Don’t Let Them Win By Making You Negative
Find and/or create positivity in the face of ongoing insanity.
One of the most distressing things about 2024 coming to an end is what we can expect in 2025. Specifically, the incoming US administration and all the bullshit, fear, and uncertainty they’re bringing to the table.
Even those who gave their support to this insanity are uncertain what it will mean. This is making it increasingly easy to be fearful, distressed, and negative.
There is no telling what will happen. Nobody can predict with any certainty how this will all go down. If you accept that it’s all going to be awful, that everything will suck, and that all the worst-case scenarios will come true, you might as well give up. That’s what soaking in that negativity amounts to.
I am not, in any way, shape, or form, suggesting ignoring what’s happening. There will, without a doubt, be some awful, horrific, terrible shit to come. That, however, is always true in any and every situation. Shit happens. Bad things occur. Life sucks from time to time.
Toxic positivity is all about ignoring this. That’s why toxic positivity is toxic. You can’t just ignore the bad, scary, and negative – because they are, have been, and always will be.
Yet allowing the negative to dominate, to rule your head, heart, soul, and conscious mind, is a choice. When you allow negativity to be your state of mind you allow them to win.
Don’t let them win by making you negative.
You are still here. We are still here
Right now, a lot of people are feeling disheartened. For reasons most reasonable people can’t make heads or tales of, the politicians with naught but messages of hate, discord, and lots of lies won the election in November. Both haters and people who will suffer at their hands (by their policies and plans) voted them in, making the rest of us scratch our heads in perplexity.
It felt like a major loss. How did it come to this? What happens now?
I don’t know. Frankly, nobody knows. Yes, a lot of bad things are possible here. It’s depressing, upsetting and really freaky. However, they might have won this round – but history is not on their side.
Oppressors always meet their end. Always. For the few true believers in the haters, the rest are willfully giving away their power literally and figuratively. You, however, are still here. The fight isn’t over because you’re still here.
And you know what? You are not alone. It might feel that way, it might feel as if you’re taking on the world right now. This is especially true if you’re a woman, a person of color, LGBTQA+, or otherwise marginalized. Yet you are not alone, you have allies, and we are all still here.
They will do their best to silence you, to get you to retreat in fear. They love to call us names and create ludicrous false equivalencies (like how in the hell is “woke” bad? Especially when the opposite would be asleep at the switch and/or unaware?)
You are still here. We are still here. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to give up.
You have a choice. More than one choice, in fact. So, don’t let them win by making you negative.
Don’t let them win by making you negative
I am not suggesting in any way, shape, or form, that you ignore, disregard, or avoid what they present as their “truths”. What I am suggesting is being mindful of how that makes you feel and choosing what that looks like.
Yes, much of what has happened and might happen going forward will cause anger, uncertainty, fear, and other negatives. You will feel bad because that’s part of life – you feel bad sometimes. But you get to choose if negativity is the dominant emotion, thought process, intent, and approach that you utilize and experience.
You can choose to take that negativity and turn it into positivity. Take that anger and organize a protest. Run for office or support someone doing so who will be better. Donate to the good and worthy causes. Do something constructive and productive by channeling that negativity into empowerment and make something of it.
Empowerment comes from within, not from without. Hence, the negativity they use to win disempowers you. Yet you can change it because you, and only you, live in your body, head, heart, and soul. Thus, you alone control all of what begins in you.
What you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if your approach is positive or negative, and your actions are yours to control. Initial reactions tend to be involuntary, and that’s why negative things make you feel bad. That’s valid. Yet, after the initial visceral reaction you can choose what comes next.
Hence, you can choose to not let them win by making you negative. Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – empowers you. That shows you how you have options and can take those negative experiences and make something positive out of them.
It’s not easy – but it’s worth it.
Not letting them win by making you negative isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that shit happens, and it’s both normal and okay to feel negativity, allow it rather than resist it. Knowing that the initial reaction of negativity is involuntary and situationally normal, you can use mindfulness to make choices and decisions to take the negativity and make something positive of it, use it to power your imagination, and be a force for good, change, potential, possibility, and hope.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, 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.
The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-eighth (568) 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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