Salutations Everyone!
I’ve been trying to write this post for about a month now, but man, life got in the way…
I had been reflecting on the negative state of the world, and I’m saying to myself “My poor kids…This is the world that they are growing up in?” And this saddens me…For a moment, I was “caught-up” in my emotions, because being disappointed time and time again was beginning to take a toll on me. I told myself that I had to snap out of it because it’s no good to be in a negative mood all of the time, because this negativity was stifling my productivity…Furthermore, I had to snap out of it for my children because kids have to face a harsh world every time they leave home (it stinks out there), so they are looking to us (their parents) to be a “breath of fresh air”… So we can’t walk around our homes miserable and in a negative mood the majority of the time because it will begin to take a toll on our children…
After I snapped out of my recent negative vibe, I realized that throughout the course of my adult life I have developed a sort of “coping-mechanism” for the crap that life dishes out to me. So how do I take charge, give positivity power over my life and not let negativity take over? Essentially, I use 4 “methods,” and it seems as though I go through them in “step-form” (#1 being the most desirable method to use, and #4 being the least-desirable method). If you’re someone who has a hard time getting out of a negative “funk” you may want to try these:
1). Let negativity be the force that drives you in the opposite direction: towards positivity… It’s basically taking negativity and using it as a source of motivation to push you in a positive direction.
2). “Flip the Script” on a negative situation by dissecting it and “peel back” all of the layers until you find some good.
3). Realize that in every negative situation that you find yourself in, it could be crappier…And be grateful that it isn’t as crappy as it could be.
4). Realize that we all have a destiny…And along the journey to our destiny, in every situation (negative and positive), there is a lesson to be learned. Trust the process: trust that you are exactly where you need to be at this moment in time.
Keep these in the back of your mind next time you are faced with negativity…If #1 doesn’t work to get you out of “crappy mood,” go to #2… #2 doesn’t work? Try #3! And when all fails, resort to #4. Going through these steps, when needed, is what has allowed me to remain an overall optimistic person…
If any of these steps are unclear to you, I’m going to elaborate each one of them below…
1). Let negativity be the force that drives you in the opposite direction: towards positivity… It’s basically taking negativity and using it as a source of motivation to push you in a positive direction.
Sometimes people look at me like I’m crazy, because, I can always find some good in situations that appear to be strictly negative… And I am somehow able to laugh in the most inappropriate situations. I’m almost always smiling and laughing…This is just in my nature; I have what I like to call “Unicorn and Rainbows” syndrome… 😂
But in all honesty, although this is in my nature, there was a point in my life where I lost myself, and this gift was harder to “tap into”… I was sad, and depressed, and everything was “woe is me…” I was more pessimistic than optimistic. I also recognized that negativity, but more specifically the negative things people said to me or about me, really got me down and caused me to shut down…I felt like everything that was going wrong in my life was all my fault…I didn’t know how to get out of this “feeling sorry for myself” phase…Being in this negative phase was sucking the life out of me… It was literally killing me. And I had to do something about this before it was too late…
So…I thought to myself, “what is the best way to move away from negative?” And it clicked to me, I have to do the total opposite of the negative…I have to be defiant!
When did I first have this “eureka moment”? It was after I had my first daughter (I was 16 years old)… A boy in my secondary 5 class told me that I wasn’t “that smart” and that the only reason why I was doing so well in school was because I was repeating the school year…Let me explain what he was talking about…To make a long story short, I got pregnant in my last year of high school, I was determined to finish high school, but I was growing weary half-way through my pregnancy and although my daughter was due in May, I went into labor in March, I was put on bed-rest and because of this, I had to drop out of school for that year. I returned to secondary V the following academic school year, but I had to start all over.
So he claimed that this is the only reason why I was on the honor roll because I was repeating the year. At that point, I was thinking to myself, “I’m repeating the year? I don’t remember any of this stuff!” I was too busy worrying about how the hell I was going to be someone’s mom at 16 years old, I really was not focused on the work.” But oh man, I’ve gotta thank that boy, because it made something click in my head:
I needed to prove him, and everyone who said that I wouldn’t amount to anything, and I would just be a statistic (“a high school dropout on welfare” for the rest of my life), wrong! That negativity that he put out there made me uncomfortable, and I had to get “away” from it; I worked very hard to make sure that I became the complete opposite of what he said. That year, I graduated with honors, I was valedictorian, and I received 13 awards at the convocation, while my baby watched me from the crowd, and jumped around on my mom and dad’s laps.
So this is a very detailed example of how I use negativity as the force to push me in the opposite direction…I use negativity as motivation to actively go after positivity.
(The SHO has a promo-shirt inspired by this method…)
This mechanism alone worked for a while, when I was younger, I guess when I was younger and had more energy… But as life got more difficult, and I had to do more “adulting,” it got harder to cope with negativity, and I just couldn’t always apply this method to the negative situations I was facing…And I found myself in a “woe is me” phase as lot more often than I would have liked to…
2). “Flip the Script” on a negative situation by dissecting it and “peel back” all of the layers until you find some good.
Back in the days, I had 2 kids, I was working, I was in school, and I was just so overwhelmed with life, and I just felt like I was suffocating. Oh man, my vibe was making everybody miserable: my children, my baby daddy, my friends, family, damn, my vibe was bothering me! LOL
And then one day it hit me: “I have to do this for my kids…I have to find a way to knock this feeling, and get back to the old optimistic and happy me..” Before, it was easier to execute my first method, because of two reasons:
1). I had more energy…
2). Most of the situations I had the power to change them; they were situations that I could take control of.
But as I mentioned, as I got older, life got harder, and there were a lot of negative situations that I had no control over…No matter what I did, I couldn’t change the crappy situation (i.e. a child being sick when I had to study for exams, not having money to pay a certain bill etc.).
So, since I was stuck with the situation, I trained myself to search for the good in the situation…For example, I remember being bogged down about getting sick and not being able to do an exam that I was studying for…But I tried to find some good in that situation… And I did… Yes, I was sick, but honestly, although I knew that I should slow down, and get some sleep, I told myself that I didn’t have time to… So I wasn’t sleeping, but getting sick forced me to get the rest that I needed. Of course, my lack of sleep is probably why I was sick in the first place, but being able to see some good in the situation just made me feel better and lifted my spirits.
And as a mother, of two girls, I find it a necessity to master the ability to find good in bad situations…This world stinks, we mothers need to be a “breath of fresh air for our children”… What’s more we need to master this skill so that we can teach our children to do the same.
Start training your children to search for the good in a bad situation from a young age…
I teach my kids to give thanks, and find “good” in everything…In the future, when they can’t come to you to help them feel better, or help them solve their problems, this mechanism will help them successfully get over their trials and life won’t consume them.
For example, the other day, my youngest daughter was devastated that she didn’t finish her homework…We had to leave for school in 10 minutes, and there just wasn’t enough time for her to eat her breakfast and finish the school work. Now, it really wasn’t her fault that she didn’t finish her homework, because she went out with a family member the night before, and came back later than we expected…She was crying hysterically because she said she was going to get a detention…I told her to stop crying, and I bet her that I could find some good in this situation…She was still crying (more like she was having a melt-down), but she was listening…
Me: “Taneia, do you like winter?”
Taneia: “No, I hate winter! I hate the cold!”
Me: “Oh, so you must hate when you have to go outside for lunch and recess…”
Taneia: “Yeah!!!”
Me: “When would your detention be?”
Taneia: “Madame said I would have to stay in at recess…”–she paused, and stopped crying…
Me (I laughed and said): “Today is going to be a cold day, at least you won’t have to go outside that much because of that detention!”
She paused… I could see her “gears turning”…Then she calmed down, wiped her tears off of her face, and got ready to head out of the door. Major-meltdown averted!
There are times when the first 2 mechanisms won’t work: no matter what you do, you can’t get a grip on the situation in order to turn it around, and you honestly can’t find any good in the situation…
That’s when you break out the second to last mechanism…
3). Realize that in every negative situation that you find yourself in, it could be crappier…And be grateful that it isn’t as crappy as it could be.
I heavily resort to this method, and often use it with my children…
Children think that everything is the end of the world… This is because they are not exposed to much as yet; at this point, their world is “small” (it consists of home, school and maybe some other building that they go to to take part in an organized activity)…So, to a child, something like dropping the ice-cream off of a cone, onto the ground, is the “end of their world”; they haven’t experienced anything more devastating than that!
So when they get into an “this is the end of the world” state, sometimes it is fitting to give them tough love, and expose them to a harsher reality.
For example…Sometimes, my little one wakes up very angry in the morning, and she continues to be angry on the way to school, simply because she didn’t want to get up out of bed because she’s tired…
I say to her:
“You have to humble yourself and be grateful… Do you know how many children would love to get out of bed, and go to school like a regular child, but they can’t because they have sicknesses that confines them to a hospital bed?”
She usually shuts up and brightens up real quick when I hit her with some reality…
The bottom line is, when we are suffering, there is always someone out there who is suffering more than us. When we are tired, there is always someone that is more tired than us. When we are broke, there is someone out there who is more broke than us…So we just have to be thankful, because things could be worse.
You catch my drift, right?
And then what do we do when the first three mechanisms are unsuccessful with getting us out of a negative frame of mind?
We go to the last resort…
4). Realize that we all have a destiny…And along the journey to our destiny, in every situation (negative and positive), there is a lesson to be learned. Trust the process: trust that you are exactly where you need to be at this moment in time.
I have gone through some situations in my life where I felt like I couldn’t handle it, and I felt like I was just going to die…Obviously I didn’t die! I’m still here! Furthermore, when I look back, I realize that these negative situations have made me the strong woman I am today…I once went through a bad breakup… The person I was dating emptied the house when we broke-up (took out all of the furniture, appliances, pots and pans etc.); I was basically left with an empty house… I was like “Yep, there’s no coming back from this…” But today, my home is furnished and it’s pretty cozy…That situation taught me how to stand on my own two-feet…And I’m proud of myself and I became more confident because of that situation; I am like “I came back from that situation? I’m a damn bad-ass!” I don’t think I would be as confident and independent as I am today if I didn’t go through that situation; I evolved a lot because of it.
In the end, you have to have faith and trust that everything happens for a reason, and that you have a destiny, and that there an infinite amount of paths you can take to get there, but the only way to eventually get there is to keep going. Giving up is not an option!
I hope that something in this lengthy post spoke to you! There will be a part 2 to this post, which will continue on the topic of allowing positive energy to govern your life.
Have an awesome day!
