Today is R U Okay Day. See someone stressed out? Don’t estimate the power of asking “R U okay?”
Well it’s 14 days til we fly out to Kathmandu.
I am currently fending off flu-like symptoms at home and letting it take it’s course so I can be more active again soon. Today I just wanted to write something without backing it up with facts, figures, perspectives and other authors on positivity.
People talk about being positive a lot.
Positivity is an awesome force to be reckoned with, but like the search for happiness, sometimes people get lost in the search.
I have been advised to read a book called “The Happiness Trap” because apparently it aligns with my views on the unrealistic belief that you can be happy all the time. Don’t make the search for any one concept (like happiness or truth) the life or the life the search.
The same goes for positivity.
It’s actually a very old Buddhist teaching that we should watch all emotions and just let them pass and that’s what I subscribe to. They are not bad nor good. They just are.
This is the path to happiness, to positivity.
No one thing in our lives is ever certain and clinging to something desperately will bring us very strong emotions and often the kinds of emotions that make us not feel pleasant.
It has taken a lot of years for me to be able to say what gives me joy. To even use the word joy without cringing as though I was “slacking off” by looking for joy.
Then a few years back I realised that joy was always present, just not always visible to me. Some goes for positivity.
The key thing is don’t make a project out of it. Out of anything in regard to emotional states really. Let them come and go and foster and nurture those that make you feel good.
The science of neuro-plasticity says the more positive the experience the more we rewire to the positive energy and the more likely we are to gravitate to the positive and continue to experience the positive. Those who don’t like neuro-plasticity say this is just behaviour and nothing to do with brain plasticity.
I think there is ample evidence (in my own life and that is enough for me) that positive behaviour makes the brain positively plastic. 🙂
Jacci Pillar 