I, like most of us have some not so good things in my live. And if you are anything like me you may find yourself sometimes putting all your energies and focus towards them.
Energy flow where attention goes. - Tony Robins
A few months ago, I was at work and someone said something I took exception to. It played on my mind for the rest of the day, I came home and sounded off to my family.
Normally I am pretty good at blurting it out then letting it go, but on this day, I just couldn’t seem to let it be. My 5–10-minute sounding off turned into a ridiculously long rant. I was getting angrier and angrier. Every bit of my energy and focus went into this one tiny little remark. Why I decided to take it on board is beyond me but take it on I did.
A couple of days later I was making a cup of tea when I opened the cupboard to get a cup I noticed a travel mug I had been given as a random act of kindness a few years earlier. Someone had placed a gift of a travel mug with my name on it in my pigeonhole. To this day I still don’t know who gave it to me. I am so grateful for it, but did I spend all evening banging on about it to my family? No, I told them about it and everyone said how lovely the gift and the gesture was then we moved on to other things.
Right there, in that very moment I had an epiphany, an awakening if you like. I suddenly realised just how much we focus on negative things way more than we focus on the positive – even as a self-confessed positive thinker – I am guilty of this sometimes, probably more often than I would want to admit (even to myself).
It made me think about all the kindness I have been shown over the years, and oh my, when I thought about it… there have been so many. So here’s to giving negatives only a moment of thought and giving the positives much more time and energy.
Next time you find yourself dwelling on something negative, find either a huge positive or several smaller ones and remind yourself that it is them that deserve your attention, then more & more positive things will give you their attention and that is what you deserve.
Below are 10 of my favourite quotes to help you get your focus and energy going to the positive things in your life:
1. Negativity is cannibalistic. The more you feed it, the bigger and stronger it grows. - Bobby Darnell
2. It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It’s what you think about. – Dale Carnegie
3. What other people think of you is none of your business. If you start to make it your business, you’ll be offended for the rest of your life. - Deepak Chopra
4. The heart that gives thanks is a happy one, for we cannot feel thankful and unhappy at the same time. - Douglas Wood
5. As soon as something stops being fun, I think it's time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live. - Richard Branson
6. If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life. - Abraham Maslow
7. While positive thinking doesn't always work, negative thinking, unfortunately, almost always does. - Gary Mack
8. A positive thinker does not refuse to recognise the negative, he refuses to dwell on it. Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions. – Norman Vincent Peale
9. In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. - Daniel L. Reardon
10. If you realised how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought again. – Peace Pilgrim
Drop in to my Etsy store Positive Life by Design for great pintable's to help you on your journey.
Don't forget to follow us on
Instagram @positivethinkingbeginners
Twitter PositiveT4Begin
Pinterest PT4Beginners