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Positivity Reinvents Us – Mediated Positivity
Blind positivity is not really that positive. In fact, if there is any single overarching confusion about how positivity science works, it is in the mistaken belief that one should hold positive beliefs all the time, even when things are painful and challenging. This kind of positivity is related closely to the magical thinking that is promoted by trainers who psyche you up to walk on hot coals....
Positivity in Action- Positivity Training in Schools
I see a new professional track developing for me. Although I have only taught lessons on positive thinking a dozen times, I can imagine teaching these lessons a hundred more. Kids of all ages were as surprised as I was to learn that 95% of the 50-60,000 thoughts humans have each day were exactly the same as the day before and that 80% of those thoughts are negative. This is why it is so hard for...
Positivity in Action- The Positivity Club Mom
One of the most rewarding projects I have ever created began last year in the wake of the tragic deaths of two boys at the high school my kids attend. They were on a school outing at the Oregon coast when a wave came up and sucked them into the ocean. Several others were there too, helpless to save their friends who perished in front of their eyes. It is a jarring image to consider even several...
Positivity Bracelets
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” -Buddha
There is no more powerful or challenging change we can make in our lives than looking at how we think. The human mind generates hundreds of thousands of thoughts every day and, for most people, the majority of them are negative. Negative thought patterns are so repetitive and...
Positivity Renewed
It has been four years since I began my Positivity Quest in Hawaii. Back here for a quick week, staying with my family who is much grown up over the last several years, has given me pause to reflect on how this work of positivity has transformed me and my life.
First, I think it is important to reflect on the inner work of positivity that began with a prolonged and, at times, desperate attempt to...
Positivity= Compassion
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama
The ultimate test of my ability to be positive is with one of the most negative people in my life: my father. I have kept my distance from this relationship for most of my life because the reflection has been generally too much to bear. Seeing in him what I can’t bear in myself only...
Positivity Reinvents Us
Today I begin my third edition of my positivity quest blog with a renewed commitment to daily writing as a vehicle for my awakening. This is the third new year that I have begun the year by committing my life to positivity. Having lost touch with the daily practice of writing as I learn in this last year has made me long to find my writing voice again in a way that will guide me to putting the...
The Nature of Positivity
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens� because only then does one feel that all is as it should be� amidst the simple beauty of nature. ” ~ Anne Frank
I love when science proves a really useful theory. The new science of positivitywhich focuses on mental health instead of mental illness has just...
Writing the Positivity Book
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” -William James
I am finally ready to take the five hundred pages of this positivity quest and turn it into a book. The weight of all this thinking is impressive in my hands and I know that my life is on an entirely new trajectory for having done it. I am coming to the close of my second...
Positivity Again: Feeling Loveable
When I believe that I am unlovable, the world closes in. This is true for all of us. The only real opening any of us can work towards, pray for and believe in is our own inherent loveablity. For this we need only practice being loving. Most difficult, especially when things are not working is to love ourselves. I have been praying and chanting and suffering these last days, waking up anxious,...
Dedicated to Love and Positivity
“Patience and persistence have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” -John Quincy Adams
Most of the time when we begin a project, we have no real idea of where it is going to take us or if we will ever truly get across the finish line that we set at the beginning. So it...
Positivity Again: Good Beginnings
“The best things in life are nearest.
Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes,
Flowers at your feet, duties in your hand,
The path is right just before you.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
This is a good beginning to a positive day. It seems to only get easier to get spun out on what is broken and needs fixing, to our anticipations and expectations of what is to come, to the weight of what remains...
Positivity Again: Anchoring Gratitude
The first conscious thought I strive to have each day is a grateful one.
Lately I am awake at least a couple of times – in and out of weird, anxious dreams. So it is not unusual that my first thoughts are anxious too. It is amazing how fast a couple of errant anxious ideas can spiral down into low grade rumination. Reminding myself through mediation to first create a grateful moment changes...
Positivity Again: Breaking Up
Last night I got a text from my teenaged daughter’s ex-boyfriend. I like him so much, and am mourning her recent break-up with him. I saw it coming… as the balance of attraction and desire became lopsided, I knew that it was unlikely with their limited capacity to understand and express how things fell out of mutuality, that they would find their way back to each other. Once the scales tip, small...
Positivity Again: Letting Go
I have a very old Rhodesian Ridgeback for a companion. She is 12-years-old and can still break out on an impressive run when we walk. But when she sleeps, she shudders and her breathing is raggedy. Ridgebacks are smart- some books suggest that they are as smart as a four-year-old child. I know that Coco knows things and that her anxious looks as I walk out the door without her are real. I have...
Positivity Again: Framing Memories
I have spent the weekend putting old photos in frames. Some of the photos are images of people I have never met, pictures that I found while cleaning out my dad’s apartment after his death. There are images of him as a baby being bathed by his mother in 1933, and as a toddler and as a young boy riding a bike. I see a resemblance to my own son as I pick and choose among the moments of his life long...
Day 31: Positivity in Action
“I believe, in some ways, agitating for social change is the most positive form of thinking there is. In order to do so, we must believe that one person can make a difference, that our opinion is worth voicing, and that the world can become better — if we are willing to make an effort to shape it that way.” -Barbara Ehrenriech
Every now and again I get suggestions about topics for the...
Day 3: The Positivity Ratio
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes. ~William James
A positivity ratiois the number of positive events or thoughts you have compared with the number of negative ones. According to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson a positive event can be something as small as a feeling of gratitude or an attitude which is curious and wondering....
Positivity in Action: Kickstarter Launch!!!
“If you had just one more minute to get a positive thought, that could change everything.”
This is what I hear myself say at the end of our kickstarter videoas I watch the faces of some of my favorite teenagers flash on the screen. I am moved each and every time I see this video, which tells the story through the kids’ words of why they are spending their weekends moving concrete and gravel....
Positivity Again: Celebrating the Beginning
“So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.” -W. Clement Stone
Starting things is hard. It explains why so many great ideas go unrealized. To begin, you have to become comfortable with the discomfort of the unknown, to embrace the truth that even the best laid plans often don’t hold up to the uncertainty and chaos that...
Positivity Again: Finishing the Courtyard
I have been working on the completing the Positive Change courtyard at South Eugene High School for over 3 years now. Like the long- awaited ending of most things, the resources of time, money and people have run thin and I, like most everyone else, is ready to move on. Unexpectedly, I have had an offer from a small group of boys who have taken on building furniture for the courtyard as their...
Positivity Potential with Tracy Quantum
Take a quantum leap in your happiness and positivity potential with this weeks discussion with Tracy Quantum.He is a meditation coach and motivational speaker, and an authority on teaching individuals and businesses how to use the profound power of meditation to create a life filled with success, happiness, love and health. Listen as he shares his unique approach which begins with the truth that...
Positivity Quest- Learning to Help
“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.” -Gandhi
We are basically good. I trust this belief and try to live my life through this window of the world. All of my work on behalf of my beloved Positive Change Clubis my most recent training ground, and there are days when I lose sight of my mission. I question my sanity in the moments when it feels...
Positivity Again: Happy for Them
I think something is happening to me. This new attention to positivity is going in deeper than before- and I am able to feel grateful and generous at times that used to be taken over by anxiety. The other day, on my trip to see Rite Aid and Kroger, I stopped in CVS and saw a couple of my main natural competitors on the shelf.
At first, my old insecurities popped up, but then,all by itself, it was...
Positivity Reinvents Us: Moving Mountains
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” -Confucius
Life can easily become overwhelming. I have a knack for attracting more into a couple of hours than most people would consider in a couple of days. Today I got the physical evidence of how too much of a good thing is actually too much, but can also remain a good thing. As those of you who follow my positivity quest...
Positivity Reinvents Us: Appreciation Celebration
“Gratitude is the heart’s memory.” -French proverb
A couple of weeks ago when I was in a training at the Ceres Project they told us that they spend 25% of their time appreciating both what they have accomplished and the incredible amount of volunteer time, donations and good will that allowed it to happen. I was seriously struck by the 25% number and started to feel a little guilty about not being...
Positivity Again: Feeling Inside
I am building this renewed writing practice as an extension of my ongoing mediation focus on learning to deeply feel my body. Each morning I bridge the dream world with a guided meditation deep into the felt sense of living inside myself. Breath work is foundational in every meditative practice, because it is the one autonomic function that is also at our command. Just learning how to pay...
Positivity Again: Most Precious
I was in the courtyard yesterday after a long break. This is a space that I have been working on for close to three years now, transforming it into a welcoming, reflective space where kids can go and get a breath and remember themselves and their potential. The efforts were inspired by a series of tragic events, most specifically, the deaths of two students at the coast. They were swept into the...
Positivity Again: Still Dreaming
Traveling again. Moving through time zones across the country. I am in Baltimore at the historical Lord Baltimore hotel, which is currently under renovation. My room is one of the first to be renovated. It is beautifully appointed, but they didn’t account for the single digit temperatures when they were dealing with the old single pane windows. The bathroom is an ice box.
I am awake at 7:30...
Positivity Again: Making Mistakes
You have to have bad days, even bad weeks sometimes. You know the good ones in comparison to the bad ones. This is what I am reminding myself this week as things anticipated are not happening and things that I thought were fine are completely broken. Making mistakes in a product business is really costly and generally takes a significant effort to dig out of. It is almost always the smallest, most...
Positivity Again: Learning Courage
The Olympic coverage has to make you think about how we learn courage. Watching people throw themselves in the air for 3 or 4 spins to land perfectly on their feet is mind boggling when you consider what happened inside of them on the first day they decided they were going to learn how to do this trick. What is that special energy that opens us up to the unknown, the potential of serious injury...
Positivity Again: Second Life
I have been feeling the resurrection myth coming to life lately. Since my father’s passing, my relationship to him has completely transformed. There is a kindness and gentleness that has not been there in decades. I discovered a box of old photos in his home when I was cleaning it out that he had never shared with me from his childhood. It is easy to get lost in the black and white images of him...
Positivity Again- Best Friends
I spent most of my youth after my parents’ divorce trying to make a family to replace the broken, violent home from which I came. I didn’t just want friends, I wanted sisters to stand beside me and help me learn what unconditional love feels like. I longed for a best friend. I met Sarah when I was 21. Within a week of knowing each other I was driving her daughter in her car to a language camp that...
Positivity Quest: Affirmation 3
“If you wish for light, be ready to receive light.” -Rumi
Years ago, when I had just begun this journey of creating the life I had longed for, a teacher gave me this affirmation, which I have been holding ever since- “I am a joyful, grateful, excellent receiver.” At the beginning, I remember how awkward the words felt in my throat, how foreign the idea of being an active receiver was to me....
Positivity Quest In Action: A Positive Thinking Trend
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” -Buddha
It was about five months ago that I sat behind a table at our local high school recruiting kids to join the new Positive Charge club. Our mission was to design and landscape an interior courtyard at the school as a memorial to a pair of students who were lost in a tragic accident last year. These two boys were full of life and vibrant...
Positivity Reinvents Us: In Ashes
I came to celebrate my mother’s 75thBirthday. I was committed to not making it worse. I was just aiming for 5% better. The thing about letting go of the past is that you have to be willing to experience the emotions to release them. Anything else is a lie, a cover-up, a turning away. I came to let go of the past and be with my mother as she is. I wanted also to apologize for the disrespect and...
Positivity in Action: Writing the Book
It has become exceedingly clear that the only way I will ever make progress in turning my 500-plus pages of Positivity Quest blog into a book is to do it everyday, just like I wrote the blog. It must be like a new resolution that at least five days a week, something is adjusted to fit into the new manuscript.
Unfortunately, when you are looking at a mountain of paper it is hard to know where to...
Day 236: Miss Positivity Quest
“Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.” ~Robert Brault
I have been struggling with the big changes that are happening in my work. The idea of the change, which feels light years away is taking shape and bears little resemblance to the fantasy I imagined in my head, although it fulfills all the requirements that I set for the change. I didn’t figure in the...
Positivity Again: Living in the Body
Sometimes I can’t figure out how to create a positive relationship to what is happening in and around me. A young woman I know, who has been struggling with a disease they have no cure for, lays in a coma after a brutal procedure to stabilize her neck. Cancer metastasized in another young woman fighting for more time with her young kids. It is difficult, witnessing old age turning diseased and the...
Positivity Quest In Action: Year Three
“The future depends on what we do in the present.” ~ Gandhi
As I begin my third year of positivity quest, I am overcome with the success and changes that the discipline and practice of creating a positive relationship to life each and every day has harvested. I am getting more confident with my positivity and just like many of the books I have read suggested, I am witnessing how I am able to...
Day 63: Positivity in the Pain
“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.“ ~Rainer Maria Rilke
This is perhaps an oxymoron of a post. But what is coming clear to me is that feeling our emotions including, and maybe even especially, our painful feelings is actually a very positive thing. There is a rampant confusion between feeling our emotions and...
Positivity in Action: High-level Humanity
As I mentioned before, I have been taking positivity into the world. The volunteer project consuming most of my time this year has been at my child’s high school.
I love kids. They are so awake and honest and their affections or disappointment is real and immediate. Our group holds more than fifty kids, all of whom I adore. Many have been close with my children for many years. Watching kids grow...
Positivity Again: Living Into the Answer
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live...
Positivity Quest: 100 Days of Affirmations
About a month ago I got an interesting homework assignment from an energetic counselor that I work with. She asked me to make a set of 100 affirmation cards and to not only read them, but actually feel them every day. I had learned before that real change comes from what we fully experience as real. I spent days researching affirmations and then another day choosing and compiling the 100 that...
Positivity in Action- Sydney’s Bench
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay
Three years ago today it was a Wednesday afternoon when a beautiful girl named Sydney went into a closet and ended her life with her father’s gun. It was a particularly humiliating high school break up that...
Positivity in Action: Feel Loved
“The way to know life is to love many things.” – Vincent Van Gogh
It is safe to say that Valentines Day is a loaded gun. For as many people truly get to celebrate the love they share with their intimate relations, there are at least as many who struggle with feeling unloved and, worse still, unlovable. Our collective sense of being unlovable might well be the single most toxic belief our culture...
Positivity in Action: Family Reunions
I haven’t seen my brother for 25 years. We were both in our 20s then; young enough to believe that aging was something that happened to other people. Our faces were unlined and our family wounds still fresh enough to be leading us around without our knowledge. Our family wounds went deep. Our parents’ divorce happened when stigma existed behind the word. Their subsequent pain, the ways they dealt...
Positivity Reinvents Us- No More
The silence surrounding domestic violence is worse than how we treat sex in our culture. Indeed it is a reflection of how we treat sex in our culture because a lot of domestic violence includes sexual violence that is so common in so many families that it is no wonder that sexual violence persists in so many other spaces we live in. Actually the same could be said about violence in general, what...