As cringe as the title sounds, it’s the truth. For a long time, I thought the world was against me. I took every little bad thing that happened personally, like life wanted me to fail. It was so draining and every day was an effort; battling one thing after another. My health took the biggest toll. I was ill all the time, my body was in a lot of physical pain every single day and I didn’t think it was ever going to stop. The crazy thing was that there wasn’t actually anything wrong with me… it was all in my head.
Before we go any further, I would just like to clarify something. This isn’t me saying that if you have a medical condition, it’s in your head. That’s a completely separate thing. The ‘just think positive and you will be healed’, isn’t something I necessarily agree with. I know that I was making myself ill because of the amount of stress I was putting my body under; I was always in fight mode which is not sustainable. This post is about my own personal experience with how thinking positive can make a difference, not how I healed a medical condition with positivity thinking.
When you put something to the forefront of your mind, it’s crazy how much more you notice it. For example, when someone gets a new car, you suddenly notice those cars all the time. You’re probably taking the same routes every day, at the same time. Those cars were always there, you just weren’t aware of them.
I recently read about an exercise that you can do right now –
Close your eyes and think of the colour blue.
Open your eyes and count everything in the room that colour.
Now close your eyes again and without opening them, name everything that’s yellow. We see what we want to see.
Those things have always been there, you just weren’t looking for them.
It’s very easy to get stuck in a negative spiral. We consume it daily. The news, social media, people we surround ourselves (work and personal). But when you see those things over and over again, they stay at the front of your mind. They say it takes 28 days to change a habit but that isn’t just for the good. If you are consuming it all the time, it can become very hard to separate yourself from it. Especially if you don’t have the right tools to do so.
What you have to remember it’s your choice on who and what you consume. I no longer watch the news. I go through my social media every 6 months and unfollow accounts that I no longer align with. If someone is constantly negative, I no longer connect with them. I will check that they’re ok before doing so, but remember there is a difference between a mental health situation and just a negative Nancy.
I’ve found that when I think positive, I see positive. It’s not that more positive things happen to me now, it’s just that’s what I choose to see. When it rains, I don’t think I hate this weather, I think how amazing it will be for the allotment. When I get to my car and realise I’ve forgotten something that I need to go back for, I think the universe was saving me from an accident. Am I naive? Am I in denial? Am I looking through rose tinted glasses? Yes probably. But I don’t care! I’m happier, healthier and just a nicer person to be around.
Now look, of course I have my off days. Day’s when I think the world is completely against me (there’s been more than I would have liked recently), days when I just can’t see the light, and days when I just need to cry from sunrise to sunset. However, the more positive I think, the few and far between those days are now. If I didn’t pull myself together, life would just stay that way and nothing would ever change. If you’re not happy with the way things are, change it!
Thinking of the small things in a positive way opens me up for bigger and better things. Take the rain for example. It sounds like such a small thing doesn’t it? Well now when I wake up in the morning and it’s raining, it doesn’t ruin my entire day! I think one less job to do and more time in bed 🙂 And who doesn’t love more time in bed!
Roisin McBride 
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