Monday, April 6, 2020

POSITIVITY: a flaw or a virtue?

In my opinion, positivity is fundamental if you wish to achieve lasting success and happiness in life, but before I delve a bit deeper into this matter, I would like to quickly refresh what positivity means. 
Scholars define positivity as being the capability of looking for solutions, in an optimistic manner, and at the same time being able to focus on making things better while having a positive mind frame. It sounds quite easy, isn’t it?! Yes, it appears to be, but for whatever reason, for many, it seems to be pretty difficult to achieve such a state of mind.
Well, I guess that perhaps not everyone really understands what an optimistic way of thinking is, but, regardless, the subject is really worth pondering upon.

Over time, it has been well documented by many research papers that people with a positive attitude tend to live a more prosperous life, being at the same time more hopeful and enthusiastic. Because positivity is closely linked with confidence, for positive people it would be somehow easier to know what they want and have a pretty clear understanding of how to get that, facts which might lead to a number of significant life changing experiences.

Without any doubt, the power of positive thinking is remarkable in many ways. Positivity is the greatest gift you could offer yourself, which might have an encouraging ripple effect on you and on all around you. A happy, worry-free state of mind, which is always looking at the bright side of life while is focusing on finding viable and ethical solutions, often leads to positive results and successful outcomes.

Aside of that, it has been noted in many circumstances that positive thinking helps tremendously with the improvement of stress management, consequently affecting for good your health and well-being. For more clarity, here are few additional attributes which equate with positivity, with a positive attitude, or with a positive state of mind: optimistic, hopeful, confident, cheerful and bright. A person with a positive mind set could encourage and motivate other people and help them feel good about themselves. In fact, positivity is really a choice, which allows you to be more productive with your work (whatever that might be), properly setting goals and achieving them; being able to accomplish things on a regular basis is enhancing even more your positivity.
Approaching life with a positive attitude is in essence the practice of focusing on the good side in any given situation, which means that one tackles the good & the bad in life with the expectation that in the end things will go well. If positivity is correctly applied in life it turns to be a prised virtue, similar to patience & kindness.

On the other hand, I would like to briefly ring a bell about toxic positivity, which in essence boils down to denial and minimization. Usually such people have the tendency to exaggerate their happiness and optimism across all cases, leading to situations which pre-empt the authenticity of human emotional experience/s.
We all know that life is not always offering only positive experiences and rejecting anything which might trigger negativity could lead to more complications.
For instance, false positivity refers to a test result which tells you a disease or a particular condition is present, when in reality there is no disease. A false positive result is an error, which means the result is not giving the correct information.
Aside of that, forced positivity refers to the concept that sick people need to insistently portray themselves as positive, believing that this will alleviate the problem.
Whatever situation life presents, it is very important to have a clear understanding of what is going on, and act upon accordingly.
Also, dear ones, healthy positivity doesn’t mean ignoring a given problem; it means acknowledging without dwelling in it & looking for positive viable solutions.

In closing of my short expose here, I wold like to quickly emphasize that positivity, correctly applied, helps you cope more easily  with a large array of daily life situations, as it brings optimism into your life and makes it easier to avoid worries and negative thinking.
If you adopt positivism as a way of being, it could bring significant constructive changes into your life, making you happier, brighter and more successful!
Positivity starts by seeing the world with an optimistic, but realistic, vision.