I absolutely believe in the potential we all have to drop what is limiting us and step into possibilities we can’t even imagine. I make my living helping other people create richer, more fulfilling careers and lives, so that view is a fundamental foundation for me.
Given that, it might surprise you that sometimes I listen to the incessant positive talk in the self-help world and think, “Aarrrrgh! This all feels like such bullshit!” When I have that response, one of two things is at play. The first is from a professional perspective, and the second is personal.
The professional perspective
In the self-help/personal development movement, there often seems to be an underlying message of not-enoughness. There’s a feeling that, “If I can only improve like this, this, and that, I’ll be OK.”
It’s a conditional acceptance – “When I ______, then I can accept myself.” And the almost manic Cult of Positivity feeds it like grade A fertilizer.
Do I believe that a positive focus is important? Vital even? Absolutely. Can personal growth lead to a richer, more fulfilling life? You bet. But when it becomes just another voice for the message that you need to be better than you are, something is out of whack.
The other thing that frustrates me is the way the excessive focus on the positive paints a picture of the ideal life as nothing but sunshine and fluffy bunnies. Guess what? If that’s your goal, you’re screwed! That’s not a realistic picture, and comparing your life to that ideal is a sure way to come out on the losing end of the comparison.
So from a professional perspective, I just want to jump up on my soapbox, grab a megaphone, and shout, “You’re OK! Just the way you are!” Yes, you have areas where you fall short of where you’d like to be. Yes, you screw up. Yes, you get in your own way on occasion. And while those are all opportunities to grow, you’re OK exactly where you are!
When you see those areas as opportunities to grow and evolve, you’re on the right track. But if you find yourself constricting and contracting, seeing them as the proof you don’t measure up to how you “should” be, it’s time to take a step back…
…and remind yourself…
…you’re OK, exactly the way you are.
(AND you have opportunities to grow and evolve).
The personal perspective
I’ve made a commitment to be as authentic as I can (not wearing the Guru Mask, pretending I somehow have it more together than others), so what about the personal perspective?
As I’ve mentioned before, the last couple years have been challenging for me. Along the way, there have been times when I have felt so close to the edge that I didn’t have room to maneuver.
I felt stretched so thin that I didn’t have any emotional buffer between me and whatever came my way. So each and every bump, even the small ones, felt bone-jarring. It was like riding down a bumpy road with no shock absorbers. All of the force of hitting the potholes and rocks was transferred straight to me.
So from a personal perspective, there have been times when all the happy schmappy focus, far from being a positive reinforcement that lifts me up, has left me feeling like I just don’t measure up, like the message being espoused was beyond my reach.
Along the way I have tried (with varying degrees of success) to take a different approach than a knee-jerk assessment of whether or not I measure up. When I find myself contracting in response to what feels like happy schmappy ideas, I step back from the notion that I need to improve in order to get to “good enough” and simply ask:
“What can I do to love myself, right now?”
That question takes me out of judgment, thwarted goals, insecurity, and the bazillion other things that conspire to drag me down. And it plops me right down in the present moment, focused on how I can be loving, kind, and compassionate to myself.
The more I can do that, the more space I create, and the more room I have to maneuver so I can turn my attention back to growing, improving, evolving, and achieving my goals.
Happy schmappy: Is it wrong?
So is all this focus on the positive wrong? Is it somehow bringing people down rather than supporting them?
Well, no. And yes. It depends.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a positive focus. In fact, as I mentioned at the beginning, it’s a vital piece of the puzzle in living into our potential. It only becomes problematic when we let it create a skewed picture of how the world should be.
Because the positive picture isn’t the full story. And to the degree that we try to pretend it is, we repress what we see as less palatable. And that repression inevitably has a negative effect, whether we see it clearly or not.
So focus on the light. And embrace the dark. It’s all part of the fullness of life.
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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM