love live holistically

Negative/Positive does it matter?

6th April 2018

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19 KJV

Does it matter whether your day is filled with Negativity or Positivity?  On the surface you may say – “Sure, it matters”. Are you aware of it’s impact on your life? Maybe you believe you do know it’s impact. So how do you go about ensuring that your day is mostly positive?

There are some people who don’t care that their relationship with their neighbour is less than cordial. There are others who don’t speak to some their family members, as they constantly bicker. That in it self is not a huge concern, but it’s the feelings that go along with the discord that counts. A feeling of ‘I don’t care whether we ever talk to each other again’ that brings about the negative feelings...Does it matter? You are still going to get on with your life! Thoughts of that person will come up every now and then, but you can deal with that, you have learnt to brush them away, as you feel they have no baring on your life. Does it matter that you feel that Mrs. Jones, the corner shop owner, is a nice person or a colleague at work is always cheery? When you look at your life and the people in it, do you notice that there are more people that you like, love or is fond of, or do you find that there are more people you dislike? Strange question, I know. Is your day taken up with more negative thoughts about people and situations or are you more often than not, feelings of  positivity? I am not trying to diagnose depression here, I am just asking you to survey your life and consider whether your thoughts are mostly positive or negative and does it matter?

This blog will look at the effects of negativity and positivity in your life, and asks whether it matters or not.

Think of your day

Morning

Are you exposed to Negativity via family members? Do you wake like the sun and shine?  Or are you quite and reserved? Perhaps you get up with a mood and face that says ‘Jesus I’ve got to do this and that today’. Do you switch the TV on and listen to the news as you get ready for your day, how much negativity do you hear every morning?

In a study by Szabo, A., & Hopkinson, K. L. (2007) International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 14(2), 57-62.Called The Negative psychological effects of watching the news on television, they found that relaxation or another intervention may be needed to buffer them!

The psychological effects of televised news were studied in two groups (n=179) of undergraduate students who watched a 15-minute random newscast followed by either a 15-minute progressive relaxation exercise or a 15-minute lecture (control condition). Subjective measures of state anxiety, total mood disturbance (TMD), positive affect, and negative affect were obtained before and after the news as well as following relaxation exercise or the lecture. The results showed that state anxiety and TMD increased, whereas positive affect decreased in both groups after watching the news and 15 minutes These findings demonstrate that watching the news on the television triggers persisting negative psychological feelings that could not be buffered by attention-diverting distraction (i.e., lecture), but only by a directed psychological intervention such as progressive relaxation. So unless you take time out to relax after watching just 15 minutes of the news you are likely to have mood disturbances.

Maybe your mornings are filled with everything positive. Perhaps you listen to motivational material, or play my videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUa0DXaEl7lI9GkQGdIyLN

Your family may be bright every morning, after saying ‘good morning’ your positive morning ritual begins.

You may be aware of the experiments by Dr. Masaru Emoto with water. Dr Emoto observed beautiful crystals forming after giving good words, playing good music, and showing, playing, or offering pure prayer to water. On the other hand, he observed disfigured crystals in the opposite situation. As human beings we are made up of at least 53% of water, imagine what listening to inspirational material can do for you.

Does it matter which one of these scenarios you experience in the morning?

Are there negative or positive influences on the way to or during your work day. Think for a minute. Are you having mostly negative thoughts throughout your day or are they mostly positive?

Does it matter?

Look at what you are exposed to during the evening, mostly positive or negative? Remember the positive or negative feelings can come from how you feel about what you doing or who you encounter.

So you have looked at your day and described it as mostly positive or negative.

The Body

I believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience and thus need a human body. Our body acts like a sponge to its environment and like Dr Emoto’s water experiment reacts accordingly.  

During the day your clothes and body absorb the days’ interaction. The dust from the building construction area you walked past, or the rain you walked through. The fluids released from your body are all absorbed by your clothes. At the end of the day, you remove your clothes and wash off the dirt and grime of the day. But have you considered what you have absorbed? Through the stress of your households’ morning rush, through the stress of missing the train or bus. The arguments you shared with the driver who cut you up at the lights, the waitress who brought you the wrong sandwich after waiting 10 minutes in the queue, which by the way, is half of your lunch break. The work colleague you felt you had to listen to, put you down again, the boss who you can’t talk to. You go home, hopefully to a harmonious home, if not, your body will absorb the environment. Your body will pick up on the vibe from the people in your household, the people on the phone, social media....Shall I go on? I think I need to go on. We have just recalled your ‘work day’.What about your evening? 

What about your evening? What do you subject your body to in the evenings? Have you checked your viewing habits? What do you watch? What is the theme of the programmes you regularly watch or record for later? Blog@loveliveholistically.com  I have a diverse ‘type’ of programmes that I record and watch, when I have a break. Once the programme has people indulging in their passion, I’ll watch it. This could be anything from Ink Masters to Portrait Artist of the year. I will watch things like Forged in fire to British Bake off. I also enjoy watching anything involved with house building and it’s interior. I listen to motivational speeches and interviews, from ‘Oprah’ to ‘T.D Jakes’ to ‘Gray V’ throughout the day.  Doing this does not stop me getting calls from someone who has yet another drama episode. What I have learnt is, what may be an emergency in their life, is not in mine. I make use of calming words to divert the emergency and see the situation in the moment. Things I aim to find out about the situation, is the person safe, is their house on fire, is there a roaring lion chasing the individual. After these things have been established, we talk though the situation, while constantly helping the caller to come to their own solution to their ‘emergency’. If I can do this in 20 minutes all is well! If not I will tell the caller that I will call them back in an hour. I have found that that hour has helped the caller to calm down even further.

I refuse to allow another persons’ emergency become my drama. I find that there are not many situations that resonate in my body. After establishing that the caller isn’t in any immediate danger, we can begin to work through the issue at hand.  I live in England and most of the people calling me with issues also live in a First world country. So most issues can be solved even if it means calling an ambulance.

Ensuring that you aware of what you are exposing your body to, is important for your personal and spiritual growth. Consider your day, what have you been exposed to today? Blog@loveliveholistically.com

Our aim as human beings is to be happy. Most of the things we do is to ensure our happiness, contentment and to enjoy life. We do this unconsciously....Think about it for a second. You may want a new job, you may want this new job to give you more money, more time with your family perhaps, or you may be following a career. You have chosen this new job in the hope that you will be on the road to a better life, a happier life. We go on holiday, to relax our minds from our everyday concerns, to be happy. We may go on holiday to relax our bodies, we go away for r & r (Rest and Relaxation). Consider what we do in regards to our physical body. We tend to, most of the time, keep our body healthy (trying to keep our body happy). When we do something that may not be healthy, like eat too much, smoke cigarettes perhaps abuse alcohol  or drugs. We beat ourselves up about these destructive behaviours as they are incongruent to our aim of happiness.

The Soul

The Soul is the best part of us. It is Light, Goodness, Love, Peace, Pure. The list is endless. The Soul is everything that is Good. Some people call it Source, Spirit, the place where God resides within us. The function of the Soul is to look after our well-being, keep us safe and on the right path for our lives.

Just as the body speaks to us, though how we feel, how well its parts are performing or whether they have stopped all together, the Soul speaks to us. The soul speaks to us through intuition. Intuition is that small voice inside us that says “Don’t take that job” “Do go over there” “Don’t buy or eat that”. “Wait, Go, Stop”

Many times we don’t hear these instructions because we are not listening, maybe we do hear our intuition but choose not to take its guidance.

The Soul, like the body, needs to be or feel happy. When the Soul feels a threat to its happiness, you feel uneasy. Your intuition will tell you “something is wrong”. Constantly feeling unhappy about going to your place of work is sure sign that something is wrong. Your body and Soul will let you know. Your intuition will tell you to make a change to this situation, you may do this by speaking to someone who can make your working experience happier or by leaving.

Believe me or not, your intuition would have  fore warned  you of any, yes any threat to its happiness.....Let’s say you need to go to the supermarket, you want to pop in get a few items and leave, as you have catch a certain train in-order to be on time for an appointment. While in the supermarket you look for the smallest line, you get there, but something is wrong with the till, or for some other reason the cashier is taking longer than usual to serve the people before you...If you think back to making the decision to go to the supermarket and listened carefully you would have heard.....”leave the supermarket trip until later” or “Make your appointment first and on the way back, go into the supermarket”. You stand in the queue, whilst there, you are constantly wondering if you’ll have time to get your train. The longer you stand there the more stressed you become. If you have experienced this let me know Blog@loveliveholistically.com. Even the smallest tasks in our lives that threatens our happiness will have the Soul stepping in and telling us that something is not right or giving us instructions, but you will not hear it if you don’t listen. Remember, while you are bitching that the queue is slow, you will not hear that small voice. How often have you not listened to that tiny voice in the pit of your stomach that told you not to do something or go somewhere, and you went against it, only to find it was a wasted journey or you got lost causing you more stress. You may have encountered any number of unwanted situations.

We have looked at some instances of where we attract negativity in our lives. Now think back to your earliest memories of being happy. I live in England and most of my clients will tell me that they can remember, as a child, rushing downstairs on Christmas morning to open their presents and finding that they were given the gift they had wished for. The joy! As you grow you can quickly recall negative situations and a sprinkling of happy times along the way. Often our happy times are the ones we have made ourselves, like passing exams at school or college. As we grow we may recall happiness as we passed our driving test, perhaps receiving love from another. Maybe getting married “A happy day”. Getting a dream job or promotion. Happy times. Having your first child, another happy occasion. Above I have mentioned only five or six instances of happiness over a span of about 25 years, from that Christmas present to having your first child. I am not suggesting one is only ‘happy’ five times in a life time. I am suggesting that as adults, we find it harder to recall happy times. Because we are the ones who have had to make our hour or our day happy or positive. It is often other people or situations that bring negativity into our lives. Take a moment and check your life, does any of what I have said above, ring true? Blog@loveliveholistically.com

Many people find it easier to describe the negative situations or people in their day. When you realise that you are the one, that creates the positivity in your day, you will ensure that when you feel or see a negative situation evolving, you try to change the outcome and ultimately the experience.

Here’s an example Mrs. Smith, a co-worker, is always grumpy first thing in the morning and can be found in the staff room before work starts. People say “It’s just how she is” You enjoy a hot beverage in the staff room, before you start work and so meet Mrs. Smith there. What do you do? Blog@loveliveholistically.comYou could sit in the staff room saying to yourself ‘she is such a grumpy woman’.  Sip sip on your beverage ‘I don’t know why this woman is always so grumpy’ Sip sip....or ‘I can’t stand her’ Sip sip...... All of which will cause negativity in your body. 

Mrs. Smith hasn’t caused the negativity surging through your body, you have. Remember you create your own positivity in your life. It is your job to ensure that it is positivity surging through your body. Here’s how you do this...You use gratitude. You enter the staff room and see Mrs. Smith, say good morning and be grateful that you have a place of work to go to, be grateful that you actually got to work at all. Be grateful you got to work in time to have a beverage before you start work....See where I’m going here? If you don’t have to converse with Mrs. Smith....Don’t. Get your beverage and go to your desk or some other place to drink it. You could forfeit your workplace beverage all together and have it  at a coffee shop on the way to work! Everything you do should be to combat any negativity.

The Mrs. Smith saga is a tiny example in comparisons to our everyday interactions. What you should have gleaned from my example is just how proactive you have to be in creating your own happiness. Constantly being happy or positive isn’t as easy as you’d think. The minute you wake up you should set the tone on a positive note. Be grateful that you woke up, be grateful that you have the ability to get up, walk to the bathroom, shower, brush your teeth, dress and feed yourself. The positivity doesn’t stop there. On the way to the school gates or on to your place of work where there is a Mrs. Smith! Staying positive inevitably keeps you happy and we know that being happy is our aim in life.

So how much positivity or negativity do you have in your life? Is it mostly positive or negative and does it matter? This blog has shown that negativity harms your body and makes your Soul unhappy. We have seen just how much negativity we absorb during the length of a day and how easily we allow negativity to build up, from the morning rush with the children, while soaking up the sound of the news in the background, missing the train, being in a queue at the supermarket, receiving the wrong sandwich after waiting ten minute for it. The negativity we absorb through the TV, social media, the people on the other end of the phone! There are endless other ‘things’ that brings negativity to you. I am sure you could reel off at least seven, without thinking too hard.

We have learnt that our aim as human beings is to be happy and that happiness leads to a more positive life. We have gathered that we make our own happiness as we grow, by ensuring we detach from negativity or by having a different mind set, to what appears before us. We do this by being grateful. Our soul is happy when we are grateful, it’s aim is to keep us safe, well and give us instructions through our intuition when our happiness is threatened. Our soul will also guide us onto our right path, all we have to do is listen. (Is your life quiet enough to hear it?) Blog@loveliveholistically.com. We have found that being positive takes a lot of energy, as it is a minute by minute conscious task.