Sometimes, thinking positively can hurt you.
I know, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you expect me to say. I teach people how to raise their vibration and connect with their inner self, after all.
But I also I teach people how to look, with emotional honesty, at the losses they’ve endured and learn how to release the pain they’ve been holding onto. You need to do your inner work if you want your vibration and intuition to rock.
You can’t do that work without looking at both the “good” and the “bad.”
But people who promote positivity above all else won’t tell you that.
When positivity works
There are times when looking on the bright side and finding the silver lining are helpful. Life certainly has its hiccups and immediately going to worst case scenario doesn’t help you get through the rough patches.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt and having hope that things will get better are wonderful.
When life is hard, getting lost in depression and doubt usually isn’t helpful to help you find your path forward.
You need to be able to face the dark
But here’s the thing. Unless you’re willing to take a meander through the difficult feelings, you’re more likely to get lost in them. By knowing them, you can navigate them.
If you insist on staying positive and only chanting positive affirmations no matter what’s happening, you’re unprepared to deal with the very real realities we sometimes face.
I have bats getting into my house right now through my apparently crumbling chimney.
Sure, I can look at chasing the bat out of the house by corralling it through a system of raised bed sheets we get the kids to hold high above their heads with outstretched arms as a family bonding activity. Fortunately I have tall kids.
But really? Without going into a long explanation of my bat-related fear of giant-needled rabies shots, it’s reasonable to state: I don’t want bats in my house.
Sure there’s a little bit of good and fun in the experience, but there’s also discomfort and fear. And a looming, expensive chimney repair project.
(In the meantime, I’ve secured our fireplace surround to the wall with packing tape so no bats can get into the house. It looks tacky, but I don’t care.)
That’s just a bat getting into our house. What about the other realities we face? Death, loss of health, changes in finances, addictions, abuse? How do we deal with those?
The danger of unrelenting positivity
There are some people who believe that if you just act right, think right, feel right, everything in your life will go right. If you say the right things, do the right things, think the right thoughts. No negativity. No can’ts or wants or shoulds.
It’s true that our outlook and attitude shape our experience of life. It’s entirely possible that what we decide is possible for our lives allows those things to come to pass, both energetically and because we then take the steps to cause them to happen.
But sometimes this thinking gets twisted and becomes a way to blame people for what befalls them. If I worry about my child, it doesn’t cause bad things to happen to them. If I express concern about how we’re going to pay for the chimney repair, it doesn’t mean that our finances, as well as the chimney, will crumble.
If I still experience anxiety, despite my positive outlook, it doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong. It means I’m human, and also the parent of several adolescent children, one with high needs, while going through perimenopause and dealing with chronic illness and the lingering repercussions of an early life of loss.
When we refuse to look at the whole of our experiences, we end up doing what’s called a spiritual bypass.
You may think you’re meditating your worries away or manifesting yourself out of your troubles. But you’re not.
When you do this, you’re not really living your whole life. Your whole life is what you came here to experience. All of it. The hard, the fun, the gruelling, the uplifting.
If thinking positively and using mantras and affirmations was truly the cure for all our ills or the path to the perfect life full of abundance and harmony, I think we’d all be thinking happy thoughts all the time. But we’re not. Because there are aspects of life that aren’t all unicorns and rainbows. And that’s OK.
Enjoying the beauty of life for what it is
The more you’re able to sit in the discomfort of when things aren’t love, light and sparkles, without shying away from it, trying to distract yourself or bypass it altogether, the more you’re able to enjoy the moments of life’s beauty. Life is all the things together. There is pain and heartbreak, but there’s also love and connection.
I’m writing this sitting in the waiting room while one of my kids is seeing their counselor. There’s pain there. Longing that I could help my child more, that they not be in pain in the first place. But this is what is. And there are beautiful flowers outside the waiting room window, the sun lighting up the new leaves on the trees. Other patients here getting help and healing for themselves. And me, loving and hoping, sitting and breathing, writing and living this life.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay