How Are We More Capable via Genuine, Non-Toxic Positivity?
Genuine, non-toxic positivity opens us to empowerment, potential, and possibilities.
Unless you live under a rock, no doubt you feel that the world has gone slightly mad.
I could provide lots of examples here – but it’s not necessary. Our fear-based society seems hell-bent on providing more reasons every day to feel uncertain, concerned, distressed, and generally negative.
This means that every day we get to choose if we’ll let the fear-base in the collective consciousness of the world dominate us.
Or not.
Combatting this is easier than we think. But it goes against the grain, and because too many of our so-called leaders prefer us as disempowered as possible – lots of false narratives exist around positivity, self-care, self-assurance, selfishness, and everything else about our individual selves.
The truth is that we are ALL more capable via positivity than we believe.
Before I dig deeper into my claim, let’s address the elephant in the room.
Toxic positivity versus genuine positivity
The idea of positivity has been thoroughly abused over the years. So abused, in fact, that whole swaths of the concept have become utterly toxic.
Just using the word “positivity” causes many people to cringe. Because the toxic version is just as bad as that which it intends to combat.
Why? Because toxic positivity and its proponents deny, neglect, disparage, and wear blinders towards negativity and even neutrality. They spew their messages of positivity in denial of all else – above and better than all else – and create a false narrative of negativity and neutrality as the bad guys.
But the truth is that there will ALWAYS be negativity. What’s more – we need it. The negative often is the impetus for growth and change. You see a problem, a negative, and something inside you becomes inspired to fix it.
Likewise, neutrality is a point that’s neither positive nor negative – but the initial state of anything and everything. Apart from the extremes on either end of the flexible cylinder (rather than a coin), everything and everyone begins at neutral in the center.
Genuine positivity recognizes and acknowledges negativity. Yin and yang. Necessary opposites in a paradoxical universe.
Genuine positivity doesn’t deny, neglect, disparage, or wear blinders towards negativity. Instead, genuine positivity recognizes and acknowledges the negative (and the neutral) – while invoking the choice aspect of positivity.
Because genuine positivity – and using it for our benefit – is a choice.
What is genuine, non-toxic positivity?
Actual, factual positivity is the choice to face the direction of positivity for empowerment to take control and make change in our lives.
First, genuine positivity recognizes the far broader spectrum between the extremes. Positivity and negativity are those extremes. But they are not simply the either/or inherent in toxic positivity.
Hence, my explanation of these extremes – and many others – existing as opposite ends of a flexible cylinder rather than two sides of a coin. The space between the extremes isn’t coin-thin. It’s a much wider cylinder.
All of us exist between the extremes of the cylinder. And it’s flexible because so many things in life, the universe, and everything, are relatively flexible. Very few people, places, and/or things are one extreme or the other all the time. They might mostly be one or the other – but they still have episodes of opposite extremes.
Take the desert, for example. Most of us think of deserts as incredibly hot, dry, arid places on the Earth. Yet at night – they can be freezing cold. And, once in a while, they even get rain. Hence, almost nothing is just in a single state or extreme all the time.
Positivity and negativity are the same. Sometimes something that started positive turns negative – and sometimes something that started negative turns positive.
From the cylinder between these extremes, we all choose and decide towards which we face. That is genuine, non-toxic positivity. It’s the choice of which way we face in any given time, place, situation, etc.
How does genuine positivity make us more capable?
Lots and lots of forces want you and I disempowered. That’s why we live in a fear-based society. Fear tends to overwhelm reason, logic, and our capacity for empowerment.
Genuine positivity – as opposed to toxic positivity – recognizes and acknowledges that this is a fear-based society. Pretending it’s not – like toxic positivity tends to do – helps nobody and doesn’t empower us.
Recognizing the manipulative forces of our fear-based society – benevolent or malevolent – opens us to choices and decisions.
When we are making our own choices and decisions for our life experiences – we’re automatically made more capable. Genuine positivity is a key to this.
How does it work? Let’s say, for example, that you lose your job. Not only have you lost your income, but you’ve lost your health care benefits (likely this is a USA-specific issue). It sucks and can be deeply frustrating, upsetting, depressing, and a cause of self-doubt and a whole host of negative thoughts and emotions.
Genuine positivity is choosing to accept this reality – and from that, deciding to act. Positive action – like seeking out a new and better job or starting that business you always dreamed of. Perhaps you use the time you have to write that novel, sell everything and go backpack around Europe, or otherwise choose a positive despite the negative.
This doesn’t deny you will need income and health insurance. But it presents an empowered choice. Hence, non-toxic positivity.
Or – you can make no choices and decisions, and potentially sink into depression, lose hope, and be enveloped in our fear-based society and see naught but bad victimization.
While it’s perfectly normal AND acceptable to feel that way from time to time – due to circumstances and happenstance – you can choose for how long.
That’s how genuine positivity makes us more capable.
Mindfulness turns the key
Mindfulness is how we start the engine of genuine, non-toxic positivity.
This is not the buzzword notion of mindfulness. This is true, conscious awareness mindfulness. Recognizing ourselves and our inner thoughts, feelings, intentions, mindset/headspace/psyche conscious selves.
Conscious awareness is a thing of the present. It’s recognition and acknowledgment in the here-and-now of what we’re thinking, what and how we’re feeling, our intentions, and the actions we take related to that.
Thus, we see our negativity and the things making us think and feel towards that end of the cylinder.
With that knowledge, we’re empowered to change direction. And that is what genuine, non-toxic positivity is. It recognizes and acknowledges the downward spiral – but chooses and decides to pull up and out of it rather than sink deeper into it and crash.
With this, we are all more capable than we realize. Of what? Everything. When we’re empowered, we can choose and decide how our lives can be. We can take control of our inner beings and use that to direct our lives.
This is not selfish or ruinous as those who prefer us to be disempowered imply. It may go against the grain – but unless you’re knowingly, intentionally causing others hurt or harm, this is not selfish or destructive. But empowerment of the individual takes away the control too many so-called leaders hoard with genuine selfishness.
Non-toxic, genuine positivity doesn’t ignore, deny, or avoid negativity. It’s a choice and decision of empowerment to take control of our life experiences. And it’s not selfish unless we’re knowingly, intentionally hurting, and harming others to better ourselves.
If you are true and genuine, I doubt you desire to hurt anyone to improve your life experience. That’s how genuine, non-toxic positivity works and makes us all more capable.
Employing genuine, non-toxic positivity isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct our actions.
When we recognize the difference between genuine positivity and toxic positivity, we open ourselves to the potential and possibilities for growth and change this represents. Knowing that genuine, non-toxic positivity is a choice along the broad cylinder between the extremes – and one that doesn’t ignore or deny neutrality or negativity – we become more capable of almost anything we set our minds to.
This empowers us – and in turn, our empowerment can empower others around us. That can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
Choosing for ourselves employs positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for our lives.
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, we can explore and share where we are between the extremes and how that impacts us here and now.
Lastly, the better aware we are of ourselves in the now, the more we can do to choose and decide how our life experiences will be. When that empowers us, it can also open those around us to their own empowerment. And that is, to me, a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with me.
This is the four hundred and fiftieth 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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