The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come. ~ Peter UstinovWhat Are Thoughts?
Before I touch the subject of becoming an optimist, I want you to know a little something about your thoughts. First of all, you are not your thoughts. You are awareness and awareness is an opportunity that allows thinking to happen. It allows you to have thoughts. Because I think very visually, I often consider my thoughts to be a thing that floats in front of me. How I am connected to these thoughts is not important. All I need to know, is that I can use them, to make changes.
So what are thoughts anyway? Your thoughts are the tools that help you to direct your energy. When you create a mental distance between you and your thoughts, you not only create a sense of independence, but you also gain more control over your ideas. It then becomes clear that you can choose which ones you want to work with and which ones you wish to neglect. However, when you believe you are your thoughts, then you have no control over them. You then believe you are the tool, instead of the entity that handles the tool.
So the first thing to understand is that a thought is nothing more than a tool. People often use the term "use positive thinking", so they basically say "use your positive tool". But there is no such thing. They consider thought to be something that can be attributed with positivity, but you cannot assign anything to thought. You don't think positive, nor do you think negative. Thought is not blue, not soft, not anything. It's completely neutral.
You can't become a positive person by using "positive thinking" to undo your "negative thinking", because you can't experience a sense of positivity and negativity at the same time, much like you can't be angry and happy at the same time. Positive and negative don't exist side by side at the same time in your awareness, so how can you possibly use the one to undo the other?
Being in a positive or negative state is simply being aware of a process that happens inside you. It's like a river, a stream, that flows in one direction (we label it "positive") or in the opposite direction (we label it "negative").
To become an optimist, you can only do it by slowly and consciously redirecting the stream that flows through you and gradually push it in the opposite direction. You do this by refocusing where your energy flows to. By using your thoughts.
What You See Is What You Become
You don't have direct access to that positive or negative stream inside you, but you do have access to that which controls the flow of that internal river. It's called focus. Your focus directs where the stream is going to and to change the flow of that internal stream - preferably in the positive direction - you have to change what you focus on or see in this world.
And yes, like everything that involves personal growth, this requires effort. Whatever state you are in, it takes perseverance to gradually push that entire stream in the opposite direction. Because that stream is so vast, you can't expect it to simply start flowing in the other direction, because you want it to. You can try it out, here and now! If you're a positive minded person, try to think negative, right now! If you're a negative minded person, try thinking positive, right now!
You can't do it, right? The current of that inner force is way too powerful, because it has built up momentum over a period of years. At best, you can shift your perspective a little bit. So thinking positive cannot be done with a quick fix approach. It's about changing your outlook over a long period of time and accumulating moments of positivity.
Many Small Steps Make Big Changes
When you feel negative, you can, for example, put on some music. Music is very influential and it can feel as if you have become more positive in a heartbeat. But as soon as you turn the music off, that internal river still flows in the same direction as it did before. You nudged it a bit, but if you don't put on some more music, you will revert back to your negative thinking in no time. You then switch back to what you are used to focusing on. That's good news, because it means that even a small change, can make a little difference.
But that one thing isn't going to change everything. You need to repeat the process. And you have to repeat it a lot of times. You have to immerse yourself in positivity and keep doing that. You have to overwhelm yourself with positive input, such as pleasant conversations, music, nature walks, enjoying your food, spending time with kids, playing, singing in the shower,... well, you do have a sense of imagination don't u? Well, use it! Make a list of all the things that can make you happy. And then take action, so you can experience a new you, because simply thinking about change... changes absolutely nothing.
The more you encourage yourself to redirect that flow, the more you will convince yourself that that is how your internal river should flow. Continue to find sources of positivity and you will begin to forget what it is like to feel those negative emotions.
A lot of people use affirmations to convince themselves to think positive, but I'm not at all a fan, because they simply don't work for me. I tried them for a while but I kept rejecting them because they felt unnatural and because the idea grew inside my mind that I was fooling myself into believing something I didn't want to believe. There are far more powerful things in this world to become a positive person. One of my personal favorites is to go to
the beach and enjoy a couple of hours walking, smelling the ocean air and hearing the waves. Things like that do a far better job at lifting your spirit, than cramming in tons of affirmations.
But it is also important to accept the state you are in right now. Be realistic about the changes you want to go through. You don't become a positive person overnight! I've been working on this aspect of my life for a really long time now and I'm still not the most optimistic person in the world. But by understanding the above concepts, I know how to gradually push myself in a new direction.
The only certainty you have, is that you can control your life, by focusing on what you wish to experience. Even when everything feels wrong, you can still decide to
live in the moment and enjoy it. It all depends on what you want to see in the world. You either choose to see the positive or you choose to see the negative. Is everything negative? Then use your imagination to find out what you believe is positive and act on your ideas, over and over and over and over again, until you find it hard to remember what it was like to feel bad.
Life is beautiful and so are you, even if you don't believe it right now. So dive into the positive. If you can see the beauty, it means you have become it.
