Day 10 Practice: Positivity… and Negativity
“There are two kinds of suffering, the suffering we run from because we are unwilling to face the truth of life and the suffering that comes when we are willing to stop running from sorrows and difficulties of the world. The second kind of suffering will lead you to freedom.”
With the practice of mindfulness, we are encouraged to feel what we are feeling; to accept what is happening with a quality of heart; and thus, we gain wisdom by paying attention to our experience. And from all of this (feel, accept, insight), we develop discernment to what is helpful and what is harmful; discernment in what actions, attitudes, and behaviors are onward leading and those that are not.
With today’s practice, I encourage to take notice of how a positive mind state feels in the body, the effect it has on our mental, emotional, and physical being. How having a positive attitude can shift our perspective in life: things seem more doable, our outlook is brighter, our attitude more optimistic, much more is possible, etc.
And as importantly, I invite you pay attention to how negativity resonates in body. The toll negativity takes on your perspective, patience and understanding. Can you feel the challenging emotions created by negativity as a mindset? The worry, uneasiness, anxiety, or doubt that is created from a pessimistic mind set.
Science has proven humans are prone to negativity which is called negativity bias. It is the tendency to place much more importance to negative experiences than to positive or neutral experiences; negative events or feelings typically have a greater impact on our psychological state than positive events or feelings, even if in equal proportions.
Negativity bias certainly holds true for me, I am much more prone towards negativity AND I am trying to bring more aware and discernment to it: i.e., my assumptions that things won’t turn out, my wish for things to be different, my negative assumptions towards others, people I don’t even know, my negative assumptions of what others think of me, or all ruminating on all the ways I have been wronged, etc. etc. etc. Through conscious effort, I have become more attuned to this negativity and how it resonates in my body. It does not feel good: there's an uneasiness, tightness, and bitterness that I wasn't often aware of. It just felt normal but the more I bring awareness to what is happening inside, the more I able to discern what is helpful and what is not.
Positivity training seems to be the buzz word of late, but it is something that we can train for minds towards. It can truly have a tremendous impact on how we show up in our lives. Mindfulness, sometimes referred to as a practice of choice, provides us with the awareness to choose: the power to choose our response, to choose our attitude, choosing how we connect with ourselves and others in the world. It is not what is happening but how we choose to relate to what is happening. May we choose to see, act, and believe in the positivity and goodness of life.
10 Creative Ways to Keep a Positive Attitude
Start a gratitude journal.
Treat yourself to some self-care every day.
Start every morning strong.
Avoid spreading gossip.
Crack more jokes.
Take real breaks.
Have something to look forward to after work.
Practice meditation.
Focus on the long-term instead of the short-term.
Listen to music that matches your mood. -From Hubspot
“I myself am entirely made of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
“Bring your awareness back to the rising and falling of the breath, and just note the rising and falling. Because the ego is so clever, in which it’s constantly judging, so just sit and do the practice, holding only that awareness.”
“There is a deep, bittersweet tradition that has existed for centuries all across the world—you see it in all the different wisdom traditions—that tells us that there is this place where joy and sorrow meet. That is the truth of being human.”
“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be, you can’t see how it is.”
“Life is a journey. The trick is to enjoy every step of that journey. No matter where our feet land, we should call it home. Then we can be ever traveling, but always home.”