How To Be More Positive

I was thinking about the notion of actively trying to be ‘positive’ and how much pressure this puts on us. For me, asking myself to be positive is like asking myself to stop thinking while I meditate, it just doesn’t work like that.

To ‘stop thinking’ we need to LET GO of the WANT to stop thinking. In the same way, to TRUELY feel positive, we need to let go of the want to be.

Positivity is an experience, not a distraction or dismissive thought pattern. When feeling sad for example, it isn’t ‘positive’ to stop feeling sad, feel happiness instead and ignore the sadness. Yes, most people prefer to feel happiness, it’s a more desirable feeling but is it more ‘positive’? No… why? Because sadness is useful.

Sadness allows us to connect, to feel alive. If in a moment you feel sad, it simply means you need to feel sad and that’s ok.

We need to feel all our emotions to understand ourselves and what we want/don’t want. They contribute to growth, spiritual transitions, and important decisions that without self-awareness and acceptance we would otherwise not make.

Perhaps it is the thought that sadness is not something that we want to feel, the running from it, that makes it so bad. What if we saw sadness, anxiety, and other unpleasant emotions/experiences as opportunities? Opportunities to feel, to experience being human, to be more present to practice accepting what is and immerse ourselves in the now? Wouldn’t that be a more accurate way of interpreting being ‘positive’? Positivity: A result of acceptance of all we experience, not just the ‘good stuff’. Being in the now, whatever that may look like and finding peace in that.

To be positive isn’t a forced act, a change of words or a mask to throw on to trick ourselves and others.

It is a result of acceptance, compassion, and love for what is and a belief that all is well. The universe has our back, everything happens for a reason. The evidence of this is everywhere, the more you open to this idea, the more you see it and most importantly feel it.

When someone is talking to you and everything they say seems ‘negative’ it can be difficult to listen, it can be draining. It may then lead us to the conclusion that we don’t want to make someone else feel as we did. We decide it’s best to only share things that are ‘positive’, the more desirable emotions. The reality is ‘negative’ communication no longer feels that way, when we delve deeper into what is being said.

A cycle of negativity with no awareness, can be draining but an open, honest conversation about any emotion can lead to clarity, comfort, support, deepened relationships, and personal growth.

Unshared ‘negative’ emotions do not have the same transformative impact unless carefully observed and accepted through a practice like meditation.

People often ask me if I feel drained listening to people’s problems and the truth is I don’t at all, it has the opposite effect. When people come to me with their stories and share their grief, sadness, and anxieties at first, I connect to them on a compassionate level and as an empath feel a sense of their pain. I go in deep and share my understanding of their pain to validate them and let them know they are heard, seen, and felt. I then get excited for them.

I can see the breaking open, the space where the light gets out, that light fills me up and I sit before them as a mirror to reflect that light back.

It’s an honour to be there to witness their transformation and their courage to be so vulnerable. Realness is so brave.

It is within the hardest of times that we finally come out of mind, into body and connect with the divine and thus feel peace, a sense of being, limitless. So, is a moment of breaking, of heart opening positive? How could it not be? It’s that start of a journey. A journey to the self.

Positivity becomes toxic when it isn’t authentic and in alignment with what is.

Positivity can only be experienced as a result, rather than an act. Meditation is the same and just like meditation, the path to positivity takes practice and a connection to the now.

You are not SUPPOSED to feel anything, you feel what you feel and that is it. Those that struggle with you doing this, are likely to be struggling with accepting their own truth. Just because they are not brave enough to honour their feelings, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to be. Show the way, you can be the light and encourage emotional freedom, this is what our world needs more of.

Stay in alignment with how you feel, what you need, speak from a place of love and authenticity, and know that that is enough.

Sending you all love & healing

Leyla x

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