the destructive power of positive thinking

now hear me out.





You hear a lot when you're growing up, that makes perfect sense.. life is a series of lessons learned and as the years go by, those lessons more often come in the form of amendments, or even contradictions to ideas that seemed perfectly reasonable and effective at the time. Days go by and occasionally we're faced with challenging incongruencies... something just doesn't make sense, and you ask yourself, 'If all these things are what I thought to be true, then why are things this way? Why is this happening? Why? Why?'

The logical answer, I suppose, is the possibility that something you took to be true in your life's equation, was in fact, not true at all. Being faced with such a possibility can be understandably devastating. It's as if you spent all this time building a rocketship to fly yourself to the moon and realizing, as soon as you lift off, that you were reading the blueprints backwards.

I'm having a big moment. You know, one of those times in my life where it feels like the very fabric of your beliefs, the gravity which holds you to steadfast against the ground, the earth beneath my feet, is crumbling, all around and under me. This puts me in a pretty vulnerable position, I'm sure I'm quite impressionable right now. I'm definitely open to new ideas.

What do you do, when what you were doing 'stops working'? I want to take this moment, to be brave, and re-evaluate. I want to take a breath, and open my eyes. Here now I must step outside myself to see where I could go with this. I could be really disillusioned, I guess. I could give up. I could be in the present moment. Right now I just want to see.

What I see, is a girl who is barely aware of her self-worth. I feel guilty, and my shoulders are heavy with a burden that I am only beginning to identify. I think back, like I have a million times before to the lessons I've learned, and focus particularly the one that I have married my beliefs to for the past few years- the idea that, positivity in one's life is an act of magnetism... that if you set your intentions on something, whether it be a goal, happiness, love, money... and you open yourself up to receive it, it will come to you. I'm sure you've heard it before, from someone, from a book, or a DVD.

When I lived in Maui, things were pretty nice. I remember, jumping into the ocean for the first time and I'd said to my best friend Amanda, 'I feel like I don't deserve this.' and she'd said to me, 'Well, part of you must have felt like you did, because you're here.' There's something really amazing about feeling that you've set an intention- and that it has happened to you. You feel in control. It's as if you've taken up a dance with the cosmos, yes? You're just going with the flow and engaging the universe, and making things happen the way you want them to, all because you dreamt it.

This worked out for me really well for a while. It just seemed like, things were happening right, all the time. Some would have called it a streak of good luck. Others would say it was an 'up' moment in a life where events are a series of ups and downs. Me, I was thinking, 'Wow, things are actually happening for me, because I have accepted positivity in my life.'

I don't know how many people I've told, 'If you maintain a positive outlook, you attract positivity. If you maintain a negative outlook, you attract negativity.' I reallly believed that. I know a lot of people that do.

Then, some time went by. Things started to go wrong. And I began to suffer.

There were times I thought to myself, 'poor me', but I have already learned that self-pity does not solve problems.
There were times I thought to myself, 'This is all _________'s fault', but I have already learned, that blaming people does not solve problems.

There were times I thought, 'Things will get better soon. I just have to think positively.' But then they didn't.

Sometimes in our lives, when we're having a hard time, we encounter obstacles, one after the other. Relentlessly. Some would call it a streak of bad luck. Others would say it's a 'down' moment in a life where events are a series of ups and downs. Me, I was thinking,

'Wow, things are really not happening for me. I must have brought this upon myself. In fact, I am bringing even more upon myself right now just by having this thought.'

See, there is a dark side to a life lived as a matter of intention, as a matter of magnetism. In a world where the very power of your own thinking dictates the eventual outcomes in your life... when things go wrong, it is YOUR fault. YOU have brought it upon yourself, either by asking for it somehow, or by failing to think positively in the face of overwhelmingly challenging circumstances.

Imagine what a burden that is, especially to someone who is already suffering.

In the midst of one crisis or another, Amanda had once said to me something along the lines of, 'I just don't understand why you choose to have a life of difficulty. Why you choose to put yourself in difficult situations.'

I'd spent a few years thinking about that, and honestly, I couldn't figure it out. I kept thinking, Why do I do this to myself? Why put myself in all of these difficult situations? Why have I chosen this difficult path?

It is really hard to know what to do when you can't breath and it appears that the hands tightening around your throat appear to be your own. What do you do, then, when placed in such a position?

I wanted to breath. I'd commanded my hands to let go, but they wouldn't. I concluded that either a) I wasn't 'willing' myself hard enough, or b) these were not my hands.

Figuring this out has been troubling me for a while now. When it comes to the times in your life when things are not going your way, it must be a matter of either a) personal failure (not being positive enough), or b) not being in control of your own life/destiny/whatever.

I'm not particularly enamoured with either conclusion. I doubt anyone would be, really. These options don't seem very positive.

Which brings me to another stunningly obvious realization that I've only recently remembered, which is this:

Shit just happens sometimes, that is completely out of our control.

Life gets hard. Believe it. And no amount of setting intentions is going to will away the pain of losing a loved one, nor should it. It won't heal cancers, or bring you that sweet convertible when you are making $7 an hour and are $20,000 in debt. Freak storms can wash away your home. A person you trusted might mislead you. You could lose your job. That person you love so much, might prefer to go it alone.

The thing I've realized, is that dealing with the ups and downs in your life is not EXCLUSIVELY a matter of intention, nor is it EXCLUSIVELY beyond our control. We have this nice, spongy thing in our craniums for a reason, and its not just to (debateably) bend the laws of physics so we can get whatever we want just by focusing on it. We have it so that when presented with a situation, we can use it to distinguish the difference between the things we can and can't change, and ACCEPT it.

We can use it to ACCEPT each other. We can use it to ACCEPT the challenges and obstacles and responsibilities that lie between ourselves and our ultimate purposes, whatever they may be. We can use it to ACCEPT circumstances we have no control over, pasts we cannot change, and the inevitability of grief, pain and loss. We can use it to ACCEPT the lessons we learn, whether we like them or not, and we can use them to ACCEPT the possibility that we may be misguided by them, and ACCEPT the new conditions of our lives, as they change, every single day.

What makes us the masters of our own destiny? We are not the engineers of our own lives. We are not in control. But we do, every day, check that box that says 'I agree to keep living, in spite of all this.'

We say yes to good fortune. And also, yes to pain and grief. We can, if we want to.