The Art of Being Positive

There was a man once. He was always positive. Being positive was his second nature. Whenever anything untoward happened, his response would be, “It might have been worse.” So much so that it started annoying his friends. When one is always positive, it can get on the nerves of average thinkers around.

One day, a friend of his came up to him and said, “Last night I dreamed I was driving and that I had a terrible accident. And that every bone in my body was broken. They tried hard to revive me, the paramedics, but they failed. They gave me electric shocks but nothing worked. Ultimately, they pronounced me dead.

The messengers of Death came and dragged me all the way to hell. There I was beaten badly and skinned while I felt excruciating pain. Then they took me and put me in oil heated to the top degree. My body burned and I cried and cried but no one helped me. The pain was like never before. I was scared when I got up. And I am still scared now. This is a bad sign.”

“Oh, well. Don’t be scared,” the man said. “It might have been worse.” “What do you mean, it might have been worse? How could it have been any worse?!” the friend exclaimed. “It might have been true,” he said calmly. It might have been true — a statement worth reflecting upon.

Fear is innate in all living beings. Such fear may be instinctive or conditioned, something I will elucidate in the near future. Fears stop one from being positive. They make you weak. If you take a look at your past, you will realize that less than one percent of your fears actually ever came true, and that too, not even fully. This is the key to remember. When you no longer feel positive about your actions or goals because you are afraid that life may just go jelly on you, remind yourself of all the times in the past when you felt the same but each time your fears were proved wrong.

While in high school, you probably looked upon your maths or science teacher as the supreme being, the one who controlled your destiny, but he did not and you still passed. Each semester or each year you were probably afraid of your exams, but you mostly passed, if not always.

When companies were downsizing, and the economy was in depression when the stock markets were going south, you might have been affected but you moved on. The Divine, the One who lives in all, ensured that you were not without food, shelter, clothing, or medication.

Being positive is a matter of mental preparedness.

It is knowing that the world cannot end for you. It is remembering that every day gives you the opportunity to do something new. Everything is interdependent and relative. Positivity is about living in the moment. And above all, being positive is a matter of choice, a conscious choice in fact. You can be positive or you can be negative; in essence, both emotions have no firm basis; they are based on hope, often biased and misplaced.

Whether or not you count your chickens before they’re hatched is not as important as caring for the ones that do hatch. Because ultimately, your satisfaction, peace, joy is going to come from living in the moment. The past is dead, and, the future, unknown.

Gratitude, being grateful for what you have, hope, being optimistic about what you may have, and, discipline, working in the present to get what you would like to have, are the ingredients for a positive life. If you are grateful, hopeful, and disciplined, you will feel positive naturally.

If all your fears, or even a majority of them, came to life in the past, you have reason to be skeptical and negative about your future, about your goals, about yourself. However, if that is not the case, remember that it is your mind playing tricks. Being positive does not mean that you hide in a cocoon and hope that all good things will happen automatically, it is about working towards your goals regardless of what comes your way. You will emerge triumphant, stronger, and a winner. You may want to read the secret of being positive.

Oscar Wilde once said, “All of us are in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Go on! Learn to play and play to win but win to enjoy. Do all that positively. Chase your dreams. Today, you have the chance.

Peace.
Swami