Positive Mindsets, An Exploration
"To be good, and to do good, is all We have to do." - John Adams
Posted From: The Bronx, New York, United States
Enabling a positive mindset is important to living life
What's the point of living life? I really do not know. It is something I strive to learn and reach for constantly. Nonetheless, I am quite unclear on the purpose of our conception.
On the other hand, I am confident that life is better when it is enjoyed, regardless of the point of our existence. For this reason, I have written this post: to demonstrate my own machinations towards enjoying life in order to provide evidence for others to enjoy theirs best.
To enjoy life, it is imperative to legitimize and invest in a positive mindset.
In this post, I will discuss what a positive mindset is, my actions in furthering my own positive mindset, and various tribulations I experience in relation to attempting to live out this mindset.
Two aspects of a positive mindset
A positive mindset contains two separate mentalities. Combined, the two mentalities create a positive mindset.
The first mentality is:
Experiencing an increasing amount of joy in feelings, thoughts, and actions.
The second mentality is:
Experiencing a decreasing amount of malcontent in your feelings, thoughts, and actions.
Thus, a positive mindset involves increasing the amount of pleasure and decreasing the amount of sadness perceived from each feeling, thought, and action completed. Together, they act as two sides of the same coin. Importantly, I need to recognize each side on their own to decipher the whole concept.
One side of a positive mindset requires understanding not everything is joyful but that there is joy in every experience, while the other side requires understanding how to limit the extent of unhappiness. For example, to increase joy in the present, you can frame current adversity as wins. Alternatively, you can look back fondly on past negative memories, honing in on the positives gained, like learning and also, anticipating the opportunity to grow and learn more in the future.
Rejecting refusal: critical to activating a positive mindset
Through various experiences encounters I have experienced, like the papers I have read, conversations I have had, and actions I have completed, I have garnered opportunities to learn how to engage and protrude a positive mindset. From these experiences, I recommend that individuals, no matter how positive of a mindset they currently hold, do not refuse to the idea of enlarging that mindset. Preferably, you must not reject refusal to working towards a positive mindset.
(The following paragraphs are not a prescription of enable a positive mindset. Rather, they describe how I have based my recommendation of “rejecting refusal” through my own learnings.)
Socializations from new experiences nest upon socializations from past experiences. In time, this process builds our understanding of the world and our knowledge. For example, the more I read, converse, and do, the more I learn. Again and again, this cycle operates, until, I cease wanting to learn.
The end of my journey of learning occurs when I am no longer open to learning. Thus, to proliferate learning, I must, at the beginning, be open to it. More importantly, the lack of openness is not important, as socialization will continue to occur, albeit at a slower pace. Instead, the rejection of openness, being closed to it, is key; being closed shuts off the opportunity for future learning.
Likewise, to be in a positive mindset requires an openness from the individual to engage in one. Without an openness to wanting to engage in a positive mindset (i.e. rejecting refusal), your senses and thoughts will shut to recognizing it as a possibility. As such, the openness, i.e. wanting to engage, experience, and learn, towards a positive mindset is critical to cultivating one.
To this note, the difficulty of doing so drastically varies across individuals: those who experience positive feedback loops closer to their enactment of a positive mindset are more likely to adopt one, keep it going, and profess it to others. Similarly, the inverse is also true. For example, if I suffer a drastic, perceived negative life change shortly into my positive mindset journey, like losing my full-time job, there will then be a variety of other forces acting upon my conscience acting. In turn, my faith in cultivating a positive mindset will be reduced, as compared to a situation where I had not lost my job. It is important to realize that each individual on their journey towards a positive mindset contextualize their own journey within their experiences.
Several actions I take to reach a positive mindset
I am not perfect — I have not achieved an everlasting positive mindset. Conversely, I constantly striving to achieve a larger positive mindset. This journey, towards a more positive mindset, is briefly described below with an examination of adages that empower progress.
Conscience breathing
Goal: To refocus on the now, current enjoyment in task at hand.
For example, when a recurring traumatic experience comes to my mind, I breathe, let the thought pass, and center back on my current activity. Like standing outside when the wind blows, soon enough, that gust will pass, and you will be back with yourself.
Once with yourself, outside noise dissipates. Noise is unwanted. By ridding yourself of noise, you can concentrate on the wonders of the task you are completing at hand.
Radical transparency in examining my feelings
Goal: to conduct root cause analysis.
In project management, root cause analysis helps individuals realize what is actually the cause of problems and/or failures.
There are various methods of achieving this analysis; the one I often conduct is “5 whys.”
The process of conducting a 5 whys analysis is as follows: when I feel a certain way, I take a second to breathe. Then, I examine why I am feeling a certain way. This proceeds for five iterations of why. Eventually, the root cause is identified. No if ands or buts, it is imperative I engage in radical transparency to conduct this analysis. I must not hide the truth, or else, the truth will not be found. An example of a five why’s analysis is below.
Constant action towards growth
Goal: To invest in myself, for the long-term.
As discussed in my trials and tribulations, I have not achieved a positive mindset. Full-stop, my mindset is a work in progress. As such, the version of myself that I am on within my positive mindset journey keeps progressing towards the goal and always has a step further to go.
A similar phenomenon occurred with essays written for college classes; there were no “final” essay versions promulgated by a higher order. Instead, they were completed when I deem them satisfactory to turn in. From my experience in history classes, I could read my papers 10+ times and find errors in all copies. Not just grammatical, but structural as well: here is a counter-point, the logic here is weak, the syntax is incoherent. Nonetheless, all of the papers I submitted were never late in submission. Instead, I called it quits at some point and hung up the towel.
I can do the same for my action towards a positive mindset. Sure, I keep making it more and more finalized, yet, if I allow the mindset to never be "submitted," I will keep working on it to improve it, i.e. growing it to an indefinite period.
Envision long-term
Goal: To re-center my attention on the long-term goals.
In situations where I feel disheartened, I take a step back. Following breathing, I turn my energy to examine how the current task fits into goals, specifically, those over a long-time period.
Posing a question to myself, I attempt to answer:
How does this current activity allow me to take one step closer to my goal?
Even if my goal is 1 million steps away, I have to create the leg work to move in the direction towards it. As a compass does, the long term goal points me in the general direction, albeit I may be unsure what awaits in the short and medium term.
Trials and tribulations with my own journey
I am capable and fortunate to embark on the task of activating a positive mindset, because of a few main reasons:
I am experienced in learning
I have resources to learn
I am willing to learn
Yet, I still can not do it without great tenacity and energy.
For example, we are currently experiencing the worst public health crisis in our lifetime. More individuals are dying from COVID a day than died in 9/11, just in the US. In midst of pandemic, a few sources of minor tribulations include:
I had job pushed back, but did not lose it
I had family members sick from COVID, but none of died
I had international plans indefinitely postponed, but none canceled for life.
There are days when breathing becomes hard — increasing awareness of my asthma and the risks associated with it.
There are root cause analyses that are difficult to find answers to — finding the answer requires a lot of thought.
There are days where my actions seem misguided and fruitless — acting towards a hard to reach long-term goal in vain.
Nevertheless, I bring myself forward. I follow the maxims I have learned, I believe in them, and I act accordingly. In due time, I get one step closer to living a life worth life — one filled with joy and absent of malcontent.
To live my best life, I need to inhabit and grow my positive mindset. Propagating the positive mindset requires an openness from me to do so, along with other actions, like conscience breathing. During the past two years of actively working towards a positive mindset, I have faced numerous roadblocks, even though I am well-endowed to succeed. While imperative to enjoy life, actualizing a positive mindset is a tough task.
Next Steps
Thank you for reading.
This is post 10.
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