How Do You Look For The Good Things In Life?

I don't watch the news very much (aka really ever) because I find it very depressing. I still manage to be well aware of government shutdowns and what is going on globally, but I choose to remove myself from having to hear about the worst examples of human behavior on a daily basis. I find myself wishing we had news channels devoted to all of the kind and touching things that people do for one another. A place to hear about all of the helping hands that are reached out, the heroic acts that occur all the time, and even the daily accomplishments of me, you and your neighbors.

I would much rather hear about the good things that people do for one another than how a celebrity treated their daughter poorly or who is divorcing who. There are so many more grand acts of character and happy endings occurring than we end up going through our days believing. We can easily get caught thinking that the world isn't a safe place and that people aren't good when that's where our focus is turned to on a constant basis.

It seems somehow we get socialized to look for what is wrong with things. One of the best examples I've heard Abraham-Hicks give (and I paraphrase) is the story of the woman who visited a new town for the first time.  A town filled with great shops and cool buildings and a palpable energy, but that had a pothole in the road which she drove her car over and that ends up being the thing that sticks out for her so when she tells people about the town the description becomes "well it's full of potholes."

We aren't taught to look for the good in things. We aren't reminded everyday to think and talk about the positive aspects of our jobs, our friends, our spouses, our homes, our health! The norm is to complain, to pick out what we don't like in others because they're not like us or doing things the way we think they should be doing them. We are not educated on how to allow others to live their life experiences as they desire to and then expect others to let us do the same. We measure our own actions on whether they will be acceptable to others so people will like us. Doctors don't remind us to be sure to talk about how well our bodies work too.

I am not saying that life is only full of rainbows and smiles or that bad things don't happen and that things can't be improved upon. But when the negative is what we habitually see first, it can make the way we look at life seem a lot darker than it is or has to be. If we can exercise the muscle of looking for what works, for what feels good in our bodies, for complimenting and appreciating others for the things they do, for noticing the beauty in our surroundings, then those things become what we see first.

There will always be room for discussion on improvement. That is not going to stop because we live in a growing and expanding universe. But we can make ourselves aware of deliberately looking for the positive aspects in everything around us first. We are intelligent beings, we know when there is something flat out harmful that we label as such. But we are not going to be unsafe when we look first for what is good. Imagine how you would feel turning on the television and hearing only of good news for a change. Take the challenge and for the next few days notice and talk about only the positive attributes of the things in your life. What you think and talk about expands what you have in your life, so being conscious of making that what's best in your life can bring about some wonderful things!

Feeling Pressure To Be Positive?

In a session with a client the other day we were talking about a particular work situation she had encountered that made her feel bad. And I was asking her some probing questions and having her bring up some things about her work that were positive and that made her feel good. And after a few moments she said to me “but sometimes I just want to be able to feel the way I feel.” And I was so glad she said that because it helped me to clarify something for her.  That she is absolutely 100% allowed to feel her feelings. And she should feel her feelings! By helping her to focus on more positive aspects of her job I was simply trying to help her to see the other side of the coin, not tell her how she should feel.

It seems that when people start doing any kind of affirmative work or begin using the power of positive thinking or embarking on a path of personal growth and development it can come with some pressure to be positive. And while I see limitless goodness in focusing on the positive,  that does not mean that people are not allowed to feel what they are feeling. I can often be heard saying to clients “where you are is where you are. And that’s OK.” The work that I am leading folks to however is to not get STUCK in those bad feeling or negative places.

I believe that we need to feel and process what were are experiencing. I don’t think it’s healthy to pretend that we feel great when there is underlying stuff going on and then to use feeling “positive” as a Bandaid. Allowing yourself to feel what you feel is a matter of processing your feelings. For example, someone at my client’s job said something that offended her and hurt her feelings. Should she pretend it didn’t and that she feels just hunky-dory? No, I don’t believe so. But what I recommended to her is feel how you need to and then let it go. Don’t hang on to that anger. Hanging on to negativity can (and probably will) make you sick. 

And that’s where positive thinking comes in. It’s about where your focus is. I asked her if there were people at her job that told her things that made her feel good and she said yes. And then I asked her which feels better, to think about the things that made her feel good or that felt bad? She answered to think about the things that feel good. So that’s where I asked her to keep her focus. Those thoughts were a matter of choice for her and it was within her control to decide to focus on the negative or the positive.

This is different than looking at the glass half empty or half full. When encountering  a situation and then choosing how to look at it, I would absolutely then recommend the glass half full because most of the time what we believe will come to pass most certainly will. So why not expect the best! If you’re afraid to expect the best because you don’t want to be disappointed I can pretty much assure you that expecting the worst will leave you feeling worse than some potential disappointment and if disappointment is going to come why preface it with negative expectations? How does that really serve you? People think it keeps them safe or being realistic but it actually ends up making them feel unhappy.

This work that asks you to look at the positives in your life is not about pressure to feel good all of the time. No one feels good ALL of the time. But all emotional states are transient. They only become static when we choose to hold on to the anger, pain, fear, blame, or any negative emotions. We consciously choose to hold on to those emotions and they don’t feel good so why not choose to hold on to the better feeling emotions? There is always another side of the coin, the work is to be conscious of looking for it so it becomes about moving through what doesn’t feel good to choosing to focus on what does. And it’s that place where I believe staying positive leads to a happier and healthier life experience.