“Negativity, Positive Thinking, and Balance”

Think positive! You can do it! If you believe it can happen, then it can! Turn that frown upside down! Ugh.

Overly positive people piss me off. So many times, it feels just so forced. It grates on my nerves. And more than anything else it reeks of denial. I’ve known far too many people who weren’t genuinely positive, people for whom their positive attitude was nothing more than a front, a mask, a way to cover up how miserable they really were inside.

I don’t think there are any phrases in particular that bug me, but one that jumps to mind is when people say things will all turn out for the best. I always want to look them in the eye and reply with something like, “oh, you can tell the future? That’s pretty cool. You should use that shit to win the lottery.”

Thinking or saying things will turn out for the best isn’t something that works for me; I’ve found it much more useful to think or say that things will turn out however they turn out. What will be will be, and I will be alright, regardless. It’s the way I truly accept life on life’s terms--by not making any kind of judgments about it.

Of course, there is the flipside of a permanently positive attitude, the negative nancy--someone who’s always looking for the worst, who always has to point out the one cloud in the sky, who finds the gray in every silver lining. That’s not any fun either, and people like that are a real drag to be around. Especially the ones who feel it’s their duty, their obligation, to point out the negative. You know, like they’re doing us all a service by reminding us constantly of the worst possible outcome.

Few of us walk into the rooms having a positive attitude. Maybe at one point we used to hope for the best, but life taught us to expect the worst. That was definitely the case for me. I didn’t rail against God specifically, but I was convinced that Fate had it in for me. It didn’t matter what I did, life was never going to go my way. Believe me, I am so glad I turned out to be wrong on that one.

I grew up in an environment of forced positivity. That was what I leaned growing up, to always be positive, always have a smiling face, and act like everything is wonderful even when it’s not. Especially when it’s not.

Now that I’ve had some time in Recovery, some time practicing the principles in all my affairs, my outlook on life is more positive. Or at least, not nearly as negative. I try to stay balanced. It’s important to my Recovery, to my staying out of denial, to look at things for how they are. I don’t know that things will turn out for the best. They very well might, but for me to assume that they will, or to tell myself that just to get through? That still feels like denial to me, like that old way of doing things that stopped working for me a long time ago.

If thinking that things will turn out for the best works for you, then more power to you and good luck with that. It doesn’t for me. For me, what works is to think about the fact that no matter how things turn out, I will be alright. For me, that’s the real power of being positive, knowing that no matter what happens, I will be alight. Everything isn’t going to be okay; it’s okay now.