Negativity

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In a conversation with a friend it came up; why ~ if you are aiming at creating a positive experience ~ would you present someone with a negative?

This is true in any marketing or commercial activity; something he was involved in at the time. It is also true in our day to day interactions with people around us. As it turns out, it is an easy one to grasp the impact of. It really does make perfect logical sense!

And yet, every once in a while I hear the words come out of my mouth: “Is this a bad time?”
Why present the other person with a negative? Why not set the stage for a positive experience and ask whether this is a good time?
Interestingly, innocuous things like that show me as much as anything else that my attitude is more negative than I had thought or hoped for... On the other hand, it is an easy one to work with and change ~ all it needs is for me to pay attention and to actually listen to what I am saying. To listen to the way I put things into words.

A different aspect of negativity is in the interaction with ourselves.
If we keep presenting ourselves with the negative aspect of what is going on in our lives, we can eventually put up a serious roadblock to the things we want to achieve. A roadblock that may start with  seemingly unimportant statements like ‘is this a bad time?’ in which we present ourselves with a negative... It can then take the form of “I don’t have time for that”. Or “I don’t think I can do that”. And pretty soon one can be at: “I don’t think I will ever accomplish that as I have never been successful at it in the past...”.

Needless to say that if those are our lines of thought, it becomes increasingly difficult to actually do the things we want to do and be successful at it.

So how can we shift into a more positive frame of mind?

Of course, as with all inner personal changes we may want to incorporate into our lives, there are any number of ways to turn this slightly negative interaction around:

• Spend some time to become truly aware of how you are putting things into words; when you find there is a negative aspect to it you purposely ‘reword’ it into its positive aspect.
• Create an affirmation for yourself which can help you let go of negative experiences from the past and open you to new and positive experiences in the future.
• Create an ‘achievement tableau’ on which you literally put together the picture of what it looks like and how it feels to you when you have achieved your goal.
• Put all of the above together in a short, personalized slideshow (positive wording, affirmation, pictures or slides that depict how it feels to have accomplished your goal) on your computer...

You may be surprised at the positive impact this can have on your life!
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