The most common question I get from people, whom I know well or are strangers is:
“How do you stay so positive?”
After hearing this question so many times and stuttering on my words when I answered, I wanted to sit down and really reflect on the process I go through in my head, to choose positivity.
If you haven’t already, check out my blog post about the Power of Positivity and the reasons I believe it is essential!
Bless the past. The 1st step to becoming more positive is to acknowledge that for better or for worse, the things that are in the past cannot be changed. We can only grow from them and move forward. The longer you spend in the past, the less future you have to enjoy.
Surrender expectations. Once you have chosen to be present, it is time to surrender your expectations of what should or shouldn’t happen. We live in a world of miracles and anything can happen at any point, for better or for worse. I feel as though people get discouraged when their expectations are not met, so I try my best to release these “standards” as much as I can.
Commitment to abundance. Building off this, I feel as though people are conditioned to think things are “unrealistic” due to what has happened in other people’s lives and the opinions of others projected onto them. This conditioning is definitely more prevalent in certain races and genders, but most of us are taught time and time again to be more “practical”. Yes, practicality has its place when it comes to things like saving money, but I feel like many people are held back from achieving things that they dream of because it “isn’t realistic”. As cliche as it sounds, when you dream big and fully commit to the things in your vision, you will be shocked at the amount of opportunities that “magically” come your way.
Choose love over fear. Life and the people in our lives are not all rainbows and butterflies. Life is nothing short of challenging, but it is how you face those challenges that defines who you are and the life you want to live. You can do all this inner work to become the most positive and abundant person, but that doesn’t not mean that everyone else in your life will have the same commitment. I always find it frustrating when my positivity gets rocked by someone else. After reading A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson and The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein, I realized that when confronted with conflict, you always have 2 options to chose: love or fear. Choosing love, means looking at the person who is inflicting you with negativity and feeling sorry for the suffering they must be going through for them to be so negative. Choosing fear, means accepting the attack personally and believing that someone else’s behavior is a reflection of you.
Humility. This is one of the most challenging things I have ever tried to learn. I struggle with humility to this day and probably will for the rest of my life. I didn’t realize how pivotal of a role it played in my ability to stay positive, until my sister brought it to my attention. She would make remarks like “why do you even care?” or “You’re still thinking about that?” It seemed obvious to me that I was embarrassed on something I did or said that I didn’t intend and how I care greatly about how others think and feel about me. It took me a lot of time to realize how I need to be okay with humility from small, daily things to bigger scale decisions and actions.
Once I accept that humility, I then bless the past, surrender my expectations of what should have happened, realign myself and my thoughts to abundance and choose to love myself.