Right of Way

Sometimes life just feels so heavy. I'm not sure if it's because challenges seem to come in clusters, or when you're dealing with one hard thing you have less space and energy to deal with anything else. I've often felt that when one big thing is exceptionally challenging everything just 'tends to go wrong'.

And then I'm forced to take a pause. How much is this about focusing on the negatives? It's something we all do. We're programmed to do it. It's somewhat an evolutionary thing. We notice things that feel off, threatening, or wrong as a means to fix them. (Whether we take it that far or not is another story.) But honestly, I think this is a lot about the focus and meaning we attribute to things.

Of course it's easy to stay positive when things are generally easy and upbeat. Of course hard things make life more difficult, but I'm wondering if there's a "Right [of] Way" (driving pun intended obviously). How much does our self talk matter?

Negative self talk plays a large role in people's unhappiness, for sure. But how much does focusing on the positive work to make things feel "better"? I'm hardly a Pollyanna, but I do think that positive psychology is onto something. Gratitude journaling works because it forces us to think about good things that are happening around us that maybe we take for granted and not just focus the uncomfortable things that of course we let bother us. 

I do believe that when we turn up the volume on the good stuff life sounds a whole lot better.