For most of my life, I would have described myself as a negative person. I’m a worst-case scenario disaster-planner. To justify this way of thinking, I could fill an entire book with all the unfair and unfortunate things that have happened to me in my life. But I ask myself if that’s really where I want my focus to be.
It’s not that good things never happen to me. It’s just that I’m hyper-focused on what I see as bad, because I’m perpetually in DefCon 2 mode. And thanks to a healthy dose of Confirmation Bias, my brain sees proof everywhere that this is what I have to do to stay safe. Anything that is “good” is non-threatening, so I don’t have to worry about it.
That’s a pretty depressing way to go through life. The good news is that these are just my thoughts. I created them and I have the power to change them. Being a “positive” or “negative” person is totally under my control. I am what I practice, I see what I focus on, and what I focus on is magnified.
I can remember long periods of time after every trauma in my life, where “the little things” just didn’t bother me anymore, because I’d had a taste of something that reminded me of what a real problem was. Being grateful to be alive and intact gave me a sort of immunity against the daily aggravations of life that seem so all-consuming. But I don’t have to survive another traumatic experience to recapture that perspective. All it takes is a little intentional thinking.
I can choose to start every new day with the expectation that good things will happen. I can choose to look for the best in people. What I focus on will be magnified in my reality, and the energy that I put out into the world is the energy that will come back to me. I already know what results I will get from practicing being a paranoid victim. Time to find out how I can change my world by becoming a source of light, instead of a black hole.
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