Positive and Negative

Ever think about that? Whether your life is mostly positive or mostly negative? I think depressed people think about that a lot. We focus on the negative things and give them more weight than they really have. A book I read described it as looking through the "lens of depression" as if it tinted everything you saw. I think that's true.

But have you ever thought about changing an event, thought, experience, etc. from one to the other? We probably do it all the time without noticing. Perhaps you had a great time on a date, then find out the person you were with lied to you about something, then the date that was once wonderful is suddenly tainted and painful. The event still passed in a happy way, but looking back, you might have changed it in your mind into a negative memory.

The opposite is something I've been trying to focus on--turning negative experiences into positive ones. It's a healthier attitude and one that I think my life could really use.

So, turning a negative into a positive could just be that you learned a lesson from something that you did wrong. Taking a lesson from a mistake could make that experience worthwhile, even if you can't change what you did. A more difficult way of turning negative to positive is to take an experience that was traumatic, devastating, woeful, fearful, or otherwise horrible, and make it something you can benefit from. Maybe not all negatives are possible to become positives, I don't know. But I'm working from the assumption that they are all potential lessons or benefits waiting to be discovered.

For example, I believe I've mentioned in my blog before that I had some horrific memories of my life in junior high and high school. For years, I've told myself that I would never admit that any of those experiences had made me stronger or made me empathetic to suffering or anything that might make it better for me. I refused to do so thinking that if I learned something, became stronger, or anything like that, I would also be saying to myself that those people who hurt me had somehow done me a favor. They had helped make me a better person by tormenting me every day of my formative years and making me consider suicide at a young age. But that's not really the truth. No, they didn't do me any favors, that's for sure. But finding something positive from all of that torment actually gave me power that I thought they had taken away. Back then, those people had the power to make me unhappy, and they wanted to. But if I turn it around, make something out of that time in my life, I can take that power away from them. I can go back to that girl and tell her how I would be a more sympathetic person, a stronger person, and a person who can handle adversity and still prevail. I learned that I can fight through depression, that suicide would have been a terrible loss knowing all of the wonderful things I've experienced since then . . . I can go on. I can give that girl I was the strength that I have now, since she didn't know she was strong. I can take something out of that time that I didn't know I could. And no one takes the credit but me for doing that. My tormentors had no higher cause to making me miserable, but I have a choice of how to view it. So I choose the higher cause.

Well, it's nappy time for the boy, so I think I'll take a bit of a break. Blog you folks later.

R