Why am I always so positive … truth is I’m not!
If you’ve ever felt like you’re expected to be positive all the time, you’re not alone. I’m often asked how I maintain such a positive outlook, but the simple truth is … I don’t. I have my share of bad days, setbacks, and frustrations, but through it all, I’ve discovered a way to see past the struggle, find the lesson in the pain and see that nugget of gold. It’s a mindset that’s changed my entire life.
Mindset
Your mindset influences every single area of your life, and in my case, this includes creativity. Less face it .. s**t happens! When it does, if I’m negative then my creativity suffers, however if I understand what went wrong and learn from it, then that’s a positive … a painful and sometimes expensive positive, but a positive, nevertheless.
Did you know that our conscious (outer world) actions follow our sub-conscious (inner world) beliefs.
For example: if we believe we’re not creative, we won’t create, if we believe we’re not good at anything, then anything we do we’ll think is crap, so we won’t try new things!
Our minds are like a computer, we’ve been programmed (society, culture, nurture) to essentially do what we do, to think how we think, to act how we act, to choose how we choose.
Most of our lives are run by our subconscious programming, we don’t even know half the time why we do what we do! It’s kind of like we’re running on autopilot. 95% of our brain activity is subconscious, these include habits and patterns of behaviour, automatic body functions, creativity, emotions, personality, beliefs and values.
This is all interesting stuff, but what does it have to do with being positive? The simple answer is …. everything.
Pre-programmed
It’s all about patterns of behaviour, the first time you try something it’s new and unless you’re very lucky, you’ll suck at it – accept this and build up a resilience, don’t be afraid to ‘fail’.
Let’s look at that word ‘fail’ .. it’s a horrible word that immediately puts a downer on things. How many times in your life have you been told that you’re a failure? How did that make you feel .. if you’re like me the answer is loads and it makes you feel worthless.
Let’s clear a few things up … People do not ‘fail’, machines fail, people just don’t get the expected outcome. It’s not a ‘failure’ you’ve just found a way of not being able to do something – Thomas Edison’s famous quote of ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ – is so freakin’ true and something we should all try and embrace – it’s called ‘lessons learned’.
The problem is that we’ve been programmed from a young age to feel like a failure if we don’t succeed at something and our brain actively looks for ways to reinforce this belief.
Learning can be hard, trying new things out is hard (and sometimes scary), getting things wrong sucks .. but so, what – accept it, move on and try another way .. and just remember even if you fall flat on your face, you’ll still moving forward!
If you can think this way, it starts to unwind the years of ‘failure’ programming, and over time you move to more ‘successful’ programming practices. This idea of ‘failure’ is deeply connected to our daily habits, which are the building blocks of our mindset.
Which …. and here’s the great thing, we can all do! Every single one of us can change our negative, unproductive programmed habits, to better, positive and more productive ‘programmed habits’ – but it’ll only work if you catch yourself, if you want to change and if you put the work in to change.
Decisions, decisions
To flip this around let’s look at the habit curve. There are two types of habits in this world:
• Positive – those moving you forward in life.
• Negative – those stopping you from moving forward in life.
Both start off with small decisions that are driven by your thoughts – the average adult makes around 35,000 conscious decisions each day!
What time should I wake up, what should I have for breakfast, shall I wash my hair (although I may skip that one) .. the list goes on, and on, and on…
Each tiny decision has certain consequences with it that are both good and bad. Most positive decisions offer no immediate gratification or upside. Whereas most negative decisions offer immediate gratification.
For example:
Positive decision – I’m going to read all the instructions before I start using my new ChainSaw. This will take up time at first and it will mean that I cannot start creating straight away, which is the tough part. Choosing this decision makes my life a little bit more tough at the start.
Negative decision – I’m NOT going to read all the instructions, I’ve read the first one, how hard can it be! Saves you all that time at first, you get to go straight in with the creative, fun part of chopping stuff up with a ChainSaw …. woo hoo.
The downside is that I’m likely to lose a body part … but the positive is that it’ll be done in a very creative manner … see turn that frown upside down … or maybe not in this case!
It’s easier to choose the negative decisions in the moment. This goes for everything in life, should I eat a burger or a salad, should I go to the gym or skip the gym, you can see how easy it is to pick the negative decisions.
Thing is, at first you won’t even really notice any positive or negatives from these decisions.
Take using resin as an example .. you’ve made your form, you have £50 worth of Olive wood in place so you crack on with the resin .. the fun bit .. without reading/following the instructions, you pour two parts together of any amount, stir for a short while and then pour/scrape it into form .. it all looks good and nothing looks like it’s gone wrong .. job’s a good ‘un.
24 hours later, it’s still not cured. You go back to the instructions, skipping past the how-to part, to the length of cure part, it should be cured by now!
You decide this resin is rubbish, you contact the Supplier to complain, they offer to help with advice on techniques … you decide you can’t do resin, you’re rubbish, a failure, your Dad was right when he told you off when you were 5 years old, you’ll never be good at anything! and (cue Wizard of Oz music) .. follow the negative road, follow the negative road ..follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the negative road!
Equally, you could be on the positive road, you could have read the instructions, followed them to the letter, not just the ones on the box but all of the instructions on the website too, you really did your research!
You would have measured correctly, mixed correctly, have the temperature perfect, poured like a resin pro – 24 hours later you have the best resin and wood project on the planet! You are a genius, you’re amazing at wood/resin, everyone loves your projects, maybe you could start a wood/resin business, 5 years later it’s outperforming Amethyst Tiger Designs that total wood/resin legend!
All because of one tiny decision at the start, which then positively impacted the rest of your wood/resin journey.
The choice has always been yours
Will everything go perfectly for you for the rest of your time on earth, b****cks will it, but even when things go wrong, when things seem to be not going your way, you still have the power to choose great decisions that will keep you on that positive road.
Our brains are designed to keep us safe, to keep us from doing anything different, anything that might take us towards uncertainty or perceived danger.
These days, most of the time, the danger isn’t real. We’re not being chased down the street by a Sabretooth Tiger, we’re considering creating something using some wood and resin, or trying a new technique, or launching a new product – we’re not going to get eaten!
We might struggle, we might have setbacks (or as we like to call them lessons) along the way, the worst-case scenario when you think about it really isn’t that bad – for most people it’s not normally life or death.
If you are experiencing negative thoughts, feelings and emotions when it comes to doing things in your life these are signs that something needs to change.
Habits come first, change your habits … change your life. The habits you do, create the patterns and programming for your behaviours, which then reinforces the thoughts you think.
There is never ‘a right time’ .. as Nike say … just do it or as I say JFDI .. create the habits you need to program your brain to believe that you can do it and before you know it you’ll be doing it!
Every journey starts with a single step. You are not your thoughts, and they don’t have to define you. The moment you start making new, positive decisions, one after the other, you begin to change your habits, your programming, and ultimately, your life. The power to do it is already within you … all you need to do is go grab it!
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