What if Positivity is a Choice of Attitude – Not A Cure-All?
Toxic positivity ruins positivity’s true power to better your life.
Positivity, in its truest, most genuine form, is a good and healthy attitude. It sparks productivity, creativity, and can be part of an overall sense of wellbeing.
In and of itself, positivity is a constructive, good force for living without fear and combating artificial lack, scarcity, and the like.
Unfortunately, genuine positivity is not the only form. Many have emphasized toxic positivity over the genuine article.
Toxic positivity has been built off the idea of the power of positive thinking. It takes a healthy, constructive notion to an extreme. This is done by suggesting that you be only positive in how you think and feel – to the exclusion of all negatives. Toxic positivity puts on blinders to negativity and all bad things in the world around you.
This is utterly and completely unrealistic. Life is a paradox. There will always be opposite extremes. You can’t avoid, deny, neglect, or wear blinders to the negatives of the world.
Genuine positivity, in fact, is often created reactively or proactively regarding a negative event or happening.
Negativity can be the impetus
Let’s face it – shit happens. Life is going to present you with bad things, pain and suffering, bad days, and all kinds of crap utterly outside of your control.
I know nobody who has had an always positive, perfect life. Everyone has been hurt mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and/or physically. Nobody avoids getting rejected, failing at a task, losing people they care about, and all the other bad stuff life will throw your way.
Toxic positivity tells you to pretend that’s not the case. Instead, you only look to and for positives. Put on the blinders and do not acknowledge, recognize, or otherwise attend to negatives.
That’s beyond unrealistic. And it’s the reason why toxic positivity is toxic. Living in denial creates microcosms of reality for so disconnected from life that you become delusional. Your efforts to find connection meet unrealistic expectations and you do yourself more harm than good.
Genuine positivity doesn’t come from ignoring or neglecting negativity – it comes in part from using negativity as an impetus for better. That’s because after you’ve had a negative experience – big or small – you have a choice for what comes next.
You will have little to no control over your initial, visceral reaction to whatever occurs. Shit happens that pisses you off, frightens you, saddens you, confuses you, and the like at the time it happens. But once the initial shock passes – you have a choice. Lament it and soak in negative and awful thoughts and feelings – or – learn from it and seek positivity to move past it.
Thus, negativity is the impetus for positivity.
Genuine positivity is a choice of attitude
Toxic positivity treats positivity as if it were some sort of cure-all. Think positive, feel positive, and it will all fall in line your way. Actively avoid and ignore negativity lest it derail your new way of life.
Positivity is not a way of life. It’s a chosen attitude that is applicable via mindfulness.
Real positive thinking and feeling is a choice you make via conscious awareness of/for how you approach this, that, or the other thing. Life is crazy, unpredictable, and often ineffable. When things get thrown at you outside of your control, you will have a choice. Take a negative attitude or a positive attitude.
For example – you get fired from your job. Initially, you probably feel hurt, distressed, concerned, angry, and any number of negative thoughts and feelings. That’s utterly natural.
But then you have a choice. Let all the thoughts and feelings of the potential bad resulting from getting fired dominate your attitude and life approach – or – choose to find and/or create the positives and good to move forward.
The primary negative is that you lost your job. The positive can be that now you can find a better job, change careers, pursue a dream, go back to school, focus on something you neglected due to that job, and more. It might appear to be a curse that you lost that job – but genuine positivity can help you find that it was actually a blessing.
That’s how positivity in its true form is an attitude, not a cure-all for what ails your life. And it’s created and/or found via mindfulness.
Mindfulness is just conscious awareness here and now
Like positivity, there are forms of mindfulness that have been presented to the public that come across as toxic. That’s because, like positivity, mindfulness gets treated by some as a cure-all.
Let’s just put this to bed here, shall we? There are no cure-alls. One size never fits all. There is never One True Way. What works for me might not work for you – and vice versa.
However – there are always choices. They might be vague, and maybe imperfect. But they are always there. Because ultimately you – and you alone – live your life. The only person in your head, heart, and soul is you.
Genuine mindfulness is applied conscious awareness. It is a product of the now and only applicable here and now.
To actively practice mindfulness and be consciously aware, you just need to ask questions like,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What are my intentions?
- Why am I doing or not doing this?
All these questions can only be answered here and now. Once asked and answered – the power to change them is yours.
If you dislike the answers to these questions – you get to choose to change them if you desire to. That’s how mindfulness truly works – and via mindfulness, you can choose an attitude and approach to/of/for positivity.
Toxic positivity ruins positivity’s true power to better your life. Recognizing this, you can apply mindfulness for genuine positivity and use that on a case-by-case basis – here and now – to choose your own adventure. You get to choose a positive or negative approach and attitude.
Doesn’t it feel good and positive to have choices?
Choosing an attitude and approach of genuine positivity isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize that neither positivity nor mindfulness are cure-alls, you can make use of them as choices here and now for your attitude and approach to random and not-so-random happenings that occur. Knowing that genuine positivity uses negativity as an impetus for creating change, you can choose to use it for how you approach life via mindfulness and apply it for active conscious awareness.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
Lastly, the better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can also open those around you to their empowerment.
To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred-and-eighty-fourth entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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