CULTIVATING A POSITIVE MINDSET THROUGH CHAOS
Throughout the last year, it has become increasingly all too easy to let the chaos of the world affect our energy. A pandemic that started at the beginning of 2020 and continues on, the fight for equality and civil rights, political unrest during a crucial election, hate crimes and acts of violence, rioters storming the capitol, and not to mention everyone experiencing their own personal obstacles: it can feel like the amount of negativity surrounding us both in-person and online is never-ending. This feeling had forced me to reflect on the way I have been letting stress and anxiety control my life, and I set an intention to actively cultivate a better perspective. Upon the coming of each New Year, so many people pick up new goals and journeys that quickly dissolve back into the normal ebb and flow of everyday life; however, this past new year was very different from all others, and there seems to be an overall larger call to action within society as a whole to make a commitment to pivotal change.
It wasn’t until many, many months into quarantine that I realized how badly I allowed my already overwhelming anxiety to completely mutate me into a walking embodiment of my own stress. I was trapped in a constant cycle of battling with the sensory overload of the outside world and the deafening chatter inside my brain. This feeling quickly materialized into a complete overhaul of productive cultivation of positive relationships/ environments.
It dawned on me that negative emotions are frequently understood as very tangible, whereas positive emotions feel extremely fleeting. Hard times or traumatic events in our life are inherently associated with formidable pain and suffering, followed by a strenuous struggle to return to normalcy. Emotions like pain, sadness, and anger take physical form and maintain a lot of space in our lives and drain our energy. Sadness and angst manifest in very specific ways that resonate commonly across most cultures, and it is actually proven that negative emotions are more universally recognized. According to David Matsumoto and Hyi Sung Hwang with the American Psychological Association, the seven most universally recognizable facial expressions are anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. It’s clear that the vast majority of these emotions are explicitly negative. Charles Darwin was actually one of the first theorists to share this idea that emotions are a essential of his theory of evolution, suggesting that “emotions and their expressions were biologically innate and evolutionarily adaptive,” at a time when the primary belief in the psychological field was that “facial expressions were culture-specific – that is, just as every culture had its own verbal language, it had its own language of facial expressions” (APA.org).
We have been conditioned to believe that negative feelings just happen upon us, yet positivity is something that requires a lot of effort to create and maintain. On the contrary, negative feelings are cultivated by our mindset just as much as positivity. When in the face of adversity, especially if already suffering from pre-existing mental illness, it can feel like an instant reflex to shut down and give into panic and fear. Usually, before we even have a moment to check in with ourselves and assess our ability to tackle the obstacle at hand, we’re already telling ourselves that we can’t handle it.
STRESS IS NOT MEASURED BY THE HARDSHIPS IN OUR PATH, IT IS MEASURED BY THE WAY WE RESPOND TO THEM.
We have to start by changing the way that we talk to ourselves. Sometimes, when we have a lot going on, we immediately tell ourselves that we are stressed out; we work ourselves up into thinking about the difficulty of rising to a task before considering our strength. Our minds convince our bodies that we are sinking before we even consider to look around and see that we are surrounding by calm waters. We have to find ways in times of hardship to remember that we have endured what everything each and every day before this one has had to throw at us, and made it out on the other side. The struggles we’ve experienced that have made us fearful of living our life are actually the exact same things which gave us the skill set to handle the situation at-hand. We must allow ourselves to experience the feeling of confidently achieving tasks or being around people with ease by reaching an equilibrium that feels comfortable, where we can be cautious of our fears but not be controlled by them.
Finding contentment through mindfulness can deter anxiety from bleeding into every aspect of your life & becoming debilitating, but only if you truly make it a daily practice. It is a large task to begin taking inventory of our negative self-talk, but it starts with redirecting your attention away from thoughts that do not serve you.
Esther Hicks, author and inspirational speaker, describes the worrisome chatter in our minds as “the wobble.” This idea of the “wobble” is based on a practice of balancing your desires vs. your beliefs, and realizing that all you can do in life in order to find contentment no matter your situation is control the things that you can, and let go of the yearning to control things you cannot. She says you have to “work the wobble out of the wobbly [thoughts] by focusing on the ones that don’t wobble. Don’t pick the wobbly ones and go to work on them, because they’ll wobble more. Focus on what doesn’t wobble, and the law of attraction will add power and momentum.” Instead of running from our fears, we have to work with them, and find out how to nurture ourselves in ways we can, so we build a better foundation to approach each next step with more and more confidence.
“There are all kinds of things that are true, but do not serve you by keeping active in your vibration”
It ends up being a battle between us and our anxiety, instead of a battle between us and the issue at hand. The thing that we often forget, is that anxiety is not always a bad thing. Yes, too much is self destructive, but instead of trying to get rid of our anxiety or avoid parts of life because of it, we must nurture our anxiety and appreciate that it causes us to be cautious and protect ourselves. Instead of ignoring our boundaries or pretending we are okay when we are not, we must find a balance between asking for help when we need it and being able to tackle a difficult undertaking on our own. We must focus our energy on controlling our actions/ response to our emotions rather than attempting to gain control of other peoples’ actions/ the things that cause our discomfort. Then, eventually, through this practice, hope to no longer experience such intense negative emotions in response to inconvenience.
This past year has changed the way that we interact with each other, as well as the way that we connect with ourselves. We all need to take a bit of extra-tender care of our mental health while being exposed to so much more alone time than we are familiar with. It becomes all too easy to constantly overanalyze: whether it be our physical form, the way we’re spending your time, or who it is spent with- the isolation can take a large toll on our self image. Having our interactions with friends and family being limited to phone calls, texts, and social media leaves us second guessing ourselves in the way we express ourselves. It leaves too much time to think and makes it difficult to feel like we’re clearly communicating in our authentic voice. The heart gets lost in translation with technology, and the longer that we go without a true sense of connection to other people, the harder it is to figure out how to do so. After this long, it’s extremely possible that our desire to be around people has actually decreased throughout this pandemic. Being alone all the time becomes scarily comfortable until being alone turns into being lonely.
With widespread access to the vaccine now in sight, the hopes of life reaching a new normal are on the horizon. It’s time to shed these layers of anxious habits that have developed over the last year and re-adjust to the feeling of being part of a society where we cannot avoid the uncomfortable things in life. Since we will be living in a new world, we will have to find a new way to balance the inner-struggles we’ve been facing with the assimilation to a new way of living post- corona. If we can begin to focus on these practices of self-care now, then we will be able to accept whatever comes out way as we assimilate back to life. This all comes from, not an expert, but someone who is learning this practice currently.
-JZS
Sources:
American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions
The Positive Head Podcast, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1MOEyuJJy9723vLkOF6Mi7?si=8qxWQWRUR4iaFufAwcK1Kg