How Does Non-Toxic Positivity Better Your Life Experience?
Non-toxic positivity is a creative force for self-care and improvement.
The word “positivity” might set your teeth on edge. That’s probably because you’ve been exposed to all the toxic positivity out there.
Toxic positivity is the idea that if you think positive – and ONLY positive – your life will be the best it can be. What’s more, toxic positivity rather blatantly disregards, ignores, or turns a blind eye to anything that’s not positive.
Positivity in this manner turns anything not positive into an enemy. Negative thoughts and feelings should be avoided or abandoned lest they harm you. But that’s unrealistic and unhealthy.
While taking a more positive approach to life, the Universe, and everything is good for your overall health, wellness, and wellbeing – avoiding, ignoring, and disregarding the negative creates unnecessary conflict. That’s because you can pretend all you want that bad things aren’t and don’t happen – but they DO. And you have zero control over them.
The key to non-toxic positivity is recognizing that it’s not simply thought or feeling. Positivity is an attitude, a choice that you make in any and all given situations or circumstances. And it’s not an either/or by any stretch of the imagination.
The cylinder between extremes
Many elements of the world around you emphasize extremes. Some are benign, some not so much. These extremes come in many sizes, shapes, and forms, both tangible and intangible. They include things like black and white, short and tall, fat and thin, light and dark, and of course – positive and negative.
A frequent comparison of extremes involves a coin. Heads or tails – one side of the coin or the other. However, this takes away a fundamental truth – the space between either side of the extremes isn’t the thin depth of a coin – it’s much more like a cylinder. And that cylinder isn’t solid like a coin – it’s flexible.
Why? Because many extremes are in the eye of the beholder. An observer might see a certain extreme as worthwhile and another as undesirable – at one point. But then, at another point, they flip – and the worthwhile becomes undesirable.
For example – JK Rowling was held up as this amazing example of an author who created a work that transformed the world of reading for young adults. For years, she was held up as a positive role model and held in high esteem.
Then she showed the world her unapologetic transphobia and subtly antisemitism. Now, the role model is no longer held in such esteem. The cylinder flexed.
The other important reason why the space between extremes should be seen as more than the narrow depth of a coin is that you and I mostly exist somewhere between those extremes. And every day you choose in any given situation to face one extreme or the other.
Extremes play their part in choices that you make all the time. But more often than not, they’re more about overall attitude than goal setting or any tangible, achievable state.
Non-toxic positivity coexists with negativity
Non-toxic positivity recognizes that positivity is a choice. What’s more, it’s not a pure choice that derails its opposite – but rather decides to take a generative versus destructive approach.
Positivity is a creative force. It ties to potential and possibility to build the world you live in. This occurs via empowerment.
How does this work? Ever notice how – when you feel good – you feel as though you’re capable of something? It might be big or small – but that positive feeling creates a sense of possibility for this, that, or the other thing.
Often this is fleeting and disregarded as insignificant. But while it may only last a moment – choosing to face something on the positive end of the cylinder chooses potential and possibility to build from.
That’s why positivity is a builder. Because it uses potential and possibility to empower you to create.
However – non-toxic positivity recognizes that negativity is inevitable. Shit will happen that throws you off your game. The unexpected will occur, wholly outside of your control. And when it does – and it’s anathema to your goals and aims – it’s going to be negative.
You can’t avoid this – it’s part of life. Friends come and go, jobs are found and lost, relationships start and end, and people are born and die. Yin and yang, opposites representing extremes. That’s life.
But the choice of which way to face is yours. The initial, visceral reaction of negativity to something that happens that goes against where you desire your life to be is perfectly natural. But after that initial occurrence, the choice is yours to make.
Negativity can empower you
Lots of people have watched their life crumble around them. Everything turned to shit, negative on top of negative piled on, and it looked like there was no winning. That presented choices such as:
- Accept and lament
- Reject and lament
- Accept and fight
- Reject and fight
- Give up and give in
All the above are a blend of thought and feeling. And none of them are written in stone. You might well feel them all during and after whatever unexpected negative occurred.
But they are a choice. For a time, you might accept and lament – but then stop lamenting and fight it. Initially, you might give up and give in – but then reject and fight. Whatever the case may be – consciously or subconsciously., you choose.
There are lots of stories of success that was built off negativity having an empowering effect. Some horrid thing happened that made you change in a way that involved a choice to be bigger, better, stronger, faster, wiser, or whatever.
That’s what non-toxic positivity recognizes. Negativity can, will, and does happen. But it’s not necessarily an ending – it might well be a powerful new beginning.
But the choices are wholly yours to make. Whatever you perceive as a positive or a negative in any given situation, you choose which side of the cylinder to face at any time. Non-toxic positivity empowers you to build better for yourself and your life.
And that is how non-toxic positivity betters your life experience. Non-toxic positivity works with – not against – negativity by presenting potential and possibilities for empowerment to choose for yourself.
Recognizing non-toxic positivity for how it empowers you isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you practice mindfulness and become consciously aware of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions, you give yourself the power to choose an attitude of negativity, neutrality, or positivity. Knowing that non-toxic positivity recognizes and even works with negativity, you can see how it can be employed to better your overall life experiences in any given situation.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. Then that can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
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 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 seventy-sixth 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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