How do you dial up your positive ? Today by friend asked me how I stay extremely positive. She told me that she wants to be more like me. She proceeded to tell me, how over the years, she has known me to only focus on the good.
I told her, I got it from my mother in how she raised me.
She said that real value comes from a person, who can find the good, who can be positive when it's not so easy. To also appreciate what there is around you. To also look at what's going right.
I was 12 I didn't understand at the time. I did understand early on.
12
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17 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I restrict my real life time to a minimum, to be honest. It helps that my RNA agrees with me that I'm "optimistic to a fault," hence why it took so long to be diagnosed in the first place.
I built a youtube playlist that is diverse in music, and play it at random. It's hard to focus on negative energy when you're listening to music You tailored for yourself.
DaniMa
Level 5
Feb 25, 2018
1
Your physical and mental physiology and the chemicals it does or doesn't produce has everything to do with your personality and moods. When you are unfortunate enough to have a mood disorder, you cannot force, cajole or shame yourself into feeling positive. There is a world of difference between having a -situational- depression that you have a great chance of pulling yourself out of and a clinical physiological condition that will go nowhere without taking psychotropic meds to manage. You didn't ask for it...you didn't cause it...you don't deserve it...but you have to deal with it nonetheless.
Highway-Starr
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
2
I do agree that there is a big difference between low mood and clinical depression and other types of mental illness.
However, much of the research in this area is funded and promoted by the big pharma companies who have a vested interest in selling the idea that drugs are the only way to manage mental illness. Unfortunately, for talking therapies to work effectively (in conjunction with medication) they are very labour intensive and expensive and despite evidence from several trials that they are effective long term with far lower rates of relapse than with drugs alone are rarely used in the UK due to the cost.
Although I am a retired children's social worker, my dissertation for my degree was contrasting medical and social models of mental illness - my research found that almost all research and training of mental health teams is funded by big pharma and skewed in their favour.
Once again, good health reverts to a question of cost. 
Of huge importance between the two solutions of talk therapy vs medication is the realization that when someone is in crisis, talk therapy is the least effective therapy. The volume of the crisis has to be lowered immediately and medication therapy is the only game in town for that. That's my experience anyway: I started looking for answers in 1982 when talk therapy was pretty crappy. I spilled my guts for 29 years to at least 20 psychiatrists and countless therapists...ALL who missed my diagnosis until 2011 when I was hospitalized.
Before discovering the correct med cocktail that changed my brain chemistry and dissolved the mental wall that had always dammed the flow of great ideas into actions, talk therapy was ineffective for me, even though I loved it. I couldn't get there from here despite the dilemma that it was making complete sense.
During hospitalization I received the correct diagnosis of Bipolar II and the correct medications and I was finally put into the driver's seat of being able to manage this disorder instead of it constantly piloting me through neighborhoods of dysfunction, and my world became a different place with a sunny view and a future of positive possibilities. Just like that. A couple of the right pills did that for me by rearranging my thought process, and that augmented my talk therapy into results. Still does.
Of course its very distasteful how Big Money of any stripe will try to manipulate results to their favor just like Big Pharma does with its therapies, but when I finally saw relief from the negative disorder that chased me through life for decades...I could have cared less.
@Uncorrugated
Thanks, I agree. 
@Highway-Starr
Agreed - all the studies were clear that medication was important to stabilise those in crisis, and that once stable, relapse and drug maintenance levels could be significantly reduced with effective psychological support. I can't remember the references offhand - I'd have to search the loft to see if I still have copies of my studies - it was a long time ago!!!
Hopefully you are managing your condition in a way that suits you. I wish you well.
@Uncorrugated Thank you! Yes, I did titrate down to a maintenance dose a year or two after the crisis subsided to hopefully lessen some of the side effects I got from lithium, and it went well for a few years. Last fall I caught myself getting a little high, so I kicked it back up 150mg and it settled in nicely. I kept my lamotrigene the same though as I've only twice cycled downward into a depressive state. I'm r-e-l-e-n-t-l-e-s-s in my recovery. It took awhile, but my mental team is fantastic and I see them regularly. I can't let up, because my disorder sure as hell won't! Those thinking they can simply pop a pill and think they're good are headed for failure.
I have learnt over the years that happiness resides within. I have had to treat medically individuals who have some of the most distressing maladies but are smiling nonetheless. If one is content within then this world is a cheesecake ( I LOVE CHEESECAKE, so thats the confection I choose, pick your own and smile).
JayJackson
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
0
I am alive... in one piece, what is not there to like?
GipsyOfNewSpain
Level 9
Feb 24, 2018
1
Once you learn to enjoy the simple things, it’s hard to be anything but happy.
Marz
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
2
Exactly
After 26 years of hating myself then accepting myself, then fighting and beating cancer changed everything. After all that, I wake every morning in a positive state of mind..ok I need my coffee 1st..
Charlene
Level 9
Feb 24, 2018
2
Coffee is great !!
@Wildgreens it is a necessity to achieve nirvana!!
I have answered this previously on a very similar post. So here's a quick copy and paste...
I talk to myself.
I don't do negative vibes. It is a technique I have developed over the years.
It's kind of a mix of stuff I have read about, seen others do and stuff that I found works for me.
I use positive language (almost) always. What can I change to improve... How can I... (make it work/avoid it etc) I try never to use 'I can't' though I will use 'I won't'
I don't have long on this planet, so I fully intend to make the most of my time here being happy. I really don't want to waste time on anger or sadness. After years of practice, not always successful initially, I can talk my self out of being angry, sad or negative and talk myself into being happy and positive.
Could I teach it to someone else? I doubt it, if I could I would probably patent it and become a life coach!!!
Uncorrugated
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
2
Thanks for sharing the previous post.
I agree that language is extremely important in self-harmony. I try very hard not to talk smack about people because I don't know their situation. What I do know is how necessary compliments are.
At work, when I arrive in the morning, I do the same thing. I go down the two rows of people, and greet everyone by name. I check the kitchen for stragglers in case someone stepped in there and I follow this businessman's advice to a waitress I heard once: "When you see the person, make eye contact with them and say with your voice that you like them."
I work in an office so tips are hard to come by, but it let's people know we're on the same team and even with my mental disorder I know that I'm changing the way people think about mental illness. And it helps the atheist community as well.
I do constructive things. Like play music, go to work and build my relationships.
jayneonacobb
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
1
Being positive and exuberant affects the people around you, so keep it up; you're making the world a better place! Unfortunately, being negative gives people juice... it feeds something in them. I stay away from them; they're nothing but downers.
High five!
Hominid
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
3
I agree
I just decide to look at things positively. I came to work today, saw that I was going to be training someone who's already failed this training twice, and said, "I think it's going to be a lousy day."
A coworker said I should be positive.
I suddenly realized she was right. I was absolutely positive that today was going to suck. On an even more positive note, I wasn't wrong.
JimG
Level 8
Feb 24, 2018
1
Your were so fortunate to have such a great mother. I came to this by way of some people later in my life. I hung with a psychic, spiritualist community for three years when the chips were very down. (Does that surprise you?) Later, at another junction in my life, I hung with Buddhists. None of this had anything to do with "religion." But these people helped me gain the strength I needed. Then, late in my life, life sent me a gift. I married a deeply spiritual (not religious) man who valued "Gratitude" and "Humility." He was so loving - so understanding. My only problem with him was to make him less humble, having been touted in "Who's Who" and revered by his colleagues, all of them world renowned scientists. He was commended by the president of NATO for his work and was appointed head of 25000 scientists who, under his direction, sent up the first unmanned space ships to the moon. Being positive brings positive things into your life. Sometimes being positive is very challenged. But that strength pays off.
think-beyond
Level 7
Feb 24, 2018
2
You must have talked to my mom.
Yes absolutely, you have to think it and visualize.
Thank you for your lovely story, I very much enjoyed it.
Enjoy being online again!
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