Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Importance of Acknowledging Darkness

It is a blessing to have a positive outlook, if, and only if, coupled with that you are honest about the emotional state you are in. 

I am here to admit something, folks. I’m a positiveaholic. Admitting it is the first step, or so I’m told. In college I learned about something called the “Pollyanna Effect”. The Pollyanna effect, Based off the popular anime cartoon, The Story of Pollyanna, a Girl of Love, is the habit of taking the all occurrences in one’s life and spinning them into something positive. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful to be able to see the light in any situation, but never acknowledging darkness can be just as disastrous as an inability to see light.*

In an attempt to be more honest in my life and my work, I am going to share something with you: It has been a tough couple of months. A couple of months filled with confusion, relationship shifts, a car accident, family trauma and on top of that, trying to be a functioning and successful human. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve managed. 

Now in my life, I have, or at least have worked very hard to be, a positive person who brings light and love to the world. It is my belief that every soul has a different intention and I really believe mine is to bring the aforementioned light and love. Everything stems from there: every lesson, every vocation, every relationship. Including the difficult things I have to deal with. A lot of the problems I face are more difficult because I have built a life based upon love: so when the world meets me with a cruel situation, my first instinct is to turn it around and spin it into one of love. Sometimes I’m right, but sometimes it’s wildly contrived and wrong.

I am coming to understand, that this unyielding positive outlook isn’t always a good thing. It does a soul no good to pretend that the bad things you are experiencing aren’t actually happening. On top of making you feel crazy, you are unable to learn, which is our number one goal while in these physical bodies. If you can’t learn, then you can’t grow, which will ultimately inhibit you from being your best self and giving and receiving the purest forms of love. This is because when you close yourself off to what you deem to be negative emotions and situations, by default, this blockage carries over to the positive emotions and situations. So you are really only living a half life. Half lives should only exist in chemistry, and even then, it’s debatable. 

Even though I have been trying with all my might to love with the strength and fervor I know I am capable of, I haven’t been able to because I have not been allowing myself to feel the pain that I needed to feel. My new goal is to accept, acknowledge and deal with any and all emotions and situations in my life. Not to judge, deny or control, because these verbs always lead to trouble. I will let life’s unpleasant situations play out, I will acknowledge them, without dwelling on them, and learn from them. I will not forget what got me to the place where I felt that way. I will take the lesson of out it, and I will move on with the peace of mind that I don’t have to experience the same thing again if I make different choices, or, if I do end up in that situation, I’ll know how to deal with it more effectively. Then, I believe, I will experience real-life positivity. I will have a positive outlook with a foundation that makes sense, rather than something that is falsified because that’s how it’s “supposed” to be. 

I always want to be an optimist, but I think I will be a stronger optimist once I am able to accurately define how I feel and learn from it without having to shield myself or the world from my true emotional life. It will be honest optimism, not optimism masking pain, which is just bullshit. If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s another liar, so I am vowing to be more honest with myself and with you. 

Also, it took a lot of courage to write this down and now to share it, so I am proud of myself. This realization is a huge stride on my slow, yet steady, marathon to self actualization.

Thank you for reading. I hope you can support me on this journey, and know I support you on your path to self, wherever you may be. 

Sending you love and light,

Lolo <3

*I decided to bold/italicize the things that I really need to remember, and that might be helpful to you, also :-)

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