Yesterday, while I was in the shower, it occurred to me that it was easier and more automatic to go to negative thinking. At first I thought, this is just because I’m practiced at it, I need to practice a more positive mindset. But I don’t think that’s it.
After self inquiring a little more I realized, I settle back in a negative mindset more easily, and not even that, I want to feel crappy about myself sometimes, it’s because I don’t have to do anything about it. Oh, I feel crappy, well duh, of course I do, here I am.
If instead I was thinking positive thoughts, very empowering thoughts, I would have to change myself and they way things are. I would have to do something about it, and that takes work.
Now, I know some of you don’t know me but, I’m kinda lazy. I learned this from a young age and honestly, I like it. So no wonder these empowering thoughts are so much work for me and that I just want to settle, the laziness is a comfort zone.
How can I change this state for myself? How can I see myself differently so that I’m not only okay with striving for better, I’m eager for it?
Perhaps it starts with hope. After all, I’ve gone through some setbacks, personally and professionally and I feel beaten down. If I have a few small wins, perhaps hope would return.
But even that is waiting for the outside world to be different than the way it is. How can I change?
Recently I was learning more about the Tao, which, the way I understand it, is being in a place of balance and flow, right in the middle, as we cruise through life. Life is all a bunch of change. We can’t stop it or keep it from doing what it will. But what we can do is be in it fully.
So maybe if I find a way to be in it fully, changes and cruising as it is, I (we) can lean in and enjoy the ride.
Things will change, as I’ve said, we can’t help that. What we can do is be all in for the cruise.
This way its not about not doing things that we don’t want to do or even changing what we don’t like. Maybe those thing will happen, and they automatically will when we choose to give up our own disconnect from the way things are to the way we wish them to be.
This is the way of the Tao and this is the way of being okay with action or non-action just the way it is. If it’s lazy, it’s lazy. If it’s active, it’s active. It might be better to think of this as a state of joy or peace instead of positivity as I was using earlier. Positivity infers that something will happen and it will be good, when, now we know, that may or may not be the case. It will just be as it is.
So lean in to the joy and peace, be positive about that experience and allow the cruising to happen just as it is, all in. Enjoy.