In a stressful world with too many things to stress us out, there are also too many self help pools of thought, of which some delve and promote the art of “false positivity”. Please note that I am referring to “False positivity” here in the context of human psychology. What is False Positivity? It is a conclusion that some effect occurred when in fact it did not. I am not one with any psychology expertise but here to speak in layman’s language about my personal view on this.
With the pandemic still very much lurking around popping up with new variants, the average stress of the day has been somewhat overwhelming for some than others. I believe there are many out there who are facing psychological challenges, mainly due to the uncertainty which causes anxiety. Therefore, it is quite normal to look for self help or even professional assistance to help overcome stress and anxiety. I am sharing a piece of my life experience here from my past, hoping that it would help someone else.
There was a time in my life, without my knowledge I was happily trotting along the path which led to false positivity. This was due to a turn of events which took place in my life which made me psychologically weak as I had little or no control over what had happened. As the years went by, I was began to blame myself and others in my life which caused me pain and anguish. I started giving myself false hope, not realizing that all the false positivity I was building up to was actually destroying me and making me weak and feeble as I was at the time unable to face reality.
Being positive, optimistic and hopeful are very good things in life. However, when you somehow undermine the reality of your life and do not have your bearings and the crux of it all, you are just faking your own journey. You begin to build things in your mind which makes you believe that you are something better than someone else or that you are stronger etc etc.
In all of this, I realized that just as I am having hope to overcome a certain trial in my life, I also needed to be practical and be realistic. Being hopeful and positive with self-affirmations and other tactics, I was just unplugging myself from my core and beginning to live in a fantasy. With this fantasy coming to and end, I realized that I needed to first be true to myself! If something has gone wrong, with or without my control, I needed to be firstly aware of it; whether it was in my control or if I had no control. Either way, what is done cannot be undone, therefore I have to move on and put it in my past, no matter how bad and evil the experience was. But I need to move on by forgiving myself firstly (If I was the cause for the mess) and forgive whoever was responsible (if it was external). The key is to move on!
Recently, I read an interesting Blog post here by G.S Inspired, where it was titled as “Own your shit” (link here). I think that a lot of us could easily move on from our misfortunes in life and save a lot of trouble, money, and time by just doing this one thing. Owning our shit! When things go wrong it is very easy to blame ourselves and/or others. We are also overly stressed and our subconscious minds are always stressed no matter what we do to make it go away.
For me, this proved that when we understand the concept of owning our part in whatever that has happened, it will surely and certainly enable us to recover and be more accountable (for the future). By doing so, we won’t be lingering on some effects of stress caused by the incident and we wouldn’t have to go down the path of false positivity to rebuild our lives. All in all, it is about being true to yourself, no matter how ugly and dark that may be. No one on this earth will know you better, than yourself. It is a very good discipline to have self-checks with yourself frequently to understand yourself better, love yourself better, and motivate yourself to achieve what you wish for in this life!
Remember, we are all here on a journey and our journeys are unique and our contributions to this world is also unique.
Hope this helped someone. Please do leave a comment if you enjoyed this or have other thoughts to share.
Thank you! Have a lovely week ahead!
Photograph : Pexels
From the Heart 
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