Fake positivity

“Just be positive”

Those are some really easy words to say, but when you body is in pain and you are surrounded by suffering, positivity is not something easy to achieve.

I feel like this is something that I need to talk about precisely because I’m someone who preaches positivity.

In an effort to protect ones own positive outlook a lot of people just avoid anything they see as negative. This is just as negative as focusing on negative things.

I can think of a time where a friend had just invested in a shitcoin at ATH and was talking about how it would moon on social media. I told him he might wanna be careful.

“Don’t come to me with those negative vibes man!”

You can guess what happened to his money.

We didn’t talk for a few months after so I don’t know if he blamed me for his loss or if he blamed himself or if he threw his hands up and said “that’s just the will of the universe”, but I know his losing money had nothing to do with my warning.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m alllll about being positive and I even believe that our thoughts can influence our reality. Forcing yourself to be positive all the time is a joke though, that’s not how it works.

We as humans have a habit of imitating. We see something we like and so we copy it. That doesn’t necessarily mean we understand it. It doesn’t mean we actually have actually taken the steps to achieve something.

Trying to eliminate all negative things from your life is actually a great exercise. You may find you have more power over your life that you originally thought. But fear of things you deem negative are proof that you aren’t 100% positive all the time, and ignoring that proof is ignoring the means of actually becoming that positive.

We have all experience pain. We all know what fear feels like. By rejecting these things, we do not actually release them, they always linger and if we totally ignore them, they actually grow.

Real positivity requires us to sit with our own suffering, to recognize it and to honor it and the past version of ourselves who felt it. We can release it by looking at it directly and saying “thanks, you taught me something. I think I’m ok without you now”.

We can consciously choose our influences, that’s a good thing. But what comes to find us often hints at what kind of pain or fear we still have inside.

I made a decision to stop watching the Walking Dead. I was having dreams of zombies and humans being awful to each other in a post apocalyptic world. I recognized very quickly that I wasn’t actually scared of the post apocalyptic world itself. I had spent years thinking “people are dumb, they aren’t going to figure shit out, maybe we’d be better off if society ended”.

My fascination with the apocalypse was actually caused by the pain of watching people hurt each other. “Fuck it, burn it all” is an attitude of someone who fears that goodness can not exist. I wanted the world to end because I could not believe it would get better. I think many people actually feel this way right now.

I realized that’s not something I want to give energy to and so I cut the show off at season 8. Neagan got away and I said “fuck it, done with this zombie shit” and never looked back.

I’m not scared of watching the Walking dead though. I can go to a zombie party. Hell I will probably watch the season finale. I just don’t want to fill my head with that kind of thing consistently.

There is a difference between seeking positivity and rejecting negativity. To seek out positivity is where true positive vibes come from. To reject negative vibes actually only serves to bring more negative vibes and makes you sound like an asshole.

If my friend was really just about positive vibes, he wouldn’t have reacted that way. He may have just said “Nah man, I have a feeling” and when he lost money he’d take it as a learning experience. If he were true to himself he might feel pain over that loss and he’d recognize it. He might spend a few hours or days feeling defeated. Or he might still be running away from his pain, saying “it’s all good! It’s just a learning experience.”

It’s easy to hide negativity under though and that itself could be false positivity, but me trying to call him out in that would be a rejection of negative and so I will only do that if I think he wants my help.

That’s what I’ve been working on these days, just letting things be as they are unless I see a way to bring more love or fun to them. All things that come into our awareness have meaning and are valid.

I want to see how they make me feel and if they don’t feel good, I seek to support what they are not, not fight them directly. This even applies to the situation I’m talking about. I don’t want to shame false positivity, I’m just trying to point at an alternative.

To acknowledge something negative without fighting against it doesn’t mean I support this or that, I’m just managing where I place my energy so that I can maximize the awesome in my life.

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