Positivity: The Family you choose

You can choose your family.

I know that they say you cannot choose your family – but you can.

Yes, there is family that you are born into. Yes, your blood family can be complicated, argumentative and unsupportive as much as they can be loving and magnificent.

Family is not just those you are related to by blood. Family is not simply brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and such – family can be more. Family can be people who are more than friends.

What does that mean? There are people that you choose who become more than friends. These are the people you associate with, take meals with, enjoy laughter and care about nearly as much (and even sometimes more) as those you are related to by blood.

Chosen family can be a far larger, more complicated unit that you enjoy the company of more than any others. These are the people you most want to spend your time with, no matter what you are doing.

The media has spent a lot of time lately talking about non-traditional families. You get family units with two mothers or two fathers and such. More than that, family can be a group of people who share interests and a non-traditional form of community.

Despite the people you are related to by blood, you can in fact choose your family. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it makes no sense to anyone but you – yet you have the choice.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can choose the people we call family, we can use those choices to build up more and greater Positivity. Selecting for ourselves the people we call family can totally empower ourselves. 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 seventy-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.