positive simply means to me that when given a choice and in the right mindset, I try and see the good in a situation, rather than focus on the bad. I find that the choice is usually and almost always mine to make and the challenge can be being in the right mindset.

In turn, when I’m able to focus on the positive, I find that my store of good energy increases and the bad energy decreases. This can create a virtuous cycle, as the good energy makes it easier to focus on positive things, generating more good energy, and so on and so on. If given a choice, which I believe most of us are, most of the time, I’d rather spend my energy trying to feed this virtuous cycle, knowing that the investment of energy has a chance of multiplying and producing more good energy, rather than just shoveling my energy down a hole of draining negativity.

Namaste…just kidding, well sort of ;)