It's hard to watch the news. It seems like everything's going wrong. How do you stay positive when everything's going wrong? Let's take that on. It's a valid question, and we're all for optimism.
When everything is going wrong in this world, how do you stay positive?
Let's go to 5 specific things that you can do to increase your positivity when Something wrong. First of all, let's take a look at that. Things are going wrong? What do we mean by that?
Notice that we take that position sometimes because we have an expectation. And our expectation of how things should go is violated. That's how we know that things are going wrong.
I love that I get to illuminate. Because the process is in our mind are obvious once they're called to your attention but you don't even notice them until they're called to your attention. So notice that you're judging this to be wrong.
Realizing that you are judging your circumstances and determining that this is bad it's not the way that it should be.
Let's go to the next tip. This is going to be hard. I'll give you that disclaimer right upfront. Don't worry about the fact that it's hard. Just try it.
Practice saying this is good. Or some variation of that. Well, this is perfect for me. This is exactly how it should be.
You're going to practice saying that because your mind is saying something else. This isn't the way it should be. This is bad. The truth of the matter is it is what it is.
We put analysis on it and then we say that it's good or bad.
Painful is not necessarily bad. Thinking about it allowed us to experience joy at the moment. Enjoying pain sometimes come together. You ask any mom, she knows. It is extremely painful to go through childbirth. And as those children come into the world, in the midst of that pain is intense joy.
Let's separate the 2 in our minds. Pain and bad are not the same things. You can experience the joy. Take the position. "This is good. This is perfect. I'm right on schedule." Choose it on purpose and then practice it.
The next tip is, "Find the funny." Find the funny. Hilarious things are happening all around us in this world that we sometimes interpret as negative. What if we were to look for and find them funny? Would that help us to stay positive in a negative situation?
Absolutely. In fact, some of the most painful things that can happen to us after a period of healing can be looked back on as some of the funniest things that have happened to us. Finding the funny gives you stories and it adds richness to your life.
The next tip is to think about your thinking. Metacognition is the term that we use for this. And that's a fancy term. Metacognition is powerful because it creates a space. And in that space, is where choice exists.
Until we see it as a choice, it's not. The world is going to go on and do whatever the world does. And there will be crimes committed and there will be natural disasters that occur. It's part of our experience here.
Thinking about our thinking allows us to go higher than what we would normally think. "Oh, this is bad. we live in a terrible world." And we don't, we live in an amazing blessed world. And we can see that when we think about our thinking.
Notice how we're doing the 2 processes. Evaluation and creation. And you can't turn either one of them off. I'm not trying to tell you how to think. I honestly don't have that kind of authority. I want you to see what you are thinking. And take some responsibility for how you're operating the equipment here.
That's why metacognition, thinking about your thinking is so important. It puts you back in control and it gives you some element of choice. That's going to change the game for you. As you do that, you're going to make some realizations.
Some of them are going to be kind of painful. Because when you think about your thinking, you'll see very quickly that we all (You included.) fall into a paradigm. A worldview. A way of thinking and there's only 2.
All of the self-help books, all of the personal development, all of the psychology support this idea. There are 2 determinants paradigms. I label them noxious negativity or the victim paradigm versus pathological positivity or the agent paradigm. I've set them up that way.
The negative victim paradigm has us beaming and saying, "Why me?" And complaining and bellyaching about this terrible life that we have. And it creates captivity and stuckness. The positivity paradigm on this side, the agent paradigm is the exact opposite and it creates for us freedom.
We're instead of blame, we take responsibility. And instead of saying, "Why me?" We say, "Why not me?" We give them way too much power in the victim paradigm. Choose an agent paradigm and move forward with power. You're never wrong about how you feel.
How you feel is 100% consistent with the way your mind is doing the processes. And how are you supposed to feel when you're in pain? Well, you're supposed to feel pain.
If you're being abused or if you sprain your ankle or if somebody divorces you or if you go bankrupt. Whatever it is, you've got this. And you can stay positive. You guys get me fired up about this stuff. Because I know that you can do it. You can stay positive no matter what.
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