How to be positively negative

Are you a positive person by nature?

Do you aim to be as positive as possible?

Is it important to you to bounce back after difficulties and be resilient?

To counteract an often negatively focused message about our world, particularly through the media, we are increasingly encouraged to be positive. I’m a fan of being positive myself; a glass-half-full outlook is something I frequently talk and write about.

The thing is, negative things create negative feelings in even the most positive of people. When we don’t allow negative feelings to be expressed, we may end up suppressing something important and not allowing a necessary process to take place. This process can help us move forward.

If you don’t acknowledge what’s happening to yourself and others, it can be like putting a lid on reality and not allowing difficulties, and the feelings attached to them, to exist.

So how can we be negative in a healthy way?

• Own the feelings and acknowledge their existence.
• If you have someone who will let you open the lid on the negative feelings, this can be part of letting go.
• Understand that feeling this way will pass.
• Listen to others without feeling the need to solve.
• Remind yourself that feeling negative emotions for a short spell is natural.
• Practise things that help you, like mindfulness.
• Imagine the sweetness of feeling positive once more.

Negative feelings and emotions are natural. If you can allow them to happen and don’t fight against them, you can move forward from life’s difficulties more healthily.

You can understand that this is not a weakness. In fact, it can be a strength. You are facing what is actually happening, with the knowledge that you may see the positive once more.