I am an intentional optimist. I did not come by it naturally. By temperament, my first inclination was fear and projection of negative outcomes. Not what I would call positive, more like “Oh no, what now?”.
Seriously, when I was young, I felt ill-equipped to cope with the scary outcomes that life could bring. Imagining the worst circumstances did not prepare me to meet them, but learning to adopt a positive viewpoint did.
A reader and observer of human nature (most writers are), I found the quality of optimism attractive. People who imagined positive outcomes seemed better able to create them. They appeared to be overall happier and more fun to be around.
That’s why I adopted positive thinking and became an optimist. When I encounter negative, disheartening information, I ultimately flip it and see the positive, but there is more to the process. There is no way around emotions that arise in between receiving information and choosing my thoughts.
Recently I heard some disparaging news. Something that I thought would go a certain way, did not and work I had done was being undone. In pursuit of big profit, the people and the planet were being disregarded.
My training in optimism led me to declare without missing a beat, that I am grateful that I did what I did when I could and that I know I have no power over others. Seeing how others operate, led me to acknowledge and celebrate my own formula for success. Basically, given the chance to do it again, I would do the same thing.
That line of thought is all well and good as an end result, but it did not take into account the emotional component. Even though I might do the same thing again, I did not like what happened. Before I noticed the dissonance between my emotions and my positive thinking, things happened that got my attention.
My grandbaby felt the conflict and was unsettled, especially at naptime. Children know everything!
The glass bottle of vitamin C fell out of my hands crashing into shards on the floor. Four letter word!
Where did I put my keys? I have a key bowl by the front door and I typically place them in there. But they were not there. I looked everywhere, that is, except the coat pocket where I eventually found them, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Ok. Something was amiss in Judy land. I decided to pause, typically breaking and losing things are a sign for me to stop pushing forward and to sit with myself and notice what is going on inside.
What came up when I sat with myself was a lot of unprocessed emotion. Emotion about what happened. Anger for instance. Disappointment. Incredulousness. I recognized the feelings and gave them expression, without doing any harm to anything or anyone.
I did an angry dance, the yogic lion pose, and made a list of all the reasons why it was I was upset about what happened.
If I don’t judge emotions, I can allow them to be and express them safely. Emotions are not positive and negative, dark and light, they just are. But if I suppress them, they grow like fungus in the dark, damp forest.
Acknowledging and feeling emotions, I can climb the ladder to reach the summit – acceptance. That’s the foundation for authentic positivity.
When I accept what is, positive thinking is in sync with my inner reality. Then there is no dissonance between information, emotions, and my thoughts.
Acceptance is an emotional process triggered by an upset.
When I leap over my honest emotions to embrace positive thinking, I am being phony.
If I pause to allow the energy of emotion to move through me, I can arrive at acceptance of what is.
Subsequent positive thoughts are then congruent; I am an authentic optimist rather than an angry one.
Making the invisible visible, what was hidden seen, what’s inside outside, is freeing!
Isn’t that why we celebrate Halloween?
