It’s maybe presumed that because I write negatively occasionally that I am a negative person, I am really not. Indeed, were I not such a positive person I think I should have gone mad years ago!
Those who know me well enough occasionally get infuriated by my positivity, when all they can see is negativity I jump in with an alternative more positive synopsis of a situation. Sometimes I even use a whole selection of stupendously long words, you may have noticed that?
Now, I have mentioned in other entries that, now and then, stuff really is sort of poo, there is no point asking someone to think of the positives in their life because, right at that moment they need to let go of the negatives first, it’s easier than it sounds. I use visualisation as one tool, breathing methods is another, writing yet another. Adding up all the positives doesn’t always work, maths and the mind don’t always come to the same answer.
So, when we have a negative, it’s worth asking someone else if they can see any way that this negative can be worked in our favour. In the same way as manure can be used to grow wonderful plants, perhaps our own life manure (not from the toilet please) can be used to help build our own future?
As an experiment, and this can’t, as far as I am aware, happen … try to imagine, if you will, that you have a time machine. Don’t complicate things, there is only one time machine and only you know about it. Think of a time in your life when you felt bad, a time in your life you wish didn’t happen. In your mind go back and change it, how ever you feel you would rather that would have gone. Done that? Good, now, I want you to take an honest look at your life from this new point, are you absolutely certain that change you just made won’t have affected any aspect of your current life you get some value from?
I can count on one hand the amount of things I could change with little to no impact upon my future. I can’t go back and stop my mother dying, it would change everything I now know. I can’t get that job in New York I regret not getting, that would really have changed everything. Losing my first boyfriend to a misunderstanding? I’d have no kids or grandkids now if I did that.The list goes on and those are just the events I can sort of predict the outcomes from.
How about those times I got delayed somewhere? How can I be sure that the delay didn’t actually save my life? All those bad sexual partner choices? I know now what I don’t want! All that pain as a kid? I learnt empathy. Caring for years? I learnt to put others first, how to deal with puke, poo and being hit without taking it personally. Being gay? I now know to respect difference. Years of homophobic abuse? I accept there is real evil in the world, not everyone is a friend.
You see, from just about every negative there will be a positive outcome if we just step back and look for it. We’ll go through pain until we see it but, it’s there all the same.
When we read negativity don’t distance yourself from that person, offer them something instead, some of your time. Time means so much, more than we ever really appreciate until we get it offered to us freely, time is the start of switching from negative to positive.