Being Positive

Twenty-three days ago I started a 45 Days of Positivity challenge. It was only a couple days post election and I was already sick of the negativity surrounding the outcome of the presidential race. So I figured I'd fight it by sharing something positive every day. I had no idea what I would do for those 45 days. I just needed a positive focus.

At first, I went out of my way to do something positive every day so I could tape it or write about it. It's not that I thought my life was horrible. It's definitely not. I guess I just thought I had to go out of my way to BE positive.

At some point that stopped, somewhere around day 11. It wasn't a conscious change. I didn't even notice it until last night. Instead of going out of my way to do something positive, I started noticing something positive that had already happened that day and sharing that.  I'm pretty sure my life hadn't changed in 11 days, but the way I looked at it had.


About a year ago, I heard a podcast with A.J Jacobs about his writing. He spoke about his book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he wrote about his quest to live according to the Bible, literally, for a year. Of course, a lot of ridiculousness came about from that year, but when he spoke about it on the podcast he mentioned something positive that had happened to him. He noticed that making a conscious change in how he acted actually changed his thinking. He talked about how so many of us think this is the other way around- that we can just "think" we want to be a certain way and somehow we will be. Of course, without the actual conscious work to change, this rarely happens.

It dawned on me last night that perhaps this is what has happened over the last 23 days. Going out of my way to BE positive actually started making me think more positively. I noticed things I might not have before. It actually seemed like more positive was happening to me, which could be true, but I'm going to venture a guess that I was just more aware of it.



Of course, we've all heard this idea before- that you attract what you choose to attract, whether it be negative or positive. I guess that's what I was hoping might happen when I did this. It's just that I thought other people would be more positive if they saw me sharing these things. It never dawned on me that it would be me who would change.

I'm looking forward to the next 22 days. I know there will be a lot of good stuff in there.