I get this daily email/newsletter thing from TUT’s Adventure Club (TUT stands for Totally Unique Thoughts)–notes from the universe, which are inspirational, often thought-provoking, and usually pretty darn funny.
The slogan of the newsletter is “Thoughts become things…choose the good ones!”
The whole concept is that thoughts have the power to affect outcomes, so if you spend a lot of time in negativity, you’re likely to get a lot of negativity back in your life. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of deal. I’ve definitely seen this happen many times. People who are angry and negative tend to attract more anger and negativity. It’s a matter of finding what you’re looking for or expecting, really.
Of course it’s a lot easier to say you should keep positive thoughts when things are already going well. When you’re in the middle of the blahs, it’s a lot harder to maintain them. I know. I’ve been there. When you’re in the middle of life crap, you’re more apt to look at people staying positive as being phony or somehow naive or something. And yet, I know I found myself gravitating toward the positive people in my life because they cast off this sort of…I don’t know…light that somehow makes things seem better. And that helps ME be more positive.
I think maintaining positive thoughts and surrounding yourself with positive people is absolutely necessary as a writer. There is SO MUCH NEGATIVITY in our field. People bitter about the system. Upset or angry about rejections. Furious about a critique or a review. Depressed about the odds of success. And there’s a certain tendency for us to hang around the metaphorical water cooler and bitch together. It’s a communal thing. But does that really make us feel any better? Does it do anything to move us along our desired path toward success? Or does it just further highlight that we’re all probably nuts for trying in the first place?
So my challenge to you is to FIND THE POSITIVE! Surround yourself with positive people. Look at that rejection you received with an open mind and search out that nugget of helpful information that’s going to make what you’re submitting better. Look at each critique as a chance to IMPROVE YOUR CRAFT. Look outside the scope of the traditional query/traditional publishing process and consider what you could learn from self publishing something–then educate yourself. Look at those astronomical odds and see it as something to truly ASPIRE to–then rise to the occasion.
8 thoughts on “The Power of Positive Thinking”
Very good post. I enjoyed reading it. I am always getting caught in the negative side of things. I vary very much from day to day. Often when I find myself when things are going badly at work for example I reflect this in my writing and I just find myself feeling daunted and overwhelmed. I suffer from very bad periods of self doubt and very low self esteem. The only way I can get around it is as you say to focus on a positive thing, writing related or not just find something positive and pull yourself out of the whole.
Breath – Smile – Write – Repeat!
I needed to read something like this today. I’ve been having some issues in my life and needed to be “uplifted” a little. Thanks Kait!
Great post and timely! This week has been one of those weeks for me and I’ve done a lot of thinking about how certain things are affecting me negatively. Next week, there will be changes at my work & I’m hoping for the best.
I didn’t start out as an optimist. I started out as a very pessimistic individual. However, after undergoing some counseling, I realized that my toxic thoughts were my defensive mechanism from my trauma. Once I let go of my fear, I became a positive thinking fountain more often than not.
I’m an eternal optimist, glass always half full type of girl. I’ve always surrounded myself with optimistic people because I hate negativity. Don’t want to deal with it. I was blessed with a son who looks at life with the glass half empty. He is teaching me how to deal. It’s been a growing experience teaching him how to see life in a more positive way, which in turn has helped me learn to deal with the negativity. Positivity can rub off on people. Thanks for being such a positive force.
I’ve been finding it harder to hang on to my optimism as of late so I really loved this post.
Thanks for the reminder. I’ve seen two posts like this today, so I guess that means it’s what I need to be aware of at the moment. 🙂