It’s hard to admit but we actually really like our negative thoughts.

They are like a child’s security blanket, rubbed raw and ragged from traveling with us wherever we go. We have dragged them on the ground as we move through our days, curled up with them while falling asleep at night, cried into them in our darkest moments.

They are ours and everyone these days seems to want to take them from us.

We are bombarded with Facebook posts and tweets and blog posts and books and friends and family telling us that negative thoughts are no good and that positive thoughts are the way to go if we’re ever going to have what we want.

But what if we want to be able to have everything we think positive thoughts will manifest for us and hold on to our safe, comfortable, familiar negative thoughts?

I know this sounds weird but the whole affair makes me feel cuddly.

Because really that is all the negative thoughts want from us: to see them, to accept them, to feel compassion for the hurt, sensitive soul of our younger self who created these negative thoughts in the first place, even if we were just younger by a day (or a minute) when we did so.

Negative thoughts are only trying to meet our primal need of wanting to feel safe by trying to understand the world in some way. While positive thoughts are a willingness to be open to the unknown.

Negative thoughts are a small room with little light and many warm blankets. While positive thoughts are a wide open field susceptible to rain, wind and wild animals of all sort.

And if that small dimly lit room is where someone wants to be, I would never tell them that they have to come out of it.

Not even myself.

But it can get a little dark and cramped in there.

And sometimes we really want to smell the fresh air of the open field. We want to run and frolic free and we don’t care if the wind and rain are going to pound us, even to our death.

We need to fly.

Positive thoughts are not a candy coating we brush on top of the negative thoughts.

No, first we need to go into that small room and say to the negative thoughts, “I see you” and, “I accept you” and if we’re really brave: “I love you. Thank You.” Then and only then can we look out through the small window in that dimly lit room and see a sliver of the field beyond and think about what we need to do to take a step in that direction. And if what we see is that positive thoughts will take us there then we might embrace that kernel of joy and nurture it and in its own time it will grow.

So, don’t worry nobody can take your negative thoughts away.

But what can happen is we might find ourselves so nurturing to the hurt nature of the negative thought that we end up loving them all to death.

 

 

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Author: Ruth Lera

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Wiki Commons