THE TOOL OF POSITIVITY
This blog is an overview of my favorite personal development topic – the tool of Positivity. I’ll be discussing my theories, my strategies and how I used Positivity to re-build my life. While you may not be currently re-building your life, this overview will be a useful orientation to the ultimate goal of incorporating Positivity into your day-to-day processes and interactions.
But first, the events that led me to having to re-build my life……….
Imagine getting fired from your position at the top of the corporate ladder and losing not only your job and income but your entire career you’ve spent a decade building, your identity, your social network and your source of self-worth. Then imagine in the depths of denial and depression making desperate financial decisions that lead to bankruptcy, the liquidation of your possessions and a crippling debt to the tax authorities. This was my reality in the 1990’s.
Brutal, eh?
Talk about a complete fall from grace. I struggled mightily to find a reason and path forward to carry on. A sliver of hope came to me in my darkest hour via a random, aggressive interaction on the streets of Chicago with an unhoused stranger begging for spare change. Miraculously, his rage left me with a profound sense of gratitude that became the Positivity that literally saved my life and has been my north star ever since.
The details of this chapter still blow my mind decades later and I’ll write about them in a future blog. For now, let’s dig into the role Positivity played in the re-building of my life, brick by brick, from the ground up.
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As you could imagine, getting out of bed every day to face my reality of losing everything and having to start all over from scratch was a formidable task. The negative energy of losing my career and self-worth coupled with a crushing financial burden was overwhelming. The ONLY way I stood any chance at all was to counter the negativity with positive energy.
Right out of the gate some essential “truths” about negative and positive mental energy revealed themselves.
First off, I viewed mental energy just like electrical energy – negative and positive energy repel each other. This visual really helped me to see that moving my life forward in a positive direction required me to get rid of the negative energy. The two could not coexist.
Second, I realized the amount of mental energy one has to expend every day if finite. The more negative energy you carry around, the less positive energy you will have to move forward. It is as simple as that.
Third, I quickly learned that the buzz one gets from positive mental energy (i.e., the release of serotonin and endorphins) creates a self-reinforcing, self-sustaining loop of Positivity. The more positive you are the more positive you want to be.
Fourth, thinking of mental energy in financial terms really sold me on how powerful Positivity could be. I viewed my bankruptcy, career loss and depression as a debt. Then I viewed any negative mental energy I carried around as the interest on that debt. Guess what? The debt itself was so massive that there was no way I could justify paying interest on top of that! Bye bye negative mental energy!
Now these “truths” were not researched or scientifically validated, they simply arrived in my head during my struggle to re-build. They helped me understand the power of mental energy and hastened by embrace of Positivity as the only way forward. Hopefully they will change how you think about mental energy too.
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Next up, I needed strategies to keep the positivity flowing and the negativity at bay.
The most critical strategy for my survival and eventual blossoming was to make peace with the current state of my life. I had to accept my condition (bankrupt and lost) and let go of the comparisons to the life I had lost (wealthy and successful). Letting go ended the grieving process and stopped the flow of negative mental energy from my loss.
In tandem with letting go, I needed a vision of attainable success on the horizon to work toward. In my head I created the imagery and storyline that I was currently treading water far offshore and would continue to do so for three years. As long as I kept the positive mental energy flowing, I would not drown. Each year I would float closer and closer to that distant shore and by the end of year three, I would be reclining comfortably on the shore enjoying a refreshing beverage surrounded by a wonderful beach party.
This imagery placed my current situation in a context I could easily access in my mind – that my situation was temporary and one day things would be fine again. This was both comforting and motivating.
A second strategy was to own the uniqueness of my lifepath. If I compared my life to those of my former colleagues and classmates, I would be drowned in a sea of negative energy - they had homes, families, and careers while all I had was a vision of a faraway beach. I reckoned that my fingerprints were unique, my DNA was unique, my backstory was unique so it would follow that my life’s path would be unique too. I embraced that uniqueness and stopped the comparisons.
A third strategy to keep the negative mental energy at bay was to re-set the bar on how I lived and how I thought about that. I had to re-set my identity from a white-collar corporate consultant to an artisan craftsman dedicated to guitar repair. I no longer wore suits or ate in upscale restaurants. I wore jeans and ate in diners. I no longer set my alarm for the crack of dawn. I got up when I awoke and worked late into the night. I was no longer networking with potential clients, I was fixing problems for guitar players. I could not think of my transition from corporate consultant to a guitar luthier as a “step down” or as a back-up side hustle. I embraced and took pride in my new role and opportunity in life.
These strategies were part of a larger group of techniques to become more flexible and adaptable, and to adjust to a new reality instead of being chained to the past. They served me well during this chapter and ever since!
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One might assume a life shattered by a career disaster, bankruptcy and crippling depression would compromise whatever came after, that I would be left a shadow of my former self picking up the pieces and failing to re-capture the glory. I certainly thought so, at least I did until I was accosted by that stranger on a Chicago sidewalk seething at me. That encounter lit a flame of gratitude deep inside that drove me to deliberately and passionately embrace Positivity.
What lay before me was a life of success and fullness far beyond what I ever could have imagined. Now looking back at those years of failure, isolation, poverty and relentless hard work, all that is left of them are these beautiful truths and strategies of Positivity that led me to this new life.
Positivity allowed me to overcome the greatest hurdles I’ve ever faced. Regardless of what is challenging you, I highly recommend it!