This is not an easy thing for me. Especially lately. I am not prone to positive thinking. I'm a worrier, an over-analyzer, an anxious heart. Cultivating a "positive mind" and feeling "positive vibes" takes serious work, and sometimes no matter how hard I try I simply can't get myself into a sunshine-and-rainbows state of being. I feel guilty, too, because I keep catching myself slipping into complainer-mode lately when chatting with a friend, family member, or even my husband. No one likes a Debbie Downer, regardless of how legitimate your grievances may be. I do have good intentions though; I do strive for a positive mind and those illusive positive vibes. But my emotional wellbeing is so unsteady at this point that even the slightest bump in the road can throw the Positivity Train way off track. And the Motivation Caboose (or is it the engine?) goes right with it, over the Cliff of Despair and into the Valley of Self-Loathing.
Anyway, that not very well-crafted metaphor is a vague description of how I've been feeling today. Yet I know this is true: if you think positive and believe positive, you will feel positive. So here's a pep talk for myself (and maybe you, too): Your life is what you make it to be. It is not easy—it is not without challenges or negativity—and it certainly isn't "fair," but hiding from or wallowing in the hard things, the disappointing things, the scary things, won't make your days any better. And they definitely won't make your dreams come true. The only thing that will improve the situation is to take action—to hop back on that metaphorical train—and keep moving forward, remembering that small steps every day are better than no steps at all and that sometimes rejection or failure is pointing you on to something better.
While searching for inspiration to pull me out of my funk earlier today, I found these words particularly comforting and re-energizing: You were never created to live depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed or unworthy. You were created to be victorious.
Powerful, right? While re-reading those words and typing them now it hit me that there is great power in positive thinking (and, as I know firsthand, great paralysis in the opposite). And not just the power to feel better in the day to day but to actually create a happy, purposeful and, yes, victorious life. I've always admired people who seem to possess a sort-of innate optimism, my husband being one of them, but I realize now how important it is to cultivate that quality in myself. Positive mind, positive vibes... Positive life.
