Surrounding yourself with Positivity

Jannik Drescher
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

What is it about our surroundings that impacts us so profoundly? What is this voice which adjusts itself along the environment our soul finds itself in? To me, it is fascinating, how much impact the people around can have on your own attitude and life. Stories are unavoidable connected with perspective. You´d be surprised in how many ways a story can be told. If you want to know for yourself. Observe two children argue and then let each of them tell you their side of the story. Or, on a grander scale, just watch the news when the next crisis is being reported on. It goes beyond reason how politicians and government officials try to spin the web to the public so that we believe them.

So, why is a positive environment so important? And how can it benefit you?

A Lake

What you can see in the main picture of the article is me standing in front of a lake in Joensuu, Finland which was taken on a hike yesterday . If you´d ask me for the name of this lake, I could not give you an answer, Google Maps says Onkilampi, but that is what they call all their lakes here, it translates to fishing pond, hence the illustrious name. But if my country had 187.888 lakes, I would run out of names at some point as well. I was not the only person at the lake though. With me were, obviously the person who took this great picture, and also a group of roughly 40 people who had all so kindly taken the time to join me on this what would turn out to be a five-hour instead of a two-hour walk. Everyone was incrementally friendly and positive and outgoing, and I enjoyed every minute of being with them. Do you know these points in a conversation when you think to yourself:”What is this? Why are we talking about this? Can you just shut up and stop saying nonsense?” I think that a lot. At my university in Germany I used to get frustrated over such insubstantial conversations. The only thing they do for me is stealing the most crucial resource I possess, time.
But yesterday, it felt different. Instead, the active exchange about our cultural differences and all sorts of things, activities and jokes led this to become a fantastic experience, one which I cannot wait to undertake again.

A Walk

Digital-Media Mogul Gary Vaynerchuk recently released a video of one of his K-Swiss-meetups where he talks to a young kid of 14 years of age about the very term I associate so much with yesterday´s event: Positivity. When hearing the kid´s story for the first time, I was in a bad state in life, things did not particularly well for me. But seeing what´s this kid has been through in his young 14 years, I thought that I could not just sit here and wallow and wonder. There is people who had it far, FAR worse than I did. And they were still going strong. This led me to another term or rather phenomenon which not only I but the kid in the video also needed to hear: Perspective. “When it´s shit around you, you have to make it positive in your head.” We are rarely in control what is happening all around us. Experiences which we cannot anticipate will happen and they will strike us like a lion will ambush the gazelle at broad day light, they will tear us apart in every way possible. That is the part we cannot control. However, the part we are in control over is, and I have talked about this in my other articles, is that we control our response to the inevitable tragedy.
When I made my way to Finland, I promised to myself that I would leave the veil of unnecessary darkness and negativity behind in Germany. And so I did something, I had never done before. I forced myself into positivity by organizing a walk. And surprisingly, it worked.

Awake

Where do you go when you need peace? You don´t know what to do?
I found out that the place where I feel comfortable around is in good company. Some people prefer the solitude and I do too, from time to time, but I feel like where I can really learn and develop myself is by communicating with other humans. That is where I feel alive. Every period of solitude feels like a peaceful sleep, however being among people, gives me a fresh feeling of waking up from a dream and kicks me back into reality. And in the end, dreaming is something you can do as much as you like, but it will only manifest if you put it into action in the real world. It´s a common story. So, when I decided to organize this hike, it was not only out of need to be with people but out of the deep desire for a new perspective, a yearning for discovery and the ability to spread positivity. Besides a beautiful lake which you can see in this picture, I perceived something I hadn’t for a long time: Peace. An aura of tranquility and silence was emitted by the environment and being in the center of it was an incredible experience like none other. Sights like these have a fascinating veneer to them, it was something so peaceful, so intense and so fundamentally sense-stimulating, that a day later, I still find myself lacking the ability to put it into words.
Some experiences you have to feel yourself to understand them. And that involves confronting yourself with reality to, after the walk or the climb be able to immerse yourself in positivity and the newly found positivity gained from that. So, what are you waiting for?

Plant the seed, cultivate the plant and reap the crops.