Where’s Your Positivity Now?
Even when it seems impossible, you can find and/or create nontoxic positivity.
Travel can be a real mixed bag. On the one hand, it provides many new opportunities to see and explore unfamiliar places and have new experiences. But then, on the other hand, it can be full of hassles, craziness, and unexpected headaches.
Because of this truth, travel can be an experience that invokes both positivity and negativity. When you’re far from home and it all seems to be going wrong, however, you might find yourself asking:
Where’s your positivity now?
Yet, even in the face of this, I know that nontoxic positivity can be found. Having had a recent experience in this department, allow me to elaborate.
Home is a long way from here
My wife and I just took our first-ever trip to Europe. Neither of us had ever crossed an ocean before, so we decided – after a planned group trip to Italy didn’t happen – we would go to England.
This 9-day adventure would take us from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to Salisbury to Bath, with a trek to Stonehenge before our return to London and flight home. This was 9 days away from our jobs, our friends, our home, and most of all – our cats.
This proved to be just a shade longer than we truly desired to be away. Good to know for future treks.
Not wanting to risk issues at the airport, we arrived at Heathrow hours before we needed to be there. We checked our bags, went through the first part of security – and learned our flight was cancelled. Seriously? WTF?
We persuaded them to let us turn back (this was the step before the bag X-rays and body scanners). We went back to the baggage area and spoke to an agent. Great. Now what? We managed to get booked on a new flight home – in another 6 hours or so. A flight already delayed by 2 hours.
We just wanted to go home at this point. But what could we do? The airline gave us some food vouchers. Okay, fine. We grabbed lunch. Then we waited. And waited. And waited.
Let me explain something about Heathrow Airport. It’s big. Like, super, wicked, big. We were in Terminal 2A. Our plane would depart from 2B – a 15-minute walk from A. And we had no gate assigned yet.
We were getting antsy. Then we learned someone had cut a fiber optic line, causing chaos at our destination (Newark Liberty Airport).
Great, just great.
No positivity to be found here
How much longer would this delay us?
The answer was not good. We had a gate, so we trekked across the terminal. For the record, at this point my wife’s messed-up knee was horrendous, and she was in agony. We were both more than ready to go home.
They changed our gate, and we schlepped from one end of Terminal 2B to the other. Seriously. And we waited. Again.
It looked like they were setting up for us to board the plane – when they informed us, sorry, no, you’re not going to Newark today. All flights in are cancelled. So, we do this again tomorrow.
The hassle of getting from the airport to the hotel they arranged for us (then back to the airport) is not a story worth sharing here. Suffice it to say, it was not pleasant. Oh, and just before we conked out, we learned our flight the next morning was already delayed by 2 hours.
No positivity to be found here. Or is there?
This is where you have to do the work, really. There was nontoxic positivity when you went looking for it. For example, the hotel was not bad. Then, the breakfast buffet they provided the next morning was quite tasty. When we got back to the terminal, we enjoyed some coffee from a place that made us both laugh for inside-joke reasons. To accommodate her knee issues, we were able to arrange transport from 2A to 2B for my wife, and early boarding.
These are small details that all feel like they should have an asterisk attached to them. Yet, they represent found and/or created positivity where it seems like none was to be found.
Find and/or create it
There is no question that our return trip from England sucked. Does anyone ever want to spend 8+ hours in an airport? I think not.
Yet we didn’t allow it to overwhelm how much we enjoyed the trip. Sure, there were other highs and lows, but it remains an amazing trip that produced many memories (and lots and lots of photos).
When you question where, if anywhere, positivity is to be found, the answer might feel like nowhere. But the reality is that you can find and/or create positivity along the way. No, that’s not easy. Yes, it might take an inordinate amount of effort. But the last thing anyone, anywhere needs is more things to feel bad about.
Life is not meant to be always hard, nor always easy. It’s a blend. The experience of living includes both highs and lows, good and bad, positivity and negativity. That’s because all the experiences are how we grow, evolve, change, and learn along the way.
Frankly, to me, life is all about new experiences and what all they can and do teach. This is true for me, but also true for you and everyone.
Even when it seems impossible, you can find and/or create nontoxic positivity. It just takes a little time, effort, and mindful work.
Finding and/or creating positivity when it feels impossible isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
Recognizing and acknowledging that even the most negative situation can still be open to finding and/or creating nontoxic positivity helps you work with it and keep yourself from being overwhelmed. Knowing that you can find and/or create positivity with a little mindful, focused effort makes it easier to handle anything and everything life throws your way.
This empowers you. When you’re empowered, that can, in turn, empower others around you. That’s why I share these weekly posts with you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in ways that open you to more potential, possibility, and the like. From there, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you in the here and now.
The more aware you are of yourself in the present, 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 and empower them, too. That is an amazing conduit to help reason overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-fifty-eighth (658) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energy for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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