Hardwire Yourself For Positivity – Introduction

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A fulfilling life is made up of two main parts:

• Making your life as awesome as possible
• Being happy and satisfied in your current life

And while a lot of people will try to tell you that one or the other is the ultimate key to happiness, I’m a firm believer that both are equally important.

If you’re stuck in a job and a relationship that go against your core values, it doesn’t matter how much present-minded and positive-thinking you are, you still won’t be truly happy.

Similarly, we all know of people who seem to have all the material success, looks and fame you could ever want, yet are thoroughly miserable.

With the GROW Model behind us, thoroughly covering making your life as awesome as possible, it’s time to tackle the other half of living a fulfilling life – being happy and upbeat about your life as it is.

And that’s exactly what I will help you with, in this upcoming series of posts!

What is positivity and why is it so awesome?

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

- Aristotle

While good old Aristotle talks about excellence, the same applies to positivity or negativity. They are just habits of thought. No more, no less.

I actually have huge respect for people who manage to be consistently negative and complaining. You see, we humans are naturally born happy, confident and positive. It takes a lot of effort and years of practice to cover up that true nature and build the habit of negativity.

The flip side is… whether you have recently started feeling down, or whether you have struggled with negativity for years, it’s just a habit. And habits can be changed.

Think of negativity, worry and stress as grooves on a vinyl record. As you go through the same patterns of thought over and over, the groove gets deeper and more pronounced, until the needle stays there firmly without wobbling, and you don’t even consider the fact that it’s just a habit.

But if you take the record and start scratching across it, and scratching some more… the needle will start skipping. You will start seeing glimpses of lasting positivity, and soon establish a new groove for your thoughts to follow.

And while it’s not instantaneous (don’t let anyone tell you there’s quick fix. This is way too important to waste your effort on snake oil), it doesn’t take that much effort either.

And in the upcoming couple of posts, I will show you exactly how you can establish the habit of positivity, so it becomes completely automatic and you don’t even have to think about it. Which will then free up your conscious mind for other things, like making your life even more awesome than it already is.

What positivity is NOT

Before we delve deeper, I want to get one thing straight. There’s a lot of misconception about positivity, and I don’t want you thinking I’m trying to convert you to some wooly fuzzy all-is-pink-and-peachy way of thinking.

Some people will try to convince you that positivity is all about ignoring problems and hoping they go away. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Even good old fashioned negativity is closer to positivity than avoidance is.

Let me explain with an example…

Imagine your house roof starts leaking. (Also imagine you have a house, if you don’t.). You have three main options for dealing with that:

• remain calmly resourceful and get it fixed
• start complaining left and right about how horrible it is to have rain coming into your house, and how roofs aren’t what they used to be, and eventually, moaning and complaining, go get it fixed
• pretend everything is bright and peachy and “what leak? There is no leak! Now leave me alone…”

Funnily enough, the people who will try to convince you that positivity is all about avoiding the problem are exactly those people who will most moan and complain when tough stuff happens. They simply don’t want to acknowledge that there’s a better way to deal with things than negativity (which is still better than avoidance, though).

Of course, people don’t openly acknowledge they’re being negative. They hide behind words like “realistic” and “reasonable”.

People who say they’re “being realistic” really mean “I’m afraid to take action so I will discourage you from taking action to stop you from challenging my model of the world. And if you ignore me and take action anyway, and then happen to fail (as often happens in life), I will point it out and use it as a justification to stay within my comfort zone and avoid taking risks.”

(That’s quite a mouthful of meaning for such a short word, huh?)

Positivity is about facing the reality, but at the same time not dwelling on the negative aspects too much, and instead cherishing the good stuff and looking for constructive ways to make it even better.

How to hardwire yourself for positivity

Over the next couple of posts in this series, I will show you several ways to develop the positivity habit until it’s automatic and unconscious, as opposed to something you have to focus and work on. Because that’s ultimately where you want to be.

I will show you several ways to do that, and I want you to pick one, and focus on it fully for 30 days.

There is no point in jumping from solution to solution, because that way each scratch across the groove of your old thought patterns will be too shallow to make any difference.

Instead, I want you to pick one solution you like the most, and give it your full for 30 days, and notice how much of a difference it makes to your day-to-day happiness.

I will be with you on Tuesday, with the first way to hardwire yourself for positivity.

Until then, remember the two key takeaways from this post:

• Positivity and negativity are just habits of thought, and like any habits they can be formed and broken
• Positivity is about remaining calmly resourceful when tough stuff happens, which gives you a better chance to improve things, because you don’t waste your energy and motivation by moaning and complaining

See you on Tuesday!

(image courtesy of dotbenjamin)