Partnering with Negativity to Power Your Positivity!

Here is a universal law: that when it comes to negative and positive, you will always thrive more powerfully in the positive if you have first been immersed in, and have heroically overcome, the polar opposite negative of that thing. 
-C. Joybell C.

photo: Carlsbad Twilight by PositivelyAnne

Has it crossed your mind lately that no matter what you do to be positive about life, it seems the soldiers of negativity stand ready for battle, day and night?

I used to feel that way.  Night after night tumbling into bed, my positive- self weary from the constant battle with the “negativity” demons that seemed to lurk in every crevice of my life.  I lost count of how many sleepless nights I spent tossing and turning as the plotting and planning in my brain took on a life of its own trying to find the perfect strategy for defeating my enemy, “negativity!”

Then one day, while I was performing the very mundane task of changing the batteries in a flashlight, I discovered that instead of going to war with negativity day and night, I had to do something a little different.  My positive self-had to develop

A PARTNERSHIP WITH NEGATIVITY!

It all started with a flashlight.   In my house flashlights are everywhere.  My husband is a flashlight aficionado and we have flashlights in every room in the house.  (Yes, all three of our kids got flashlights for Christmas last year, thank you very much!).

Of course, living in sunny Southern California there is not much use for flashlights except for finding the bathroom in the dark when camping, or the occasional item that rolls under the stove.  I went to grab a flashlight for the latter and of course, because we don’t use flashlights very often, the batteries were dead.  I found some new batteries and went about the process of changing them. Now I knew which way to do it by matching the plus and minus markings on the batteries to the plus and minus markings on the flashlight.  Of course, as life goes, the markings were barely visible on this particular flashlight and because I didn’t have my glasses on, it took me a couple tries and a few choice curse words to get them in the right way so that the flashlight worked.

I found myself more than a little irritated.  “Why in the 21^st century am I doing battle with the batteries in my dumb flashlight?”  Of course, deep down I knew why.  That positive and negative had to go to together in just the right way to make it work.

photo: Winter Hope by PositivelyAnne

But that didn’t matter.  My irritation was clouding my brain and as trivial as this sounds, I put down the flashlight, picked up my phone and took my irritation out on a search engine:

Am I the only one in the world who thinks it’s dumb that I can’t just shove the batteries in my flashlight any which way and get it to work?

Now I figured when I pushed the send button I would be taken to the blog-o-sphere and rejoice in a myriad of snarky bloggers intent on fueling my negative thoughts about batteries.  Instead, much to my surprise, what popped up first on my phone screen was from a site called quickstudylabs.com:

Electrons have a negative charge and are repelled by the negative terminal.

(“Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…so what?”, I thought.)

Electrons are attracted towards the positive terminal because negative electrons are…

(drumroll please…)

ATTRACTED BY THE POSITIVE! 

What?!!!!   I re-read the words, once, twice, three times. Surely this was a joke.  I ran to get my glasses to make sure I was reading it correctly.

Electrons are negative and repelled by negativity. Electrons are attracted towards the positive terminal because negative electrons are attracted to the positive!

Holy Moly!!!!   Suddenly I understood the reason why my positivity journey was being derailed over and over again.

I was going about this whole positivity thing the wrong way.  I was spending way too much time fighting negativity with anger, frustration, and irritation when I should have been using the power of my own positivity to acknowledge negativity exists, to embrace it, connect with it and let it absorb all of my positive energy.  Just like a flashlight battery.

Negativity is attracted to Positivity! Positivity embraces it, absorbs it and uses it to affect change. In you, in me, in the world!

That’s what negativity wants…to embrace the positive…and when we let it do that, our positivity takes over and suddenly our flashlight works.

So how is it going in my life since the great flashlight revelation?   Well, I am human, and imperfect, and there are still plenty of times I just want to just stuff the damn batteries into my life’s flashlight and be done with it.

But I am learning that when I stop doing battle with the negative aspects in my life and instead pause, take notes and learn from what they are trying to tell me, my positivity just takes over.  The flashlight of my life is revealing blessing after blessing.   It’s those things I’m focused on now.   I’m learning to “partner with negativity” and keep it in my “positivity toolkit” as a reminder of all positivity wants me to be, can be and who I am! 

Maybe it will work for you to.  Oh, in case you are wondering, flashlights reveal a whole other world under our stoves- HA HA!!!…but alas, that’s a story I will leave to tell another day.

On this journey together, one positive (and negative) step at a time!

PositivelyAnne (positivelyanne.com and instagram #positivelyanne)

Thank you for reading and I hope you will not only Like, but Follow my blog.  I look forward to our positive journey together!