CHAPTER 36

The Poppycock of
Positive Thinking

 

   After my past marriages crashed due to their Kami-kaze courses, I began observing the various doors through which I entered my Chamber of Self-Delusion. I saw a great portion of it was built upon my loyalty to Positive Thinking… & romantic illusions.

   My aversion to dwelling on Self Pity Lane blinded me to plant myself so deeply in the sunshine trench of Anything Can Work Out Happy IF I Believe EnoughIF I don't let anything get me down!

   What a setup for falling flat on my ego-ass when that anything involved one who did not share the same commitment.

   By wearing my happy-go-fucky blinders that only let me see my side of the setup and thinking I was the stronger one — Heck! Look how I survived my kidhood! — caused me to think I was alone responsible for making our relationship work.

   Unfortunately, I retained positive thinking as my guide, which led me directly toward falling into an abyss of my own design. By denying myself knowledge of the whole panorama of who I was marrying, his reasons for I-Do-ing and by not having witnessed a family marriage-in-action, I did not see it as a two person venture.

When we were not sharing dreams
we became dueling schemes.

   Pollyanna became my marriage counselor and together we created as harmful a Tunnel Vision as Negative Nellie ever could. I felt it was honorable to fall in love with another's potential — not with what they chose to be when we met.

   I saw the potential saint in the sinner. I saw what I wanted to see. Ergo! I married my version of their potential — not their reality.

   I figured if I painted my portion of our life with lotsa love it had to become his ultimate vision.

   Hey! — I assumed — isn't everyone's goal to be happy?

   More poppycock!

   I ignored the fact that everyone paints their own wagon per their own specifications — a basic formula for a clash, because we not only paint with clashing palettes, colors and tools but with opposing visions, energies and goals.

   From my confined perspective in the false comfort of my Positivity Trench, I fantasized that all gloomy people wanted to be sunny people.

   Wrong! Very wrong.

   My stubborn loyalty to positivity caused me to believe my optimism would be infectious without realizing that another's negativism was a potent immunization... and infectious virus unto my system.

   The more I saw the craziness of my crusade, the faster I sprinted toward my current concept of Harmonium.

   It's stationed at the center point between positive and negative thinking where reality clarifies. Where I neither think the worst of a person, nor see only the best. It's where I simply see things as they are minus the distortion that my self-delusion can cause.

   Where I can focus on life as is rather than how my rose colored glasses want life and others to look.

   Harmonium has a very calming effect. It destresses the unwanted surprise parties that occur when reality pulverizes our illusions.

   When we partner with another due to our seeing them through fantasy focus, the other is unaware that we have not married them, but our illusion of them.

   Ergo! They see no reason to hide who they really are.

   Double Ergo! Let the universal chant begin: I don't know WHO he is — he's sure not the guy I married!

   But he is.

   Harmonium has works for me now in nearly every area of my life wherein the extremities of emotion formerly misled me.

   I no longer let setups that involve others to either overly depress or elate me.

BUSINESS EXAMPLE:

A major hotel chain was one of my clients when I had my creative agency in Toronto. The manager liked my work so much, he offered me a super retainer to use my services exclusively. Even though I couldn't have any other clients, it was a very tempting financial offer if I saw only what I wanted to see, like a steady income from a client who was very pro-me.

   If that's all I saw, I'd have jumped on it.

   When I woke up to see the whole picture, I saw there are no guarantees in life, from a supportive manager staying at his job, to the hotel going belly-up. I saw the best and the worst and the in-between of what was possible.

   I asked my Soular Self: By going through a slow spell in business, would I be jumping because I believed in me, or because I was afraid I might not have another client?

   Would I be jumping from courage? Or fear?

   Instead, I jumped into my good ol' handy dandy hot air balloon. I saw the best and worst in both options. I freed myself to make a calm decision based on what me and my GUT Buddy wanted. I rejected the offer when I realized the Fear Fleas would have been the sole cause for my giving up the independence I relished — and still do.

   It worked out fine. I kept the hotel as a client and gained many more clients that year.

FRIEND EXAMPLE:

During the past several years I experienced my need for Harmonium in choosing close girl friends.

   In reflection, I realized that as soon as I felt close, I'd call them the sister I never had. If they initially seemed warm and friendly and we shared some interests, I took them into my heart, encouraged their careers and disastrously saw only the best.

   Naturally, when a few of them turned sarcastic or if I discovered they were bitching behind my back, I deafened myself from hearing the truth of what motivated their ire.

   By wanting them to be the wonderful sister I dreamed of having, I denied that they were back stage bitches. I set myself up for being devastated by not reading all the clues they openly gave me from the very beginning.

   I viewed every slur they aimed at me, or someone not present, as just an isolated incident. Or worse, as something I just imagined.

   If I learned of a lie they spread about me, I labeled it as impossible.

   When a woman\sister whose career I launched knew I was in a financial slump called to gush on and on about her successes, and then asked me to go shopping with her when she well knew I couldn't afford it, I refused to see how it perfectly fit into her early bitch blows.

   I was angry with me, not her. I felt: How dare you, Ms. Reality, mess with my dream of who I want her to be. She was just too busy to care. Yes? Huh? Of course!

   When those few then-friends knew I wouldn't join their gossip group nor listen to them slander others, I later understood it was then that they elected me as their new target.

   At first it was very painful and confusing. Then enlightening.

   Though I didn't want to believe what I had known all along about their sport, the magnitude of this milestone made it impossible for me to deny the foolishness of what my only seeing the best in others had gotten me into.

   Aha! Time for Harmonium!

   In that venue, I saw that they never lied to me about their love for juicy dirt. I had just refused to add it to my image of them. I thought if I ignored it, then it wouldn't exist.

   How self-deluding could I get?

   No matter how they stabbed me, I realized I couldn't get mad, since mad comes only from me kicking myself for my own blindness. I'd be the only one I'd be hurting.

   And revenge was out of the question or I'd be doing what I didn't like in others. Who would it help?

   My solution was to Look, Learn and Let Go of it all.

   If other people believed their fiction or not — so be it.

   People believe what they want to believe regardless of Truth.

   Trying to squelch giddy gossip is as futile as trying to keep creamed corn in the middle of an empty plate. You can't. No matter how you struggle to organize it, the corn oozes out somewhere.

   In fact, I inwardly thanked them.

   If they hadn't thrown such an undeniable waker-upper into my path, I might never have seen the foolishness of my sister selection process. Nor, how I had transferred my Tunnel Vision from ex-husbands onto girlfriends.

   Now how do I now select friends?

   Simple.

   I give myself time to know them. Time to see the whole picture. Being neither cold and cynical nor instantly warm and trusting. And if there are minor traits I don't like in them, so what? I sure don't have an exclusive on perfection.

   But if they truly are bitches, that's okay too. I don't have to be friends with the world. I don't have to like everyone, just as I don't need everyone to like me.

   Needless to say, the quantity of my close friends has now declined, but the quality has escalated in the people close to me and in the reality of what I know to be so in the other. I learned to probe the whole package.

PERSONAL EXAMPLE:

   One down morning, my emotional period turned to an exclamation point. I looked in the mirror and yelled YUUUCK! Even though I was dressed and looked OK as usual, I pulled back to tell myself off.

   “OK, you know the messes you've gotten yourself into by only seeing the best in others. Can't you see you're making yourself miserable by only seeing the worst in YOU right now? Look in the mirror. The only thing different than usual is your attitude. And that's OK. It just one of those days.

    So! Don't let it cramp your outer self and direct your attitude. Pop some Pamprin, pamper your funny bones and dump the guilt of expecting 'Bubbly' to be your everyday sub-title.”

   Harmonium has become my natural tranquilizer for the stress I once afflicted upon myself. As well as my natural No-Doz to minimize surprise parties of the unhappy kind.

   Roller coasters may be fun to physically ride, but not emotionally when our denial of What-Is has blindly given the control lever for our life over to others, and to our illusions.

   When riding a powerless track into a self-blinding tunnel vision, derailing is inevitable.

BOTTOM LINE:

Positive thinking only works when it’s personal… not when it’s delusional. Or means changing others from who they are.

  • You can’t positive think a jerk into a listening, romantic sweetie.

  • You can’t positive think a sports couch potato into an adoring partner who focuses on you alone.

  • You can’t positive think a person who lives for travel and non-committedness into a stay at home spouse.

  • You can’t positive think anyone into who or what they are not.

  • You can’t positive think a winning lottery ticket into your hand if it’s not in your destiny plan.

   We can only think positivity into our attitudes… and I sense that is the best way to make everything sunnier… but what do I know?

   It’s just being me thinking in my own personal positive fashion.

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn