Bite-Sized Positivity
Every piece of bite-sized positivity is a building block for good.
We all know someone that’s constantly smiling. They seem eternally unperturbed. Sunny disposition, happy-go-lucky, perky, a ray of sunshine, and so on.
These people are few and far between. And some people find them extremely annoying for various reasons – often lacking reason. They radiate positivity like the sun radiates light.
On the other hand, we all know someone that’s constantly struggling. They are the eternal victim, often frustrated and perturbed. They seem to have a dark cloud hovering over them, appear to live a half-life, are a downer, funkiller, and so on.
These people are, in my experience, relatively few and far between – but more evident than those of a sunny disposition. People find them annoying for various reasons, and they bring dark and dismal wherever they go.
Most people fall in the extremes between these two. You get moments where you may be annoyingly happy intermixed with moments where you’re miserable and showing it. While that may cause you to have a 50/50 balance of positive/negative, I think more frequently it comes down to subconsciousness.
What does that mean? It means you make no active choices for how you are thinking, feeling, acting, intending, and being and just sort of going with it. For many, that’s necessary to get through a day.
But it’s also a choice to not employ mindfulness.
Some people see too much toxic positivity. There are lots of messages about keeping a positive mindset, reframing negativity, and the like that implies a blissful, always-present state of positivity.
Realistically, though, life tends to be all about bite-sized positivity.
Before I expand on this, let’s discuss the elephant in the room.
Toxic positivity
The problem of toxic positivity is in both its approach to and denial of negativity.
Toxic positivity is in-your-face, all-the-time, now-now-now positivity. It’s this notion that it is the end-all-be-all replacement for every other emotion you can feel. It also gets to the point of being either overly preachy or super hooky spooky.
Then, toxic positivity suggests disregarding, ignoring, and eliminating negativity.
Disregarding, ignoring, and eliminating negativity is no possible. But that’s a good thing – because we need all of them to recognize and give value TO positivity.
Real, genuine positivity is not the opposite of negativity. It’s the alternative. You WILL feel bad, get hurt, experience upset, and have negative thoughts and feelings. That’s not just human nature – but it also tends to be an impetus to grow.
In one of her You Are a Badass books, Jen Sincero discusses how many of the most successful entrepreneurs, scientists, and athletes overcame rejection and negativity to succeed. They were told no, rejected, sometimes insulted – and used that negativity to prove the nay-sayer wrong.
Nobody, even that person with an overall sunny disposition, can be positive all the time. Shit happens outside your control that will impact you.
I’d like to say that nobody can be negative all the time – but they can. Unfortunately, it’s easy to see the world as dark, dank, full of despair and hopelessness. But that’s a choice.
The point is that positivity – particularly bite-sized positivity – is how you can find your way out of negativity. It’s also a choice – but shouldn’t deny negativity along the way.
Recognizing toxic positivity is easy. It tends to ignore reality in ways that feel disingenuous and somewhat blind. Toxic positivity often looks like an end-all-be-all scam, like 19th-century hair tonics and such.
Real positivity is available in bite-sized chunks.
What is bite-sized positivity?
Positivity, in its truest form, tends to come in small bits. It’s moments in time, quick experiences that occur at random – and may not look, on the surface, like positivity.
This is similar, but less cynical, to comedian Denis Leary’s definition of small doses of happiness,
“Happiness comes in small doses, folks. It’s a cigarette, a chocolate chip cookie, or a five-second orgasm.”
Unlike the overarching concept of happiness, positivity has a broader definition. As opposed to a sense of bliss and peace, I believe positivity is a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and contentment.
There are constant happenings that are material and immaterial, tangible and intangible, that reflect positivity. When you recognize them, you can actively use them to alter your mood, sense of being, frame of mind, etc.
This is an extremely limited, short list of objects of bite-sized positivity:
- Sunlight
- Moonlight
- The laughter of a child
- A cat’s purr
- Unexpected money showing up in your bank account
- A stranger holding open a door
- Being told “well done” and the like
- Another driver letting you into a lane
- A favorite smell wafting past you
- Finishing a project
- Starting or ending a relationship
I could go on and on and probably create a list pages and pages long. Bite-sized positivity is all around us, and available at any time.
The best way to recognize and use bite-sized positivity is, of course, mindfulness.
Employing practical, regular mindfulness
You are the only one inside your head. Nobody but you is in there, thus nobody else has your experience, perspective, beliefs, habits, values, and whatnot.
There are two primary ways in which you exist and express yourself. Subconsciously and consciously.
The subconscious mind is both where your overall values, beliefs, and habits exist – and – how you absorb information from without and process it on autopilot without analysis or filter. You might have experienced finding yourself doing something unwittingly – like chewing your fingernails or frowning – and realized you weren’t doing it consciously. That’s your subconscious doing the driving.
The conscious mind is where you are aware at this moment, of the here-and-now, and all that you are taking in. It’s your mindset/headspace/psyche self, inner-being. It’s how you’d respond to the question “Who are you?” after considering that a moment before answering.
Your conscious self is informed of both where you are within and without. It takes in the sensory input from your six senses and processes them alongside thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Accessing and working in the here-and-now with your conscious mind is how YOU can control where, what, why, how, and who you are.
Mindfulness in its true form is being consciously aware and making choices and decisions from that. Thus, you can see the examples of bite-sized positivity for positivity, and employ them if you are feeling bad, unhappy, hopeless, down, and so on.
Mindfulness will make you more aware of the bad, too. But awareness of the negative is how you can choose to use positivity to turn it around.
Every piece of bite-sized positivity expands it overall. That doesn’t just apply to you – but everyone. In a world with so much uncertainty and fear, bite-sized positivity can accumulate and improve matters for all.
It isn’t hard to find bite-sized positivity
It begins with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Knowing that bite-sized positivity comes in multiple shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors, finding it is super easy. When you work with that positivity and use it to find the good in bad times and make the best of your life experiences – that ultimately empowers you.
When you feel empowered, your mindfulness increases, you become more aware overall, and that gets reflected and spreads to people around you. This creates a feedback loop of awareness and positivity.
You build more positive feelings and discover further reasons to feel positivity and gratitude. That can be the impetus to improve numerous aspects of your life for the better, help overcome the overwhelming negativity of any current situation, and generate yet more positivity and gratitude.
You are worthy and deserving of all the good you desire.
An attitude of gratitude is an attitude of pure positivity. That positivity can generate even greater positive energies – and that, like you, is always worthwhile.
This is the three-hundred and seventy-first entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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