Keeping your Positive Vibes
How do you protect your vibes and help lift others?
We live in a world that is not within our control. It is internal wisdom to know that we can only control ourselves and our own attitude. Keeping our positive vibes is within our control.
Have you noticed that sometimes we start off in a good mood and then we encounter someone else in a bad mood, and we feel like we just got dumped on? We got sucked into their vortex of bad vibes because we were not prepared to guard our own vibes. And sometimes we create our own bad vibes, and we need to get ourselves out of it.
Facing life challenges and dealing with negative people and bad situations is real. Keeping our good vibes is not about having an immunity to these situations, but to be aware that we have a choice to work through these life challenges with positive good vibes.
No matter what it is, how do we handle it and keep up our good attitude when we encounter negativity? Some people are stuck in their own negativity because they are unaware or are blocked from seeing themselves. They need their time and other triggering events for them to be more aware. We can only be patient with these people and learn how to keep up our own positive energy.
Here are some of the visual ways I use to keep my good vibes. Visualize what works for you. Let’s put out good vibes and be the peace we wish to see in our world.
Shield yourself. Be ready. Imagine your positive bubble. Shielding ourselves with love, mindfulness, awareness, calm, positive vibes and not to take anything personally.
Nobody can bring you peace but yourself. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
We expand the good energy field when we meet another good energy field. We feel in sync with the other person.
Here are some situations that can throw us off our good vibes or help us justify our bad vibes, negativity towards others; and how we may prepare ourselves with our tools to handle it in order to stay in our good vortex.
- Situations: Encountering someone who is in a bad mood, venting negativity, being insulting. Encountering negativity as a 3rd party or finding ourselves in a group of negative people. When anger and negativity comes through on the telephone.
How do we keep our positive vibes? If possible, excuse yourself. If it is not possible to excuse yourself, bring total consciousness to yourself. Be fully aware and awake inside to build your shield and repeat mentally “This is not about me and I will stay in my positive vortex.” Focus on your breathing and relax your stomach. The other person will run out of steam much faster and will not enjoy venting to you after a while because you did not react. Instead your positive energy may lift the other person up. - Situation: Hearing some bad news regarding our health, our financial situations etc.
How do we keep our positive vibes? We are human. This type of news usually impacts us and brings us down. The goal is to have our tools to lift us up when we cannot change the facts. How do we accept and embrace the truth? Do you have a trusted inspiring confidante to talk to help lift you up? Do you meditate? Being negative will not solve the problems and will retard your ability to come up with solutions. - Situation: Hating our work, our job, our boss, our co-workers
How do we keep out positive vibes? Shifting our focus to see these problems as lessons is a good start in changing our vibes. Ask yourself — does ruining my own day living in negativity make me happy or change my situation? Just shifting our attitude to see our situation as temporary will allow us to focus on solutions than to remain steeped in our current situations. If we stay in our bad vibes, nothing good can be attracted to us anyway, because what we feel and focus on expands! If we can see any situation as a lesson to learn, and believe in our own possibilty to change, life will flow and nothing can disturb our good vibes. - Situation: Just having a bad day, feeling stressed, feeling pressured by life.
How do we keep out positive vibes? Changing my bad day is only one perspective away. What can I be grateful for? Do I have a roof over my head? Am I healthy? Do I love anyone? Can I help anyone? When we can feel grateful, and we can think of someone else or do something to help another person, suddenly our bad vibes can shift.
Working through life challenges with positive energy is much more productive than to be angry about circumstance that have happened, and that we cannot undo. We can only SOLVE FORWARD the best we can, and not dump on others in frustration.
Being happy does not mean that we are never down. It means that we know how to lift ourselves up when we need to.
It is hard to sustain our good vibes when we are feeling stressed, anxious and pressured by work or other life circumstances. It takes a daily practice to remind us. Even 1 intentional minute of attention to a practice is amazing.
We all have the same 24 hours. MAKE TIME FOR YOU. We all can find at least 5 minutes to ourselves everyday — that is 5 times during the day that we can take 5 to 6 deep breaths for a minute. Use the alarm on the cell phone! It benefits you and everyone around you.
Below are my tools to sustain me in mindfulness. It’s not easy to remember our tools sometimes. I read my list often so I remember to cultivate and sustain my good vibes to live an inspired day.
Be willing to explore for yourself, to figure what works for you. BE INTENTIONAL.
1. MEDITATE — my quiet time to sit & breathe for 5 mins to 20 mins early in the morning. I define meditation very broadly. Anytime that I am INTENTIONAL about silence and freeing my mind is my meditation. I also love the guided meditation with “Great Meditation” channel on YouTube. We can all meditate in a way that works for us.
2. LISTEN to what inspires me: audio book, talks, mantras or chants. I always have materials that I can easily get to. Even 1 minute can serve as a reminder.
3. BE in Nature — nature can be looking at the sky, at a tree, at a flower! It takes 1 minute to observe nature to feel the sense of awe around us.
4. WALK and taking pictures of nature, or observe the world. Looking at something new can shift our awareness. Just walking one block outside can make all the difference in the world in grounding us.
5. WRITE down my thoughts, or a gratefulness statement– very peaceful, it’s like talking to the paper! Journaling can sound like it’s too much. Writing down(copying) quotes or affirmations is a great exercise. In 5 minutes we can write a lot. From our hands, our mind gets infused with new thoughts.
6. READ my inspirational books — Find one that speaks to you, and don’t read it — study it. Ask yourself — am I living and practicing what I am reading? It is tough but keep studying for yourself. Read inspirational quotes and reflect on them.
7. SEEK BEAUTY — browsing my pictures of nature and paying attention to seek beauty soaks me in the beauty of our world.
8. TAKE TIME OUT to go have a cup of coffee myself in a coffee shop. Or to have lunch by myself.
9. COLOR — it’s peaceful and meditative. Take a coloring break.
10. SIT and BREATHE— being purposeless in a purposeful way. You can sit anywhere, anytime! Sit and imagine setting down “all the loads” you are carrying. Feel lighter. Give your shoulders a break. You can call it meditation, but it sounds more simple to “sit.”
11. DO A YOGA POSE— My favorite yoga pose is the warrior pose. It is calming to hold a pose.
12. MOVE , DANCE— Do one move you love. Squats, push ups, jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers or put on your favorite music and dance. It moves our energy around and keep us present.
Most of these can be incorporated anytime. The key is in the doing! Set a reminder on your smart phone! It can be as short as 60 seconds. It’s not the quantity, it’s the intention and attention. And as we focus our attention on it, our practice will grow. We get in a groove, form a habit and it becomes part of who we are. Mindful human beings!
