Life without negatives

Posted on May 6, 2008

OK, let’s be honest, that’s never really going to happen. Something will go wrong once in a while, there’s nothing you can do about it.

What you can do, however, is control your reaction to whatever it is.

If you dwell on the negative, it increases in size, it takes priority in your day. It takes up mental energy that you can better use for something worthwhile.

One trick is to look for the silver lining in the dark cloud.

Example: Last night, I went to bed about the usual time… but then the alarm on my phone went off just before midnight (stupid setting on my part). Then I woke up again just after midnight from some kind of bizarre dream about samurai style sword fighting. My old method would have been to lie in bed, perhaps doze a little, then get up when my alarm goes of and be tired all day. Worse than being tired, I’d probably dose up on caffeine as well, which makes me feel alert for a while, but also slightly queasy(when consumed in large quantities), and be complaining about how tired I am all day (mostly not verbalising it, I’m not that bad… but the voices inside my head, they complain a lot), and end up feeling more tired, getting less done, and feeling justified in basically being useless all day.

Today, I got up (not straight away, but still, sooner than I would have), and instead of dwelling on how tired I felt,started my morning meditation a bit earlier, did some reading, a little bit of writing (this, in fact), and generally got my day off to an earlier start than usual. After I finish this, my usual day will start, and I’ll be humming along like normal.

Some negatives don’t have a silver lining - there’s not a lot you can do about that. What you can do, however is simply move past the event. Deal with the consequences, and put it aside. Beating yourself up over it, or revisiting it in your mind only helps keep you in a negative ‘flow’, and if you’re anything like me, those can go on for a couple of days.

Today, I’ve got a new little voice in my head. It’s the one that shouts “get over it!” at the other ones when they start complaining about feeling a little tired. I’ll see how that works out for me.

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