You will win every time you stay positive in a negative situation
The difference is what we see and how we interpret it
When was the last time you experienced a negative situation? Recall the event as best you can and think about how you responded. Did you get caught up in negativity or were you serene? Depending on the event, can you see how worry and anxiety drive you to despair? It’s natural to respond negatively when a condition gets out of hand, particularly when we least expect it. A tirade of negative thoughts arises and we find ourselves unable to free ourselves from them. I want to assure you that this is normal due to the mind’s inherent negativity bias. It is an evolutionary mechanism that has helped humanity evolve for thousands of centuries. However, he becomes a danger when he works against us.
Each of us has experienced a negative situation at some point. Unfortunately, some people experience them more than others and get caught up in victim thinking. Perception is everything because what you seek, you will find. The power of free will means that we can perceive something as bad in a good situation and complain about it. Someone else will find the good in a negative situation and use it to their advantage. The important thing is how we interpret what we see. For example, I was reading my book reviews on Amazon recently and noticed that someone had left me a one star review on my book, Awaken Your Authentic Self. If you buy books on Amazon, you’ll be familiar with a feature called Look Inside. This allows the user to preview the content of the book before purchasing it. The reviewer mistakenly attributed this non-working feature as something I participated in.
To be clear, this is Amazon’s domain as they create, manage, and host their own website. As the author, my publisher lists the book on Amazon and I have no involvement in the sale or management of its content. I felt a wave of negative emotions wash over me when I read the review as there was little I could do to resolve it. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes things happen that are out of our control, and while we may be innocent, we still have a choice of how to respond. Getting stuck in negativity is of little use because it won’t change the outcome. Even if I get angry, I am allowing external conditions to dictate my happiness.
Life is neither fair nor unfair
Can you identify with this narrative in your own life? Has something similar happened where you were innocent and although you tried to rectify the situation, you were of little help? This is when we can succumb to negativity because we have been wronged. However, we have a choice and it may not be the easiest to do, but it is the best choice for our peace of mind. Anger and negativity reinforce a mindset of despair because we feel that the transgression is intentionally perpetrated. Listen, sometimes bad things happen to good people. Similarly, people believe that life is unfair. Life is neither fair nor unfair; it beats regardless of how much you try to change its nature. I do not mean that we are insignificant in the scheme of things. Rather, things are meant to happen, and it is not the event itself that fuels our suffering, but the choice of our response that dictates whether we remain at peace or get caught up in the storm. Are you comfortable with the idea that seeing life as fair or unfair does not help you in difficult times? The question we must ask ourselves is: What am I called to know about this situation? How can I evolve from what is happening?
Therefore, you win every time you stay positive in a negative situation because life will drive us to despair given the chance. Negativity is a stone’s throw away. Everyone will tell you how difficult life can be, but rarely do we hear stories of a life full of joy and happiness. Even comments on social media today have become an outlet for moral outrage and social injustice. But this is not helping anyone, apart from leading us to despair because we are drawn into this fictional sense of injustice in the world. Surely what you read enough is bound to create your reality, and for some, social media is their only platform for information. I met a client whose only source of information was Facebook, so all of her news and information was directed to her area of interest. She didn’t read books but preferred Facebook as her source of knowledge, sadly most of it was negative. With this in mind, I’d like you to think about the previous example of a recent negative event in her life. Ask yourself the questions I posed in the penultimate paragraph and write down what comes up. It is by being positive in a negative situation that we win the day and overcome the negativity of the world. What will you choose?