On Positivity
How reality influences emotions
Sean "Day[9]" Plott talked about the divide between reality and your emotions (or how you feel about that reality) in his latest pre-Christmas "Day[9] Daily". This really let me to something I have been trying to learn about and experiencing for some time now. Happiness has little to do with reality and a lot to do with your STATE OF MIND. Emotions will happen, but you can CONTROL HOW YOU ACT ON THEM and how they influence your STATE OF MIND. You can actually teach yourself to not let negative influences from your reality alter your positive state of mind. Likewise, you can teach yourself to nurture positive influences, cherish the positive emotions and use them to achieve happiness.
Simple, repeated tricks work
Put deliberate action into finding out what CHEERS YOU UP if you lack positive emotions at any given time. Start with your body and brain: they will respond if you take care of them and have an enormous amount of ways to make you feel good. For me, regular exercise (every other day) helps enormously. Others, I hear, respond well to adrenaline. Dance. Laugh. Even without any cause whatsoever. Or find a YouTube movie about kittens. Smile. Close window. Observe your STATE OF MIND.
Talk to yourself (out loud works best, but I'd only recommend it when you are by yourself, or people WILL look at you funny). Tell yourself that you CAN achieve whatever it is you want from life. Tell yourself you are beautiful, smart and capable (do not tell yourself you are perfect, because you are not, and neither is anyone else). Write it down on a place where you see it every morning and read it every day. Read it out loud. Tell yourself not to fear or worry, because nothing in life is worth fear or worry, and they have not produced anything useful EVER. Note that sometimes, these feelings are useful signals to trigger you to focus on some area of your life that needs attention; handle this with positivity to 'fix it' and stop worrying immediately. Absolutely never worry about things that are out of your control or in the past. Instead, tell yourself to BELIEVE that you are worthy. Even when failure finds you, tell yourself that this failure has nothing to do with YOU. Do not make up excuses, but try to invest in finding what you did wrong while keeping positive and TRY HARDER NEXT TIME.
Find friends and people who are positive (but honest) and who generally MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD. Take care of your brain by relaxing and enjoying guilt-free play. Read about people who inspire you, and do not envy but truly believe that you can be like them, even just a little bit. It helps to genuinely 'dig deep' into their personality, to find out that you have a lot in common and they are actually just human as well. Also note how they handle their failures (I bet you: with persistence born from desire/vision/beliefs and positivity).
How emotions influence reality
Now here's the real kicker. In my (admittedly, still limited) experience, my emotions HUGELY INFLUENCE MY REALITY. Ever had a really bad day where everything seems to go wrong? Try to think back to one of those days. Try and identify the individual events and how they made you feel. I found that most of my 'bad days' actually started with one thing that got me feeling extremely negative and things got worse from there. So what happens with your reality if you decide to handle this negative influence and keep your emotions positive after that first bad thing happens to you? I challenge you to try this, a lot. It will be hard the first times (as with all things, improvement requires failure), but as you get into the habit of keeping positive, I found my number of 'bad days' decreased to almost nil.
Somehow, by simply being positive and keeping your thoughts focused on whatever it is you want to achieve, the number of actual negative events decreased and the number of positive events increased, as if they were attracted by magnets. Of course, there are circumstances in which it is too difficult to keep the negative emotions from taking over. That's ok, nobody's perfect, go to bed early and try again the next day. I am starting to believe you are the master of your reality because of the ability to control your thoughts and emotions. If anyone would care to explain HOW this works, it would be very welcome. All I know, is that it actually works.
Let me close with a poem found in Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" [1]:
If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don't
If you like to win, but you think you can't,
It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will--
It's all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!
[1] Highly recommended, although I'd suggest interpreting 'Rich' in the widest sense of the word instead of just monetary gain. I try to live by his words to achieve any goal in life.
