Why You Should be Positive on Medium, not Negative
By: Brian Rowe
Tags: Medium, Community, Positive Thinking, Writing, Entrepreneurship

There’s certainly a desire in life sometimes to be negative.

I just felt it on the drive home from the gym yesterday, getting stuck behind somebody going 28 MPH in a 35 MPH zone, having to wait at three traffic signals in a row for what felt like forever. This drive did not fill me with joy and positivity.

You can feel negative about yourself too of course about all sorts of things. Something I really try to steer away from but that I feel about myself almost every day is that my writing could be so much better. My writing on Medium. My novel writing. My short story writing.

I’m currently revising my twentieth novel, and I get frustrated here and there when I feel like I’m producing mediocre work, when it should be great, when I should be able to produce an incredible story by now after years and years of practice.

And then of course there’s the desire to feel negative toward others on Medium, too. You might feel negative toward somebody doing far better on you on here. Somebody whose stories gets more claps, more views, more responses, more curation.

You might feel jealous. Might feel anxious. You might even say something nasty to another Medium writer, which I talked about this weekend…

Your negative feelings could potentially manifest themselves into being mean to another Medium writer, and such a direction is never one you want to go in. Such a direction isn’t going to get you very far on here, let me tell you.

Instead, you should embrace positivity on Medium always.

You want to think of this site as a community. Where we are all doing our best work each and every day and doing whatever we can to support each other.

I was called out recently for not clapping enough for other writers on Medium. It was hard to hear, but I needed to hear it. I was taking too much time only writing, writing, writing on Medium, and I wasn’t engaging enough with the community as a whole. I wasn’t being quite as positive as I should have been.

Now I’m clicking over to this site every morning feeling super positive, not just about my own work, but about the incredible work so many other writers are creating on Medium. Stories that entertain, inform, and inspire. Amazing pieces I would never even think about writing. Compelling pieces that allow authors to open themselves up and share a little bit of themselves with us.

So don’t be competitive. Don’t be negative and nasty. Embrace positivity!

Sometimes I feel negative about things. It happens every day, and you know what? It’s part of being human. You can’t feel positive all the time. Things big and small will bother you, and you just have to deal with them.

But I’m really taking the viewpoint of being only positive when it comes to Medium. There’s so much great work being done here. The community is so supportive. Writers and readers on Medium make my heart happy every day.

Feel free to vent here and there. Share a criticism about Medium if you have one. But stay positive as best you can. Especially when it comes to your own Medium journey, and the journeys of others. We’re all in this together, remember that.

Let’s be as supportive of each other as we possibly can!