May The Force Be With You

May The Force Be With You

This may be the only blog of this name that is not about Star Wars…

That said it does involve the dark side!

During recent research I came across an article from 2011 by Tori Rodriguez titled ‘Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being”.  My first, second and third response to the title was NO. My insatiable curiosity and desire to challenge my thinking kicked in and so I read it – twice!.  Didn’t quite buy into it to be honest as it appeared to be pointed towards ‘meaningful misery’ and that positive thoughts and emotions are not congruent with the messiness of real life and therefore peoples outlook can become so rosy that they ignore dangers.

Extreme don’t you think !

I think this insults our intelligence – our Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence allows us to be aware and  to express our emotions in a real and meaningful way, no rose tinted glasses there.

However, my curiosity was raised and so I just had to follow it further.  I came to an article titled “Can Positive Thinking Be Negative” by Scott O Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz, 2011.  The main point in this one is that positivity is not all it’s cracked up to be. What is more it says, research suggests that optimism can be detrimental under certain circumstances.

Yikes !

I found quite a few more like minded articles.

My response – Positive Thinking is such a loosely used term now.  It’s easy to take the power away when it’s just about thoughts but it’s not just about thoughts is it?.

We have to consider the whole picture – the full force of positivity and how it powers us to move forward.

Negative force can be just as strong and prevailing, it keeps us from moving, quite often keeps us in our past.

Positive force allows us be present and fuels us moving ahead.

Let’s keep it real, positive thinking alone won’t support a positive force

It takes a cluster of traits and skills and behaviours.

The great news is, these can all be learned and developed through our emotional intelligence

What makes up the cluster for positive force?

               Growth Mind-set,

               Resilience,

               Optimism,

               Reality Checking,

               Choosing your attitude

               Self-awareness,

               Relationship management

               Stress management

Each element of the cluster takes effort to develop and needs constant work to adapt to our every changing complex world.

While some may tut tut the motivational quotes and pictures, they have a direct response on the emotions that we are experience and boost our mood just enough to take action.

The smallest sparks of positivity can help start and build a sustainable positive force.

Identify what sparks your positive force

Make a plan for the morning, afternoon and evening time that keeps you sparking.

This will help managing our everyday tasks and activities that otherwise can totally drain us and take us back to the dark side.

We are not asking for the sun, moon and stars, just our internal universe to be positively powered.

May the Positive Force be with you.

Images courtesy of Ambro, Iosphere and Evgeni Dinev at FreeDigitalPhotos.net