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Transform Your Life with Positive Vibes: Overcoming Negativity and Embracing Positivity
Contents
Transform Your Life: The Impact of Negative Vibes
There are many times in my life when things have gone wrong. I won’t bore you with a list, but at some points, it genuinely felt like I was in the Truman Show, and someone was pulling all the strings they could to make anything and everything go wrong.It’s fair to say that that mindset and the negative vibes that stemmed from it ruled my life for my first 36 years. Those negative vibes seeped into everything I did. Not only did it affect me, but it also affected those around me, even without me really being aware of it. I was sucking the good out of everything. Even when I was positive about something in public, secretly, I expected failure and as a result, I probably self-sabotaged a lot of the things I did.
The Comfort of a Negative Mindset
There was comfort in it, the negative mindset; expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. But the truth is, it’s not a healthy way to live. It induces anxiety and stress in everything, and if we’re going to be successful, we need to take the bad stuff in our stride and still have a positive outlook. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up at 4 am and spiralled into negativity, nor how many times something bad (or could) happen and my brain would go off catastrophizing. It simply wasn’t healthy.I’d be in the kitchen doing the dishes and suddenly overcome with anxiety about something even though I couldn’t pinpoint quite what. I’d be short and snappy too, blowing up over the smallest thing.
The coke bottle effect
I often describe this as a coke bottle effect. My coke bottle was almost full all the time, and any extra stress would just push me over the edge. What I needed to do was lower the amount in my coke bottle and give myself some breathing room. It’s a dangerous place to be, that mindset, thinking everything is stacked against you. It’s only after I listened to a podcast by Jonny Wilkinson (I am) that I “woke up” and realised enough was enough.
The influence of Jonny Wilkinson
Back in 2003, I watched Jonny score that drop goal to win the world cup and never thought twenty years later he would have such a profound effect on my life. Not because he said anything mind-blowing, but simply because he challenged the foundations of the world which I believed to be true. An outlook society had given me from birth, through school, the media, and an overarching social pressure to conform.
Since then, I have read some fantastic books, met some great people like Mike Kewley (mindfulness practitioner), and formed my own ideas on how the universe works, but it all started with that one podcast.
Steps to positivity
Wishing well to others
I decided to be more positive, and that sounds great, but how did I do it? Well, despite many false starts, I found a few things that worked for me. Wishing those that had done ill to me well – every single night before I went to sleep. Now, this concept at first seemed like total madness to me, but honestly, it was transformative. After just a few weeks, it was like those little weights from all those events on my shoulders were lifted.
Keeping a Dairy of Positives
Keeping a diary of all the positives that happen in my day – and believe me, you can find positives in every day. Even in the worst of days, things that might seem trivial are positives. I often simply put, “I cut the grass today” (best kept lawn on the street in my opinion). I fill this out just before I go to bed, and now, I can look back at thousands of positive things in my life whenever I want.
Recognising Negative Bias
Remembering that the things other people do to annoy me aren’t a problem, it’s just my brain kicking off. Did you know our brains have a negative bias? It’s all about keeping us safe, but our negative bias was designed for the days of hunter-gathering, not constant information overload. Our brains, therefore, seek out negativity and project it onto others. Say a car pulls out on me, my brain automatically spirals into thinking they did it deliberately and the driver is probably a bad person. Just be a goldfish, I say, see the anger, let it fly on by, and forget it 10 seconds later. Why dwell on something so trivial?
Avoiding Forming Opinions
Not forming an opinion – opinions only hurt the people that carry them. Why do we need to hold an opinion about everything? Newspapers are the worst for this; they tell you what to think and bad news sells. Now I really try hard not to hold an opinion about things I don’t understand or people I don’t know. If I don’t hold an opinion, it can’t sit over me.
Trimming Social Media
Trimming your social media – I am not an advocate of stopping social media, but I am an advocate of only following positive accounts. So many people share fake news, click bait, or images designed to create jealousy and envy that I just figured out if I followed accounts with beautiful images and positivity, that would subconsciously come into my life. All I must do is see more positivity and check myself when I am being needlessly negative, and I become more positive!
Conclusion
I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am a monk. Far from it. I catch my mind being negative or forming opinions all the time, but the fact is, I am now aware of it. I don’t think I will ever be able to stop it fully, but I am okay with that because I know now, I am not a negative person.
Whereas 80% of my thoughts used to be negative, now it’s 20%, and that 20% I can recognize and call out immediately. I am aware of it, and the best bit is by being more positive, I see more positives than ever before too.
Don’t get me wrong, bad things will still happen, we will still feel stress, but stress isn’t the bad thing; it’s our reaction to the bad thing, and our aim should be to focus on improving our reaction to the bad thing to be happier and healthier.
Will Ryles
Entrepreneur & Founder | Yellowstone Accounts
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