The Sweet and Sour of Positive Thinking

Sweet positive thinking can suddenly turn sour very quickly when it is not aligned with your emotional truth. However, the world is in such chaotic turmoil you may not want to succumb to that low hopeless state either. The grand question to address here in this blog post is how do we find that healthy balance between the sweet and the sour of positive thinking? Honestly, if I had a choice regarding hanging out with someone who is optimistic vs someone who is pessimistic that choice would be easy for me. Years of hopeless news can feel like constantly lifting heavy weights at the gym. To me optimism can feel like hearing a song come over the loudspeaker that causes me to want and get up and dance. What can be so wrong with being optimistic?

Let’s unmask the Pollyanna side of relentless optimism. The definition of ‘Pollyanna’ is unrelenting optimism. No matter what is happening in your life there is a refusal to give in to going down to the bottom of the despair barrel. However, there is a wide range of options in between to express despair and optimism. It does not need to be an either-or option. The Pollyanna mask can hide all kinds of pain. The part about the Polly anna mask is that it can feel real and true in its energetic belief and form when you are younger. As your grow older, the old energetic pain can begin to bleed through the mask forcing you to once and for all to heal those buried energy patterns.

Positivity can be a paradox, a contradiction to what you are actually feeling. Excessive optimism isn’t always the best healthy outlook toward life. As a clairvoyant psychic the paradox (contradiction) that I had to ‘face’ was seeing a happy client sitting across from me, suddenly burst into tears because their life is falling apart. I did not expect to witness such levels of sadness behind such a beautiful happy cheerful face. It forced me to take another level of inventory of what sadnesses that I too may be masking.

Optimism overload can ‘backfire’ when always being so optimistic. Did you know you can become ill from being so happy, sweet and optimistic? Yes, and let me explain why. You have a range of emotions which are feelings to be expressed. If you only allow yourself to express happiness, joy, and uplifting optimism in your emotional range, those other feelings can lay dormant underneath and can cause you to become ill. Your own unexpressed feelings such as sadness, grief, anger, frustration and worry can become toxic to your physical, emotional and mental health. Think of a compost bin where you keep tossing in the old food scraps. Over time, the old food at the bottom begins to liquify into a black stinky mess. Your old, composted emotions will eventually rise to the surface. Eventually those suppressed feelings will become fertilizer for growth but most often not during the most convenient times. Read my blog post on how expressing yourself lights up your chakras.

How do you navigate those pitfalls to optimism and make the shift from Pollyanna to reality? It might not be as easy as you think it is. My daughter is a self-described realist and always has been from a young age. Many of us can name times growing up in our childhood, when you walked into the house and could tell that something was really wrong with your mother. Yet, when you asked, your mother responded that nothing was wrong and everything is just fine. Her example may have taught you to hide your own feelings and put a ‘chin up’ optimistic, everything this fine face on it. A ‘realist’ mother would have said, “I had a rough day at work and I am still a bit unsettled by it, so I am going to go out for a walk and release that tension.” The realist, would admit that yes, you are noticing that something is truly wrong, but it has nothing to do with you while expressing a healthy way to sit with it, feel it, and walk it out to shift it.

There is a sweet and sour side of positivity that can tangle you in all of its complexities. What if you want to remain in the essence of rainbows and sunshine? Do you really have to change that part of your nature? The truth is, your energy field does not lie. In fact your human energy field does not know how to lie and you can not make it lie. If you are depressed, your energy field is going to be heavy, cloudy, and sluggish. Yes, you can still put on a happy face, but the truth of how you are really feeling is in your aura. You are not fooling anyone, not even yourself. You are not being asked to walk around sad and low, just real. Let me share a story that might help here.

When I was going through Sangoma (Shaman) training in the Zulu community in South Africa, I was having a rough go of it. I had so much old pain boiling to the surface that I just wanted to quit and go home. What I know about Zulu people is they can see your energy field (not just Sangomas). One of the Sangoma’s came up to me with a huge smile on their face and asked me how I was doing. I was smiling, but I could tell right away they would see right through any BS answer I might try and sell them. So I told the truth which was the fact that I felt overwhelmed, and felt that the training was too much for me. He responded with the term, “Makhose” which means I see you great spirit. He did not try to make it better or try to hug it out, or expect me to be anything other than what I was feeling. However, in his response he reminded me that he saw me as a great strong spirit. So if you are depressed, you can say, I am struggling a bit with overwhelming sadness, but I am taking steps to work through it because I am a great strong spirit!

Will embracing your shadow side help you to be more real? Your shadow side is that side of yourself that you can’t see. So yes, if you can not see or sense that you are sad, angry, frustrated, and disappointed then embracing the knowledge that you have a side of yourself that is not always optimistic will help. The term shadow can give you the impression of dark, dense, uncaring, and cold but it does not mean that at all. Shadow simply means an aspect of yourself that you are blind to. You can be blind to being smart, brilliant, funny and someone who has a good heart that hides in the shadows. Why would those better qualities hide in the shadows? If you believe that you have nothing to offer the world, then those more positive aspects will not be able to reveal themselves to you. Then when you meet someone who is optimistic, positive, smart, brilliant and funny you can find them annoying because you can not feel those qualities inside of you.

The struggle of maintaining a continuous positive sunny outlook on life can be exhausting. Often, everyone around you can become dependent and almost addicted to you always being the positive one. When you are the optimistic one, others will turn to you so that you can help them problem-solve the most positive outcome for their issue. Then you have those who have made a great decision for themselves but they just want to run it by you so that you can cheer them on and tell them, you can do it, with a robust high five! Maintaining an optimistic aura about you when you just do not have the energy for it is a strong indicator that it might be out of balance. Encouraging those who are used to coming to you for the boost of positivity will benefit from you turning your answer into a question for them. Ask them, “if you were going to look at the positive side what answer would you find for yourself?” You then become the positive vibe teacher by mentoring and showing them how to be that person for themselves.

True optimism is a full-body experience, not just a superficial one. Your human energy field is a light body that is currently supporting your human body to become a light body. Creating a light body requires the light of your spirit to fill every cell and every chakra of your energy field in your body. Have you ever heard the term, “sickeningly sweet?” In this example, it can mean that you cover everything in sweetness and light but underneath, there can be blocks to the flow of your energy field. Your sweet nature can cover your aura with golden lightness but underneath you may not be able to maintain the deep sustaining light of your soul. You need a strong battery like a flashlight to make the bulb work. In this case, your spirit fully present in your entire body provides the energy needed to express your true light.

At the end of the day does the sweetness of optimism always turn sour? Optimism has been studied and found to provide healthy outcomes at every turn. Optimism turns sour when you override all your other senses, such as boundaries and manipulation, that need to be addressed. Is it okay to choose the optimistic path? Yes, choosing the high road in potentially triggering situations, can assist you in not adding to the crises, chaos, and dramas going on around you. Sweet optimism, allows you to address any triggering moments by intending the outcome is going to be healthy in nature. No, you do not need to leave your optimism at the door. Simply be real, while understanding the circumstances you are faced with while choosing to remain optimistic as the situation unfolds, for the highest good of all. Read the optimism study done by the Mayo Clinic.