Stay Positive or Negative
By: Gholamreza Zare
Tags: Self Improvement, Stress, Life, Positive Thinking, Personal Development

The river of our attitudes flows in any direction we decide. In today’s society, this direction is often in the hands of culture and media. Thus, your attitude and environment are two critical factors in personal development rules. So, you learn to overcome your life’s culture and community effects by overcoming the mindset and belief system that your attitude comes from.

Photo by Miki Fath on Unsplash

Many writers and advisors encourage people to have a positive attitude. I think they interpret a positive outlook into just a hopeful and optimistic view. For a healthy life, we need a balance between positive and negative attitudes.

Let’s look at this example. Suppose you order food at a restaurant. When you are eating, someone informs you that the food is poisonous. Because you have paid for it, do you eat all the toxic food and endanger your health, or do you think of a way to get rid of that amount of poison you eat and may danger for your body? In this situation, a positive attitude does not create a solution for us. We should ignore the remaining of the food immediately. Then, we should consult a specialist to maintain our health and neutralize the effectiveness of the poison that has been consumed.

Maybe your life is just like this example. Many habits are like poisonous food and finally kill us. So, we need to set the balance between positive and negative attitudes in every decision. Indeed, a wise man with a positive attitude does not live peacefully next to life-threatening and dangerous people. Can you survive alone in a lion cage without any weapons, hoping that he will not harm you? Of course, I hope we really try to use reason and logic in our lives. Having a negative outlook is as life-saving as having a positive outlook.

Optimistic viewpoint

Finding a positive and hopeful attitude in a negative situation may neutralize us in solving problems and accepting the risks and potential hazards. For example, do you expect your bad relationships with people to be accepted because of your positive attitude? These two subjects are contradictory. Having a bad relationship is a serious issue. It needs to be addressed to change your relationship because it will block you from successful opportunities.

Suppose I want to drive my car to a destination. So I have to pay full attention to my driving. On the other hand, I have to be careful about other vehicles on the road to not have an accident. Even if I have a few minutes left to my destination and accidentally crash, my goal will not be adequately achieved. Along the way, I may get tired sometimes and sometimes feel happy. My mood is moving between these two states, like a pendulum. Neither too much joy intoxicates me, nor does fatigue and sadness take me away from my goal. If I stay in consciousness, I will enjoy both. So having only a positive outlook does nothing. The beauty of the pendulum is its gentle movement between joys and sorrows.

Another example is laziness. If I am lazy in my work, can having a positive outlook complete my backward work? Laziness may appear attractive, but it is a disease, and I need to find a treatment for it. That you acknowledge that you are lazy is a positive part of the story, and that you seek to cure it shows your wisdom. I agree that you should not blame yourself, but you should find a solution.

To understand situations, you need to give yourself more time to process and analyze your life. Analyze your thoughts and feelings well so that you can strike a balance between positive and negative attitudes.

Cultural structure and environment

You cannot fight your culture and environment all at once. If you do, you will have to pay a heavy price.

You may not like the many forms of thought that society has injected into your mind. be calm. One of the essential tools to control any community is to inject the same thought patterns. Many people throughout history have lost their lives trying to fight these same misconceptions.

The border of freedom and balance of society is stained with the blood of people who thought that their view would improve the community. These problems will always remain strong because societies’ rulers are not in line with their goals. So you have to accept that you want to live in a society with these characteristics. Your efforts to reform society are commendable, but it does not mean ignoring your personal life goals. You run your personal life development program in your community.

From skin color to belief color, various contradictions have become the subject of war and conflict.

Note that the primary battle is an economic war because today’s people think economics solves all problems. Simultaneously, security from the age of dinosaurs to robots’ age is a significant concern. Economics is a tool in security. But security has other dimensions such as love, respect, freedom, humanity, and many more.

To achieve your goals, you need to balance your community’s positive and negative view and your living environment.

If our ancestors had not come out of their caves, we might still be writing memorabilia on the rocks. Society has a cavernous structure, hard and stony, but that does not mean it does not change. Making a change in culture takes time. Some changes require a generation of students, i.e., between 15 and 20 years. So you continue to implement your development programs as you work to improve society’s imposed patterns.

Negative thoughts

Negative thoughts come from the patterns we kept in our minds and always run them. For example, when we face a stressful situation, we may change the condition by eating or other actions. These reactions are just habits, and they can not solve the problem. Our brains feel comfortable, and the difficulty stays unsolved. So, break your brain patterns. Instead of hiding yourself behind bad habits, try to find a solution to reduce your stressful situations.

The practical way is that you can stop and go slowly. Think again about your circumstances and focus on considering all the ways to solve the problems. Your eating, drinking, smoking, and such bad habits are NOT related to the problem. So, be careful to break these artificial supporters and replace your true wisdom.

It’s the fact that your personal power decreases when you obey the negative thoughts. You can also tune your thoughts by considering yourself and the conditions you stay there right now. Then make an effort to go slowly to a better situation. So, stop, breathe, and refocus to find an optimal way to reduce your stress and solve the problem.

Rethink your importance list

Sometimes a pseudo-important thing goes to our importance list. We consume our efforts and energies to do something that is nothing. For example, you may try to change your friend’s behavior to make a better relationship with him/her, but your friend repeats their habits. So, rethink the importance list of your life and consider the balance between negative and positive attitudes.