49: Keep it On the Positive

Last night, I took part in a kirtan ecstatic chant led by the Grammy-award nominee Krishna Das then camped under the stars.  For those who don’t know what kirtan is, my  beginner understanding is that it’s a call and response type of singing that aligns vocal sounds to our chakras. I don’t really know the ins and outs, but what I do know is that it makes me feel really good and keeps me on the positive. And that my friends is a good thing, right? Krishna Das and Radhanath Swami  talked a bit about the ripple effect and the collective consciousness. Like others have said before — including the Dalai Lama — the way we react to external stimuli (good and bad) directly influences those around us.  Some have even gone so far to say that our energy transmits a ripple throughout the ether, so that even people you don’t come in contact with are influenced by your energy. Interesting, right? All that aside, there’s tremendous power in projecting an optimistic and positive mindset when our dots don’t really line up the way we had planned. Dr. Wayne Dyer puts it nicely. He says, “Initiate a habit of choosing thoughts and ideas that support feeling good and powerful, and that elevate you to a higher level of consciousness" So here are three thoughts to consider to help keep it on the positive and elevate your consciousness. 1. Meet Negativity w/ Love The other day, I witnessed an employee at a friend’s company grow red in the face when on the phone with her boss. When the call ended, she cursed and verbally expressed (at a decibel well beyond what’s necessary) how annoyed she was at her boss for not scheduling meetings more effectively. Her negativity was nearly impossible to ignore. Her negativity immediately changed the culture in the room and my shoulders grew tight. I walked out of the room because I just didn’t want to be around that kind of negativity. How rude to steal away other people’s happiness, I thought.  Then, I remembered what Ram Dass talks about in Be Love Now. He says to embrace all things with love. In times like these, try to understand that perhaps this person has had a really tough day. Or perhaps they have suffered a lot of loss in their life that led them to be quite negative. Or perhaps they just don’t have a lot of loving positive people surrounding them in life. Point being... offerloving kindness in place of feeding negativity. 2. Frantic Energy Helps No One Dr. Deri Joy Ronis writes in Bridging the Gap to Peace: From a New Way of Thinking Into Action that “Frantic mental or nervous physical energy serves no purpose in helping us get beyond the very things that frustrate us.”  She adds that not being at peace isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a signal that we need change and should pay attention to it. Trust me — I understand how it’s far easier to say this than practice it. I constantly struggle to recognize my pitta fire energy and douse it with water when I need to chill out. Sometimes, however, when “crap hits the fan” — so to speak — it’s a lot easier to scream, shout, and be frantic.  But it won’t really get me anywhere.  In yoga, it’s often taught to dig deep into emotions and experience them so that you can understand them better. So, the next time you feel a deep surge to getfrantic, dig into that emotion and really feel it. Indulge a bit. If you want to scream, really scream. Do what Angelina Jolie has said to work and scream in a pool so it doesn’t bother anyone. Just fully feel your sadness, anger, or jealousy and experience it without doing any harm to others.  The next time this emotion arises, it will be easier to recognize it and make a choice. You’ll be able to choose whether or not to go down that path. More often than not, it will get easier to say “no, thank you. I don’t need to go down that path.”  Another helpful trick here is a simple breathing exercise where you breathe in the mantra “I am a mountain” and breath out “I meet my vulnerability with love.”  3. Where’s Your Positive Fuel? Having a positive mindset doesn’t mean being ignorantly optimistic. It means making a choice to place your focus on the positive with the understanding that negativity does little to get you anywhere.  After college, a lot of us lose our optimistic fuel.  In college, most people are quite happy. Academia most definitely is a stressful environment, but, for the most part, days are filled with people who are activity pursuing their dream career and having lots of positive social interaction and meaningful discussions. After college, a lot of us enter into  what’s often called the daily grind. Perhaps you’re working a job that doesn’t fuel you because you have a responsibility to bring in income to provide for your family. That, I’d argue, would be the majority of the over-educated employees working at jobs far below their skill after the 2008 economic crisis.  Just like you’d fill up your car on your daily commute, think about where you’re filling your positive fuel tank. Actively seek out positive people at work, have a weekly in person or digital meet up with a positive mastermind group, or read material that focuses on the positive (i.e. not the newspaper).  We’re animals, let’s not forgot. We are an effect of our habitat. What makes us quite different from other animals, however, is that we have a choice to choose our habitat and those we invite to share it with us. We have a choice on where to focus our attention. At Omega Institute, Radhanath Swami used the analogy of a crane. He said, like a crane, we have the choice to go after big fish or go after the little fish. Big fish satisfy us far more than little fish, but if we just choose to go after the little fish, we can never focus on the big fish. If we choose to focus on the negative annoyances in life, we can so easily ignore what really matters. And that, Radhanath Swami states, is to try to live out the best version of ourselves through loving kindness.  —- What are your thoughts? Like always, I’d love to hear what you think. How do you keep it on the positive? Just hit reply and say hello.