The Negative Side Of Positivity

“Positive thinking” is a buzzword often seen on social media, especially in the context of mindset.  This may seem like a good thing and the content associated with it typically makes us feel good and it inspires a lot of comments of people sharing their positive ideas.

Is it really a good thing to focus only on the positive side of things?  This question seems absurd when you look at it, because how can positivity be a bad thing, right? 

The truth is that this kind of mindset actually has quite a few drawbacks to it and can lead to toxic behavior.  In this article I am going to illustrate the common pitfalls that can come with a positive-only mindset and then offer a paradigm shift that can help you steer clear from these dangers and confidently walk a path that takes you to outcomes you desire.

Sound good?  Let’s dive in!

The Pitfalls of a Positive-Only Mindset

Here we are going to look at 6 common traps that can catch people trying to practice a positive-only mindset.  Raising our awareness to these issues can help us recognize these patterns in ourselves and others.  Then we can choose to do something about them.

1. Emotional Suppression:

Consistently upholding a positive façade means negative emotions are brushed aside, undealt with, and can fester. Recognize that processing a full range of emotions is crucial for emotional maturity and mental health.

This was an expected thing in my family growing up.  Any emotion other than happy and everything is ok would cause a lot of discomfort.  Whenever I cried, I was told to stop being a sissy.  If I was upset or frustrated, I would be given something to soothe the emotions like ice cream.  This learned behavior caused a lot of built up emotions.  On the outside I looked fine, but was in constant turmoil on the inside.

2. Reduced Authenticity:

There’s a risk of losing touch with who you truly are when you’re bound to a positive-only outlook.  Flaws and vulnerabilities end up being ignored, which can lead to some precarious situations. Authenticity thrives when we acknowledge and honor all facets of our existence.

Authentic expression brings personal freedom, heightens your creativity, lifts self-esteem, and can attract perfect opportunities for you.  The benefits are tremendous and worth the effort to overcome any fears you may have in expressing authentically.

 3. Relationship Barriers:

Relationships deepen through shared experiences, which include both joy and adversity. A positive-only mindset can create barriers to forming deep, meaningful connections as it avoids engaging with the struggles that often bring people closer.

4. Missed Growth Opportunities:

Challenges and failures are fertile ground for growth. By always focusing on the positive and negating the negative, valuable life lessons may go unlearned, stunting personal and professional development.

Once I faced the challenges I had because of depression, I discovered there was much more to life and so very much more to me.  These challenged helped build resilience and a mindset that sees every challenge as an opportunity to grow.

5. Invalidating Experiences:

Suggesting a positive mindset as a remedy for legitimate struggles can invalidate personal experiences. It may imply that your difficulties are a mere consequence of a poor attitude, which undermines genuine issues that require attention.

The poor attitude is usually because of unresolved issues that haven’t been addressed.  They continue to bring similar situations to you that a positive mindset might be able to gloss for a while, but ultimately comes crashing down.  The key is to identify and remove the root causes, which is not what a positive mindset does.

From Positivity to Opportunity

This is a paradigm shift that removes all toxic positivity.  Seeing experiences as positive or negative distorts your view of reality into a black/white or good/bad filter.  The truth is that life does have some black and some white, but most of it is a beautiful range of colors.  This positivity filter turns a colorful world into a drab image with sharp edges.

Stop Looking at Things as Positive or Negative

Positive means affirmative or yes, not good or white.  Negative means absent or no, not bad or black.  I get that the dictionaries offer good and bad as potential meanings for these words, but these definitions do not serve us.  In this sense, every experience you have is positive and every experience you do not have is negative.  Positive and negative are the potential answers to the question, “Did that happen?”

This is more in line with truth and sets the table to accept what actually happened.  By removing this filter you can start to uncover other filters which might be in place that distort your perception of reality.

So, how can you view it instead?

Beneficial or Adversarial

When unpleasant things happen, you may be conditioned to seeing it as something that happened to you.  What if you were to switch that to this is happening for me? 

For example, you make an unwise purchase and then you get angry when you found out it was a scam. A positive-only mindset would have you ignore the anger and just blame the con artist for swindling you, but asking how the anger is working for you can lead to looking within and realizing that you saw the red flags.  Now that you can see this blind spot, you can do something about it.

This turns every experience that you have into an opportunity for growth and change.  The events that happen in your life are all valid.  The frustration, guilt, sadness, joy, and laughter was real and they all can help you get to where you desire to be.

Willingness to Change

Now that you are aware of what you did that caused the undesired outcome, you can adjust.  In the example above of being swindled, it may have been an emotion of excitement that persuaded you to say yes.  Look into that emotion, because it distorted your perception and caused you to ignore your feeling that something was off.

Our subconscious minds are full of limiting beliefs that are the root causes of the unfortunate events that show up in our lives.  With the mindset that everything happens for us, we can start to be guided to find and ultimately remove these beliefs that are always working in the background against us.

This is the work I’ve been doing that has transformed my life from depressed to joyful.  I discover new beliefs every day because I know that all of my experiences are happening for me.  Together, with Loriel, we help guide people that are willing to change to shift their paradigm, change their limiting beliefs, and work on creating their dream life.

Conclusion

A positive-only mindset is a slippery slope as it attempts to hide negative emotions and experiences with flowery language.  A hard fall into toxic positivity can easily be avoided by embracing a view that sees every experience as happening for you.

Change isn’t easy, but it is worth it.  I would have done anything to get out of the depression I struggled with and I tried a lot of things, including positive thinking, that didn’t bring about any real change.  Things did change when I discovered that I had the power to change destructive patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and choices. 

I’ll be honest, it seemed like I would never get to a point where depression didn’t rule my life, but with consistent effort in changing habits and beliefs, I eventually got there.  I’ve done it and I’ve witnessed many others transform their life which is why I am confident that you can too.

If you feel you could use some help with this paradigm shift, schedule a life-changing call with us by clicking the button below.

I’d love to hear your experiences, so if you feel called to share leave your story in the comments below or ask any question you might have and I’ll answer promptly.

Love,

Arcturus