This Positivity Shit
There’s a new trend in town. Positivity is becoming rampant as people begin to broaden their awareness and wake up from the slumber of absolute ignorance. That’s a great thing, but sometimes, like we have a tendency to do, we must try to fuck up a good thing.
Let us first note: acting positive and being positive are not the same. This distinction feels most real when you’re wiping someone’s positives vibes off your face. Of course acting positive does have it’s benefits. It’s better than being negative, but it’s not quite positive.
Have you noticed it’s becoming kinda cool to have your shit together? Judgmental negative people (haters) who just want to get together and complain about petty bullshit are becoming a thing of the past. There are still plenty of miserable factions around, but they are starting to become the minority in a sea of happy optimistic hopeful cheery people who don’t claim to be dead inside. It’s not cool to be dead inside, and perhaps more importantly, it’s not even possible to be dead inside because we are life itself. So, there’s that.
If you’re existing on this planet right now, and because you’re reading this, let’s go with that, then you must have noticed an increase in positivity. People are on an organic life coach fitness guru starseed reiki healer wellness consultant etsy shop lifestyle blogger entrepreneur mixtape uber driver startup incubator airbnb host movement. Let’s be real, you can’t attend a family gathering without having that one cousin who is “self- employed” (hopefully you’re the cousin). The point is: things are changing. The way we live is changing. As the collective consciousness elevates, we are all waking up and remembering the true state of things. And guess what? That’s a fucking process.
It’s only natural to “fake it until you make it.” When you look around at your life and you see your parents living unfulfilled lives (yet wanting to dispense advice continually on how you should be living yours), when your $250,000 master’s degree means nothing (as you work a job that has nothing to do with your degree and still can’t afford to support yourself), when political institutions have become a joke, when people are being denied basic human rights, and when our mistreatment of the environment and the destruction of the other life on this planet has us on the brink of our own extinction, how can we be expected to be positive?
Understand first that nothing is that serious. Relax. Breathe. None of this is even real.
This video game we call life has amazing HD graphics, but that doesn’t make it real. Of course it’s extremely convincing. How else would we create it? We wouldn’t stay here very long if the graphics were shitty.
We would know right away that it wasn’t real, so we would play differently and thus, rob ourselves of the beautiful experience of life. Part of the allure of this video game is that we do not know we are in a video game, and even when we become aware that it is a video game, the graphics are so good that we forget all over again.
This allows us to continue playing. Let’s face it. We love the drama of it all. We are addicted to it. We come to the physical universe so that we can choose to be who we really are and thus experience it, but we simply wouldn’t make that choice without something to choose from. Here, we choose the opposite. If we want to experience hot, we must first know cold. If we want to experience light, we must first know dark. If we choose to be love, we must first know fear. Relativity is fun, and here’s the fun part. We are love all the time. We always have been, are now, and always will be love. We can’t not be who we already are, but we can willingly forget, so that we can remember and experience ourselves for who we truly are.
Ok, so we are kicking ass at forgetting who we really are. The voluntary amnesia is too real around here.
Forgetting gives us the choice to become who we already are.
Positivity is a choice. Every moment affords us the opportunity to choose to be who we really are, and when we get right down to it, we only have two choices to choose from. Call the choices whatever you like: love/fear, positive/negative, happy/sad, peaceful/angry, etc. However you label them, you will still find there are only two choices. Choose positivity because that’s who we really are, not because #powerofpositivity is trending on instagram.
Social media has provided a platform for positivity to go viral.
Let’s explore the double edged sword of that phenomenon. On the one hand, there are people who genuinely seek self improvement. People are realizing the power of their thoughts, words, feelings, and actions, and correlating how these tools are used in the creation of the reality they experience. This is a wonderful awakening, the true benefits of which we are just beginning to see. Imagine a world full of people taking responsibility for the events and circumstances they attract into their lives. This is where true personal power comes from.
“The first step in changing anything is to know and accept that you have chosen it to be what it is. If you can’t accept this on a personal level, agree to it through your understanding that We are all One. Seek then to create change not because a thing is wrong, but because it no longer makes an accurate statement of Who You Are. There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are.” — Conversations With God Book One by Neale Donald Walsch
When we admit that we are the cause of our experience rather than the effect of it, everything changes. We choose to look at things positively because we realize we are the creator of the things. We attracted the things into our lives, which means if we do not like the things, we have the power to change the things. Looking at our reality negatively is just like looking at a meal we have prepared and complaining that it tastes like shit. Well, who’s fault is that? Who made it?
Oh sure, we could blame Alex Guarnaschelli’s recipe, but we know that’s not right, mostly because she’s a saint and can do no wrong in the kitchen. So, if the meal tastes like shit, blaming someone else and complaining about it certainly won’t make it taste better. Rather, looking at the process and seeing what we could do better next time, or trying to salvage it by squeezing Sriracha all over it, are much more positive productive ways to approach the situation. After all, we are making an announcement to the universe of who we are. Are we going to be positive or negative? Are we going to stay happy in the face of calamity, optimistic in the face of adversity, peaceful in the face of disharmony, or allow ourselves to be the purveyor of pessimistic bad vibes?
Social media has provided a platform for negativity to go viral.
People are flocking to social media in an attempt to share their every thought, selfie, and meal with the world, and as a result, there has erupted a lazy battle of positivity vs negativity. I call it a lazy battle because, come on, how much energy does it take to type a ridiculous comment on someone’s post?
It takes a very special type of sedentary asshole lousy with a self loathing malaise and an abundance of false confidence and gross entitlement to leave a potentially damaging comment on another person’s business. Mind your business. The internet has given people just the right amount of anonymity and the social disconnect necessary to promulgate this behavior. Social media apps have put the experience in the palm of our hands and how soon we forget that a screen name is attached to another human being. We must not blame social media though. The platform functions perfectly. User error is the problem.
So, keep on snappin and tweetin, grammin and facebookin. We gotta fix ourselves. Like I said, it’s a fucking process, and we are making progress. That’s where positivity and negativity meet. I mean in order to get to Positiveville, we first venture off to Negativetown, but as we make the journey back to our hometown Positiveville, we cross through a “buffer zone”. Let’s call it Fake Deepland. This is where a majority of the social media population resides right now.
This is not a place for us to set up shop y’all. This is a place for us to pass through. This is the progress in action. There is an ever expanding group of people with the courage to fake it until they make it.
Let’s be real. We have been left a legacy of problems from our previous generations. They passed on their ways of thinking (wow thanks). They left us their beliefs (such a thoughtful gift), and we have inherited the results of those beliefs — war, oppression, poverty, famine, environmental crisis, etc.
It’s time to make our way back home and experience the very positive unconditional love that we deserve — the love that we are. It’s time to think, speak, and act in a new way.
But how? It’s great that we have identified the problem, but how do we solve it? It’s going to take a lot more than identifying the problem. It’s part of the process, but talking about it only takes us so far. When you think about the power of our words and the power of our attention, we really can’t afford to talk about it for too much longer. It’s only time to act. I mean the fire department doesn’t sit outside of a burning building and talk about the fire. They go handle it as fast as they can because they know for sure that time is a factor. The clock is ticking and something must be done. This positivity shit must be more than a trend.
Positivity is not a trend. It’s a lifestyle.
“It’s a relationship with life. It’s an understanding that you are ALL of this, that you are one with life,” states Chris Adams, CEO/co-founder of dreamr — the world’s first social platform to connect it’s users around their dreams and aspirations ~ dreamrapp.com. “Positivity powers dreams. It’s the energy that propels life forward. It’s a way of life. Because of this, dreamr was built on a foundation of positivity and has built-in ways to deal with negative people and situations. We just don’t tolerate the bullshit. We are about progression. It’s our priority to provide people the opportunity to build a new network of positivity, support, and encouragement while connecting over what matters most — our dreams.”
Social media with a positive purpose can change the world.
I know it sounds like a dream, a big one, but think about how social media connects us. More so than any other time in recorded history, people all over the planet are connecting. What if we leveraged all of that connection for the evolution of humanity and the assurance of a better world for our future generations? Just imagine the possibilities.
“Empathetic people — dreamers & idealists — have this sort of accidental power. Most spend their early years ridden with self-doubt, insecurity, and people pleasing habits. But their journey is inevitably derailed when this comfortable life gets uprooted by an unexpected darkness. Suddenly their trusted methods no longer seem to bring them happiness. At first this depression convinces them that they might never feel joyful again. But ultimately, it sets them on a quest for something more — for love, justice, and wisdom. Once this adventure begins, there is no stopping a dreamer. And when dreamers unite? Well, that’s how we start to change the world.” — Unknown Author
