This is the third post in a series on positive thinking. On Christmas Day, I wrote about how the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is a great and natural opportunity to reset goals for the coming year. To create the optimal situation for accomplishing our goals it is important to develop and maintain a healthy and positive mindset, hence this five-part series on techniques for positive thinking. Part 1 discussed the importance of positive thinking on fitness and performance, and part 2 discusses how to maintain positive thinking in the face of negative influences. Today's post discusses why positive thinking has to be a consistent practice. Most people, I think, despite the best intentions, tend to gravitate to the negative over time. Consistent effort is required to push back against the constant, oncoming tide of negative thoughts.
But why is it that the negative is always more powerful than the positive? Why are negative thoughts so much "stickier" than positive thoughts and why do unpleasant situations and suffering appear to us as so much stronger and to last so much longer than pleasant experiences and joy? Someone once said to me that negative thoughts are like velcro and positive thoughts are like Teflon, which sounded to me like a good way to sum it up.
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in a closed system always increases. Stated in the inverse, order in a closed system always decreases and degrades towards chaos. If we apply this law of physics to ourselves and to our lives, we can see that we are always in a slow state of gradual decay. Not a very encouraging realization for a weekend! But even though we are all mortal and have to live with the reality that our bodies experience entropy and decay just like any other closed system, as human beings we do have the power to control the rate of that entropy -- that decay -- with the practice of positivity in our thoughts and our actions.
In a broader context, the healthiness of our thinking seems to work in much the same way as the healthiness of our bodies. When we exercise regularly, our physical fitness continues to improve but the moment we stop, our fitness begins to deteriorate. It is a frustrating truth of physical fitness that we never have "money in the bank" and have to keep moving forward in order to maintain results. It is the same with our thinking. If we exercise a practice of intending towards positive thoughts every day, that practice helps to push back against the tide of negative thoughts and experiences that can swamp our spirit.
To have healthy and happy lives we need to push back at the rate of decay in the emotional quality of our thinking with moderate amounts of consistent practice of positive thinking. The good news is that it does not always take a lot of time or a lot of effort to foster healthier thinking. Instead of an hour on the treadmill or a 20 mile bike ride to improve the fitness of our bodies, a 10 minute meditation a few times a week can be effective to improve the health of our mind. This is one of reasons I have been writing these blog posts this week: committing these thoughts to writing has helped me turn back the tide of my own negative thoughts and has helped me to feel more at peace. My hope is that, if you are reading this, maybe it can help you a little bit too.