Positivity: Something to Smile About

What brings a smile to your face?

What memories, what images, what sounds, what smells, what touches, what thoughts will make you smile? What brings a smile to your face?

These are the things we need to have at our disposal for when we are inundated by negativity. We need to have these tools available to us so that we can give ourselves an easy means to creating positivity instead.

Some days it feels like a major struggle to invoke good feelings. You wake up sore, tired, uncomfortable. You read all the ridiculous news and see bad things around the world. You are having communication issues with someone. The weather is surreal and depressing. All of these are negatives. When we allow these things to take root and get ahold of our day, they dominate, and continue the downward spiral.

We need to make a choice here. Do I allow the barrage of negativity to overwhelm me, or do I find a way out of this? I do not know anyone who desires to feel bad or depressed or angry on a regular basis. We all want to be happy, we all want to feel content and joyful more frequently. So we have a choice when we find influences both inside and out to be generating negativity. How do I turn this around?

This is where having that thing I previously called an attitude shifter comes in handy. More directly, you need to have something that will make you smile almost every time you invoke it.

What memory puts a smile on your face? Time with a good friend or a loved one? Is there an image you can access that makes you grin? An animal you are fond of or a child or something more abstract? Is there a piece of music or a comic routine or some other sound that makes you chuckle? Does a particular smell like cookies or bacon or the feeling of a special piece of clothing like a loved one’s shirt brighten your mood?

There is something that has this effect on everyone, and knowing what that something is can be key to turning around a bad day and drawing in positivity.

Positivity is not just about the idea of the “power of positive thinking”. Acquiring positivity is about thought merged with feeling and action. You have to think about positivity, but more than that you have to feel it and act upon it. If we take just a little more time and energy to do this, I truly believe we can all work to make this world a better place. Finding something that makes you smile invokes thought feeling and action and thus is a good place to start.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we have devices we can employ to make ourselves smile, we can use this to empower ourselves to feel better. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

This is the fifty-third 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.