Are You Positive About Positive Thinking?
“Think positively.”
Not exactly a groundbreaking thought is it? Like anything that’s been repeated enough, the simple instruction to think positively has lost a lot of its novelty. Not everyone is as sold on it anymore. We are no longer living in the 1950s when people will blindly say, “Oh! Ok! What a good idea, I’ll do that!”, and proceed to live a life of depression tucked behind a branded, toothy smile. There’s much less conformity these days. People are speaking up. It’s mostly for the sake of gaining attention by whining incessantly, but still, ideas are being challenged and that’s a good thing.
The only problem with ideas being challenged, however, is our need for drama. That is, drastic changes that go from black to white, skipping over the gray and flipping things completely upside down for the sake of new discovery as opposed to looking at them from a different, yet truthful angle.
The same is true of positive thinking. Realists will argue that positive thinking is a hokey waste of time — that it’s cute, but only for people that are too weak to handle the struggle of reality. But realists fear being vulnerable enough to believe in the spontaneity of romance in case it doesn’t work out for them.
Romanticists, however, will argue that positive thinking is the only way to approach anything — that by staying positive you can drive through pain, always stay on the sunny side of life and ultimately make any life you want for yourself. But romanticists fear life shaking them into something they don’t want in case reality doesn’t work out for them.
For many, the relationship to the classic idea of positive thinking, then, is rooted in fear. We either resist it out of fear that it’ll blow up in our face, or we cling to it because we don’t want to bear the pain of life not going the way we want it to.
I’m here to propose what I think positive thinking is really all about because it’s more layered than motivational hack jobs like myself make it out to be. With realists withdrawn to thinking that reality is noninclusive of abundant possibilities and romanticists withdrawn to thinking that they can will themselves away from pain, is there not potential that positivity and grief can coexist? Is it possible that these two can fuse together and make thinking positively more about learning positively?
If you’ll humor me on this, close your eyes (or not, I’ll never know). Take a second to think about what’s really dominating your life right now — any invasive thoughts or issues, whether you’ve labeled them as positive or negative. What’s running your life?
After you’ve got a few ideas, now try to look past what they’re doing to you, and instead consider what they’re trying to tell you — what you can learn from them and how they can balance you.
You can open your eyes now.
My guess is that there are few major somethings taking up most of your mental space and, because they’ve cycled through your brain a trillion times, it’s getting harder to see them in a new way. So try to think about how they’re taking you off balance.
Allow me to create an example by addressing a topic that’s becoming increasingly relevant to men around my age. Let’s talk about balding. If you’re starting to bald and you’re spending a lot of time envying those who have full heads of hair, is the envy not really an opportunity to take a step towards making peace with the things you’ve been given and that which you can’t control?
Taking this approach may not seem very different from what we’ve come to perceive as positive thinking, because at its core you’re still making the best of a situation you’d rather not be in. However, the reason many people have found positive thinking to be a bit stale is because normally in a situation like this the narrative would go something like, “Hey, but you still have a sick job. Think positively!”. Your worth is deflected elsewhere, and the truth is that you’ll only run out of places to deflect it. We see here, though, that positive thinking can be much more dynamic, not only because it’s inviting deliberate action to be taken, but also because it transforms the situation into something that can work for you, not just something you have to come to terms with. So it’s capitalizing on negativity rather than resisting it. It’s going past neutralizing you and instead propelling you forward. Enough time spent with this type of thinking will help you to realize that all of these things that suck in your life really only suck because you allow them to.
The same mindset can be applied to the flip side of the situation. So if you’re the last of your friends to have a full head of hair, is seeing them in times of joy not a reminder that although it’s great to feel confident about your hair, you don’t need to become attached and fear losing it because ultimately it won’t make you happy?
The key here, guys, is to identify when any happenings in your life take hold over you (whether it feels good or bad) and extract that energy into inner strength and values. Making a habit of this will make literally anything that happens to you advantageous, even if it’s a scenario that just serves as a reminder that you’re on the right track.
Now you might say, “But Greg, what about objectively bad and painful situations?”. Yes, I know. Trust me, I try to make this shit as bulletproof as I can. Let’s talk about it. I’d venture to guess that the death of a close family member is one of the most painful things each of us is likely to experience. Like I said before, you can’t will away pain, and positive thinking is not going to stop these things from happening. You also will not ever get to the point where you say, “Oh joy! My Mom died! What can I learn from this?!”
To grieve is human. To run the whole gamut of emotions is human. Do not try to avoid them. To not feel these things is to not be alive. It is ok to feel sadness, anger, jealousy, etc. Do not be frustrated with yourself for feeling things you’ve been feeling your entire life. Expecting these things to vanish makes no sense.
However, as I mentioned before, they can coexist with more positive thoughts, and all feelings of discomfort are absolutely laced with lessons. So if you experience the death of a loved one, take time to feel that. Take time to grieve. Be patient with yourself during all of these feelings. But when the time comes that you choose to start healing, you might say to yourself, “Hey. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time with family over the years as I’d like to, and now I’ll start doing that”, or, “Wow, life really is short. Maybe this is a reminder for me to start living the way I want to live and not be so afraid”. Believe it or not, the list goes on.
And that’s the size of it, guys. Every single thing happening to you is affecting you somehow, and if you can develop the habit of being patient and mindful enough to face and question all of these things (before or after you react), you will then have the opportunity to seek out what you can learn from them and therefore how they can serve you. This is the truth of positive thinking, and why the concept is not actually as trite and one dimensional as many have come to think it is.
