Once, a long time ago, a friend of mine who is extraordinarily talented was feeling sad about the slow progress of his creative career. In an attempt to encourage him, I told him that the power to increase his success was in his own hands: he simply needed to believe he was a success to become one.
I went home feeling like a supportive friend and a hero, who quite possibly saved the day with my straight talk. I “freed him” of his negative mindset with my honest assessment and now he could see the truth and just work towards changing it.
Yeah, no.
A few days later we met again and he told me I had genuinely insulted him. After our conversation, he was so angry he hadn’t been sure if he wanted to speak with me again. Instead of filling him with possibility, he felt I blamed him for his own lack of success. Way to go Nitsana.
And what was worse? He was right.
There is a reason that the sentence “think positive” feels so extraordinarily superficial. Because it is.
You can’t just “think positive” – when you don’t. You can’t just “believe” in something that you don’t.
And trying to force yourself to do so, only makes you feel like more of a failure for not being able to do that simple task of just “thinking positively”. Just “seeing yourself as a star”. Or whatever.
Sometimes we have an epiphany and it changes everything. And we are easily able to change our own damaging inner dialogue during those magical moments. Sometimes it happens with years of therapy and self-work. Sometimes it’s a gradual growing up. And some of us are blessed with self-dialogues that support us.
I spent years “thinking positively” and things still didn’t always go the way I wanted them to. It just made me try harder. I was going to damn well think positively and love myself no matter what the cost! I could do this. But I couldn’t. Because “forcing” myself to think positively and blaming myself for not succeeding in changing the things I wanted to change only succeeded in making me feel more like a failure than ever before. Trying to think positive simply became another manifestation of self-hatred and not accepting myself exactly as I was.
So that’s why I don’t believe in thinking positively. I believe in loving yourself. I believe in accepting yourself, even when you don’t think positively. That’s where you are. And it’s fine. Let it be. Trust in your own process. Hug yourself as you would a best friend who is going through a hard time and can’t see him/herself.
At the same time – there are practices you can employ that can help you get to a place of genuinely believing in your own good. Do those. And remember you are awesome even if you are feeling down, unloving or sad. If you don’t get the results you want – give yourself a hug first. Know you are doing the best you can and trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be – even if you don’t know why. It’s such a fine little line, it’s hard to grasp sometimes. But don’t get caught up in trying too hard to “be the best you can be”. It ends up being just more of the same and extraordinarily un-fun. Do what’s fun.
