Well gee, here we are. I’m zooming around the bend of the latest trend of twenty years ago and starting my very own blog. How novel and exciting!
OK. So enough of that. You see how I poked fun at myself in those first few sentences? That’s the old me. This blog is coming at you from the new me. The one that is 100% happy, positive, and productive all the time, every second of every minute of every
OK. So that’s not exactly true either.
Without a doubt, there are real benefits to having a positive outlook. And while my confusing stumble at the start of this post—see, there I do it again!—may have seemed to present conflicting viewpoints, I can explain.
I strongly believe in the power of positive thinking. It transforms everything we do in life. It may be an old adage that makes our eyes roll, but there is real value to seeing a glass as half full rather than half empty. The sun shines brighter, the grass is greener, the flowers smell more fragrant. Grey skies are going to clear up…really!
That said, I’m also a realist. At times, life sucks. We might not have enough of the things we want in life, or worse, the things that we need. Or, we might have chemical balances in our brains that lead us to be unhappy, despite having the same things as our neighbor. Or, we might have parts of our body that don’t function as well as they do for others, or at all. Or, we might live in a country or city that doesn’t respect our rights, or give us freedom. Or we might live without the comfort of food on the table or shelter from the elements. So I also recognize that simply *telling* a person to be happy, to be more positive, isn’t going to do a darn thing, especially when we don’t understand or appreciate that person’s individual experience. Words aren’t enough. They ring hollow. How is a person supposed to be happy when they are watching their child grow up without access to an education, or when they can’t afford healthy food, or when their sister has cancer, or when their friends die in a shooting?
Here’s the thing. I grew up around a lot of negativity. Like, a lot. And I didn’t really have parents around during the formative years of my life, as my parents got divorced when I was young and my ma worked second shift and my dad was basically MIA for about a decade. And when they were around, discussion involved things that were wrong with the (well, my) world—my ma’s shitty job and pay, how awful the coworkers/bosses were, battles about child support payments. And all of that is to say nothing of popular media, which deals in drugs degradation and death like a dope dealer slingin’ dimebags. Even if we didn’t have things wrong in our own lives, we’re drip-fed tragedy.
To be fair, both my parents did work hard, and they did provide for me, and I count myself extremely fortunate in that regard. And I feel lucky to have a good relationship with both of them now in the present. But all of these negative things affected my outlook on life, which was exacerbated by the fact that I was predisposed toward depression in the first place. These parts of my life caused me to be more suspicious of people. They instilled fear. They assured me that chaos is rampant, and that the powers that be are the only thing standing in the path of destruction. They made me mad at everything…when I heard the aforereferenced song “Grey skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face” I wanted to toss the singer off a bridge. They taught me that I needed to escape from this horrible world with alcohol and cigarettes and cough syrup and a cornucopia of drugs. And I know I’m not alone in falling into the trap of numbing oneself to avoid dealing with the pain; many of us do it every day, even if we don’t realize it.
How do we cope? We adapt. We integrate those mentalities into our daily thinking without realizing it. We begin to view things with an air of pessimism, with a belief that we are meant to be where we are and that things will never change. This submissive mentality drastically impacts on our ability to be happy, and to make others happy.
So here’s the deal. We need to have a more positive outlook on life. True, we need to work at it, and it doesn’t come cheap. It can absolutely be work at times. But succeed, and you will reap unfathomable rewards. Once you start to walk the path, it’s like a new world, one that was always there but that you only saw through the looking glass.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately—the power of positive thinking, and how so many things in our life can cause us to forget about that power and instead default to negative tendencies. So, I’ve started this blog as a way for me to work out my own thinking on the subject while hopefully inspiring some positivity in others as well. I’ve learned so many things *The Hard Way,* but I really didn’t need to, and neither do you. That means you can look forward to many upcoming posts about how to achieve a more positive outlook—including my own regular stumbles along the way—along with tips and tools to help you get there yourself. I’ll also throw in the occasional off-topic post because, well, this blog is also about me, and that means a bit of color now and again.
Live gratitude. Do something for someone else. Feel good about your life. Make the most of it.
🙂