Positive Thinking Post 2 of 5 - Responding to Negative Influences

This is part 2 of a 5 part article on positive thinking, which is a critical component of maintaining an active life and achieving our goals. You can read the prelude on goal setting here, and the first part on positive thinking and fitness here.

In the last post, I described ahimsa -- the practice of doing no harm even in thought.  This is a difficult practice to incorporate even in ideal situations. But how do we maintain a positive attitude in the face of external negative influences?  

This is an absolutely critical concept because fitness is a form of self-care and self-care is always in competition for every other person and thing that wants your time. Whether it's work demands, unsupportive friends, or unsupportive family members, people or obligations that exert some influence on your life will be a negative influence from time to time on your ability to maintain your commitment to a positive mindset.  So how best to deal with negative influences?

There are as many acceptable ways to deal with negative influences as there are circumstances, but I have found that there is only one mental attitude with which to deal with negative influences that does not in itself generate more negativity: compassion. 

Start with compassion  

Compassion is described in Buddhism as the desire for someone to not suffer. In its most intense and difficult form, compassion is the desire for someone who has hurt you to not suffer. Just like triathlon, compassion is a simple concept that can be difficult to execute.  So how do we generate compassion as a response to external negative influences?

Nothing is personal 

The usual and instinctive response to negativity is anger. Unfortunately, anger is a very strong generator of additional negativity so is always counter-productive.  A main reason that we get angry is because we take it personally when people behave negatively towards us. But if instead of reacting to that anger, we can step back and observe it more neutrally, it is possible to see that the negative behavior of others is always a product of the person generating that behavior. Even if the negativity is about us or affects us, and even if it's in response to us, it is all about the way the other person thinks, feels and perceives. We get to choose how we react and how we shape our own perception of the negative conduct of others. 

You don't need to respond  

Often, when confronted with negative behavior, our first instinct is anger, and our second instinct is to respond in anger.  Since anger feeds and fuels negativity, this is not a useful response if our main goal is to maintain or restore positivity. 

While one approach is to wait until you're no longer angry before responding, once the anger subsides, you may find that your need to respond at all has also dissipated.  You may be in a situation where you're best response is to simply let it go. You should feel free to take that path if it feels right to you. 

Give back what isn't yours  

A very wise friend gave me very good advice once: if you find yourself holding on to something that isn't yours, give it back. Some people in your life can have negative reactions to things you do and decisions you make. Following the first rule, don't take anything personally, and  the second rule of not responding right away (if at all), we can have the freedom to choose not to take on and hold on to other peoples' issues. Negative attitudes come from unresolved issues. This is true for other people and is also true for ourselves. It is hard enough to resolve our own issues that create our own negativity. If you find yourself holding on to someone else's issues and attitudes, return it to the sender; those feelings aren't yours to keep.

Back to compassion  

Generating compassion, much like maintaining a positive mindset, is not always easy and requires some practice and deliberateness.  Since positive thinking is a primarily internal process to respond effectively to our own negative self-talk, a good approach is to generate compassion for yourself. Just like maintaining fitness and activity is self-care, compassion for the self can also be an important part of self-care.  Since compassion is the desire for someone to not suffer, try to generate a genuine desire towards yourself to not suffer over whatever issues are causing your unhappiness. 

Sometimes we find it difficult to generate compassion for ourselves. We often find it easier to focus on other people and find that it feels awkward to focus on ourselves. This can feel especially true for generating self compassion.  

One approach to resolve this difficulty is to generate an intention of compassion for yourself for not being able to feel compassion.  Then you can explore the illogical paradox that results.  When I try that approach the ridiculousness of the paradox makes me laugh and reminds me that all the reasons I have created to have difficult thoughts and feelings really aren't all that important. 

That is the main power of compassion: its ability to shine a light on our own inflated sense of self that views our problems, even our legitimate problems, as uniquely important and, by extension, unsolvable.  

So the next time you find yourself trapped in a cycle of negative thinking as a response to someone else's negativity, you can try to see if an intention of compassion -- the desire that someone not suffer -- can help change your thinking.  And if you have trouble with that, generate compassion for yourself for not being able to feel compassion.  And laugh.

Positive Thinking and Fitness (Post 1 of 5)

In Going Long, an encyclopedic guide to training and racing full ironman distance races, Joe Friel and Gordon Byrn devote a whole chapter to the importance of positive thinking and self-talk.  The importance of a positive mindset for any endeavor is summed up as follows: "Mentally strong athletes understand that the body will follow where the mind leads, and they are careful where they lead their minds." 

A friend of mine once argued that the power of positive thinking is a sham  He said that when we ignore the negative, we abandon the power to confront it, and he equated positive thinking as fantasy and illusion.  I think his argument misunderstood what positive thinking really means.  I was at a loss to explain it in a way that made sense until I came across the Buddhist principle of "ahimsa" -- do no harm.  While often expressed as non-violence to all living things, ahimsa goes deeper than non-violence in words and actions, but rather extends to non-violence in one's thoughts as well. 

Ahimsa and healthy choices 

Ahimsa is easier to apply to our fitness goals by expressing it in the affirmative instead of the negative -- instead of "no violence" it can mean "make healthy choices", which starts with healthy thinking, which, in turn, increases the likelihood that we make healthy choices in our words and in our actions.  Looked at through that lens, "positive thinking" is really "healthy thinking" but as a conscious choice.  Said like that, its implications on our commitment to staying active is much clearer. 

Friel and Byrn divide positive thinking into thought, speech and writing, saying that controlling what we write is easiest, since writing is a deliberate act, while controlling our thoughts is hardest. My experience has been entirely consistent with that.  For example, regular exercise became a habit in 2016, which led to finishing a stretchy goal I had set for myself.  But all it took to start derailing me this year was a series of minor injuries, which started tearing down the positive thinking that was instrumental to achieving my goals in 2016. Without consistent awareness of our negative thoughts it takes surprisingly small amounts of adversity that, given some time, threaten to derail our positive thoughts.  Then the eve-present negative thoughts, words and actions have fertile ground in which to grow. 

Thoughts, words and actions are a hierarchy of our inner life that operate as a powerful force that shapes the life we live. Buddha said: “The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings… as we think, so we become.” 

Which brings me back to ahimsa and the power of positive thinking.  In my view, positive thinking does not mean denying or ignoring the negative or looking for silver linings (as my friend alleged).  It means acknowledging and respecting the negative for what it has to teach us, but then choosing to approach the world with an attitude of appreciation for the abundance that we have in our lives and a positive focus on the only thing we can control: our self. 

Scarcity and abundance at the inception of our thinking paradigm  

Negative thinking begins with an emotional attitude of scarcity.  Left unexamined, we tend to focus our attention on what we lack: what we do not have, or have but want more of, or the love and affection that we feel we lack.   Scarcity is a sad and lonely place.  Positive thinking, on the other hand, begins with an emotional attitude of abundance. We can choose to acknowledge the scarcity that is making us unhappy and respect the lessons that brings but, instead of dwelling there, we can choose to shift our focus to all that we have: the people who love us and help us, the beauty that surrounds us and the infinite opportunities that we have, big and small, to help make life better for us and those around us.  Scarcity and abundance exist in the same space and the same time and around the same themes.  Where we place our focus determines which will maintain long-term power over our thoughts and, therefore, our lives.

Focus on abundance leads to healthy choices

The positive thoughts and the emotional attitude of abundance, when chosen deliberately, leads naturally to a practice of ahimsa -- we can consistently make healthier choices and thus generate more happiness for ourselves and, by extension, for others.  Choosing to embrace a practice of healthier thinking can give us the opportunity to choose healthier foods, healthier activities, and healthier relationships that serve our best interest.  It can help affirm our inner wisdom that we alone know what is best for us and gives us clarity in the choices that will favor the good and result in less space for thw bad. As a practice, this creates fertile ground on which to decrease suffering and increase happiness.   

Do no harm, make healthy choices, and embrace abundance wherever it exists 

Personally, I have found it surprising how quickly momentum can build when we make a consecutive series of small, healthy changes. I saw it when I faced my own serious health crisis two years ago.  Within 18 months of consecutive small changes (along with a lot of help and guidance from some very good people), I accomplished more than I ever thought possible for myself.  As for the positive thinking and ahimsa -- after a series of minor but debilitating injuries this year a lot of my plans for the year were dashed.  That caused me quite a lot of despair at times and it was a struggle to maintain a healthy and positive attitude in the face of those ongoing setbacks. I tried to build up my spirit the same way I tried last year to build up my body (once again, with generous help from some very good people).  I took little steps, one step at a time.
So if things are going well for you and you are still reading these posts, perhaps you will choose to spend a few minutes thinking about starting a practice of your own. Perhaps just reading about the practice has already started to allow a few seeds of positive thinking to take root.  If, however, things are stressful and dark and difficult, even the smallest amount of effort can seem impossible. This is, however, when changing our thoughts is most critically important. So just take little steps, one step at a time.  That is often all we can do.  But the good news is that it turns out to be plenty.