Serious How much of a choice is it when it comes to being positive?

[User Anon 1848]

I recently heard the phrase "being positive is a choice" and while I don't think it's that simple it did get me wondering about how much control one can have over their outlook and attitude in life. Can the thoughts you choose to focus on truly overcome negative personalities or life experiences that perhaps molded you that way? Are there other ways to become a genuinely positive person?

Personally I can fake a positive attitude when needed, such as when interviewing for a job but it's hard for me to be sincerely upbeat and positive in general, even when I try to think about how good I have it compared to a lot of people in this world. I believe that you can make yourself feel better through exercise, being productive and helping others too but ultimately I'm not sure how much control you have over your attitude as a single person. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. This seems like a pretty positive community after all.

 

[Noblejanobii]

Being positive is a choice, I believe, but it's never an easy one. It's not like flipping a light switch. Sure you can fake positivity. That is a light switch. But true genuine positivity is like a fire. It takes a while to get it going. At least, in my experience it did.

When I was younger I was quite naive and positive. I was constantly happy and never had a care in the world. Then depression struck in high school for many reasons I won't go into. The point is, I was shook and wallowing in my own self pity for years. It turned me bitter and irritable. I wasn't myself and once I realized it, I decided I didn't want to fake happiness anymore. I wanted to actually be happy. So in college I started to do more things that made me happy. I forced myself to think positively. If I ever had a bad thought, I'd follow it up quickly with a happier thought. "She looks prettier than I do." followed by "but my mascara looks on point today". Stuff like that. It was very hard at first. But after almost two years of training myself, the positivity comes naturally. Sure, I have relapses. Everyone has their moments of self doubt and bad days. But I always push myself to think optimistically. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow will be different. You've gotten through today, so it's time to put your chin up and face tomorrow.

So yes, positivity is a choice, but it's a hard one. Some, like myself, are more easily inclined to it. But others may not take to it as easily. You have to train yourself constantly to think optimistically and positively. Find the good in every person you can, even if you hate them. This is still very hard for me to this day, but even something as simple as "we both like les miserables" can make it easier to talk and think positively of someone. Keep in mind that one positive thing, and don't let their negative aspects tear it away. It gets really hard with some people, and unfortunately, there are people that exist that there is no redeeming, but don't dwell on them. Surround yourself with positive and uplifting people. Train yourself. One thing I used to do was tweet something positive every day. By writing it down, it made it a lot easier to think and believe it. Stuff like that was and is a huge help.

So yeah, it took a while, but these are some of the things I did to overcome my negative experiences and grow to become a genuinely positive person when I thought I had lost that aspect of myself.

 

[juliorain]

It's very difficult for me to be a pessimist. It's definitely the opposite case for me. I have to choose to be negative/pessimistic and usually, it is because I have some sort of gaslighting or bullying to approach someone or something as a negative. I get the "you're a young soul from friends" all the time, I am definitely open-minded and try to approach things rationally (though I'm just a wild card most of the time). Though as a direct consequence, as I hold my naivety high, I've noticed it opens up for those who are negative. Just ignore the haters. Not everyone will see eye to eye, and honestly, I don't see my naivety as a sign of weakness, I see it as a sign of strength being able to stay open-minded despite the all the shit life slings in my face. Depression happened to me, sometimes I just want to quit. Sometimes I tell myself nothing is worth anything in the end, but I also persevered. Please do not say I'm not being realistic; positivity isn't any less realistic as negativity. I'm intelligent enough to distinguish between what is and what isn't a pipe dream, where my fiery ambition can or can't take me. It's all about the personal discovery that shapes your worldview. If you were wrong, so be it; if you made a mistake; there isn't anything worth trying to mull over it. I admit that this done to either extreme can be bad, but finding that balance will only come with personal experience!

 

[noa]

Being happy and/or mentally healthy is not a choice, being positive is definitely a choice.
As someone with depression and horrible anxiety, there's only so much I can do. But, I find it very easier to cope with life if I force myself to have a positive attitude, even if my brain attempts to reject it. My brain will be like "everything is terrible and i'm going to fail" and i keep telling myself "what if things get better? I should keep looking to the future" even if my brain isn't capable of believing what i'm telling myself, it's sure as hell better than just continuing to listen to my negative thoughts and spiraling further into anxiety.
I absolutely don't think you can "just be happy" or overcome your own depression/anxiety with thoughts alone, but i believe keeping positive thoughts in your mind and surrounding yourself with positive people/hobbies/media is really beneficial to your mental health.

 

[Megan]

Negative people tend to look backwards to the past. They can only see the negatives and mistakes they made. That drags them down. It also doesn't help that humans are mentally tuned to perceive bad experiences way more intense than good ones. It's part of the survival instincs.

Positive people tend to look into the future. They don't care for what happened in the past. They only see the potential that lies in the future. If they failed in the past, then they don't mind, knowing perfectly well, that they won't make the same mistakes again.

In reality only few people tend to be in one of the two groups. Most of them constantly move from one to the other. Life in that regard comes down to you noticing when you fall too deep into one of the two directions. You just need to drag yourself out of it. To accomplish this it always comes down to training mind and body, as well as being conscious about the environment you find yourself in (places, people, time, etc.).

 

[Sawsbuck]

Honestly I hate that, like I'm a much more positive person now but last year everybody kept telling me to force myself to be positive and I just couldn't do it
Got banned from quite a few places last year between February and June because I was too real about myself not even pretending that I was happy

 

[Aslan]

Being happy and/or mentally healthy is not a choice, being positive is definitely a choice.
As someone with depression and horrible anxiety, there's only so much I can do. But, I find it very easier to cope with life if I force myself to have a positive attitude, even if my brain attempts to reject it. My brain will be like "everything is terrible and i'm going to fail" and i keep telling myself "what if things get better? I should keep looking to the future" even if my brain isn't capable of believing what i'm telling myself, it's sure as hell better than just continuing to listen to my negative thoughts and spiraling further into anxiety.
I absolutely don't think you can "just be happy" or overcome your own depression/anxiety with thoughts alone, but i believe keeping positive thoughts in your mind and surrounding yourself with positive people/hobbies/media is really beneficial to your mental health.

I couldn't have put it any better than this! I think whilst it is hard to exhibit positivity during periods of adversity, it is a choice that people are capable of making. Having had issues with depression / anxiety also, it is not a choice to just overcome such conditions and be happy but we can make the choice to try welcome positivity and confront our negative, self-destructive behaviour. Whilst intrusive thoughts have made it hard to be positive with my brain latching onto negative self-talk, catastrophising and other unhealthy thoughts - I've actively made the choice to try and be positive but realistic about how long it will take for me to break out of these habits, recover and be content. I think when confronted by setbacks we definitely have a choice of how we want to approach them. Whilst issues like depression can make us feel like it is worthless to persist or that the scale of the setback is too great - it has been helpful for me to be positive and have hope that these issues will resolve with enough commitment or to think of setbacks as learning experiences in general, rather than an attack on my worth etc. I think being positive has helped a lot with resilience and just finding the will to keep going when it becomes incredibly hard.

A positive outlook on how difficult situations will go has helped keep me calmer and happier. It has also allowed me to appreciate things that I would have otherwise not noticed if I was so focused on everything that was going wrong - from nice conversations with friends, good meals etc. Those little things make life easier too. Some people think it is naive to actively try to be positive but I think if being positive makes living more enjoyable then there isn't much harm to it. Maybe things won't work out as much as you hope for but that's OK, life goes on and I like to think that there will always be ways in which it eventually gets better. Being positive is definitely a choice, but of course it is unrealistic to expect a person to be positive all the time. I think however trying to work towards being positive has helped me a lot though and I'm glad I've tried to stick with it for so long. Sorry if I didn't word this too clearly, I tried my best!

 

[Her]

Positive thinking doesn't even have to be about seeking a happy state - it just has to be about taking the steps to reach an emotional plane more healthy than where you are now. One doesn't have to reach high to get out of the lows, a middle ground that keeps you out of damaging mindsets is just as suitable sometimes. It can be as simple as refusing to go to bed angry or sad, something I personally do to help maintain good mental and sleep habits. If I go to sleep feeling gross, it will just build inside me and continue to drain me while sleeping and after waking up. Whereas if I take the time to at least reach an ambivalent plateau, I can ward off mostly avoidable feelings that would only bring me down.

 

[gimmepie]

I don't think forcing yourself to be positive is the same thing as being positive. You're essentially just lying to yourself and I fail to see how that's a healthy way of coping. I feel like it's certainly possible to acknowledge the positive even in a god awful situation, but I don't think you can just adopt a 100% positive mindset to try and stimmy negative emotions.

 

[Her]

I don't think forcing yourself to be positive is the same thing as being positive. You're essentially just lying to yourself and I fail to see how that's a healthy way of coping. I feel like it's certainly possible to acknowledge the positive even in a god awful situation, but I don't think you can just adopt a 100% positive mindset to try and stimmy negative emotions.

It's not, but for some people without an established support system (either professional or social, the later being an increasingly prohibitive cost depending on region, as we all know), falling back on the fakin' it 'til you make it mantra can be all that keeps their heads above water - even if it is consciously lying.

 

[gimmepie]

It's not, but for some people without an established support system (either professional or social, the later being an increasingly prohibitive cost depending on region, as we all know), falling back on the fakin' it 'til you make it mantra can be all that keeps their heads above water - even if it is consciously lying.

This is fair. It's better than nothing.

 

[pastelspectre]

i have depression and other mental illnesses that severely prevent me from being able to be fully mentally stable ever, plus i don't have a good support system at home currently so that affects me a lot. however i do still try to be positive, whether it be by telling myself positive things or venting to my friends for comfort.

once i get a therapist again (who knows how long that'll take, because my mom refuses to help me even a little bit with that part) i plan on telling them my issues and stuff and maybe they'll be able to teach me better coping mechanisms? i dunno. i'm just trying my best to get through this scary world and this bad situation i'm in.

 

[Taemin]

I think that being positive is a choice to an extent.

I struggle with depression, but I've also always been positive by nature, so even when I got really dark, sometimes I could think of even small things to make myself feel happy. I also think walking outside is very pretty, and enjoy clearing my head and thinking, and looking at nature. It keeps me going some days. I feel like my mind automatically tries to find the good in things, to compensate for the fact that I can get easily depressed. I often feel bad for people who's minds down work the same, or maybe they have zero support and etc. In that case I believe it would be harder to stay positive, even if by choice you're trying - past a point it does have to be innately in you, I think. For example, my mom by nature is a negative person, and says she has always automatically found the bad in a situation, so she was almost negative without a choice say in the matter.

To add onto that, even if someone is negative by nature, I always encourage people to try to find the good, or think of good things, even if it doesn't help automatically, it's a good practice. Some people tell me I'm too positive, but that's better than letting yourself become too dark, IMO??

TL;DR I think it's a choice to an extent, but I also believe that people have within them the gut feeling of positive or negative by default, and may have to try harder to grasp one or the other. Sometimes it's a harder fight for others to say positive, and you shouldn't blame them.

 

[Solez]

I think that positive thinking is a choice, yes, but it's also something akin to a habit: you can develop a knack for thinking in a positive or negative way, and the more of whichever one you do, the better at it you get. Like, if you expose yourself to a lot of negativity (sensationalist news, for example, or certain toxic people), you train your mind into thinking in that manner; on the other hand, if you expose yourself to more positive stories and people, it becomes easier to look at the bright side, I think. So maybe it's not the positive thinking that's the choice, but the situations you expose yourself to, that determine your thinking.

 

[User Anon 1848]

I think that positive thinking is a choice, yes, but it's also something akin to a habit: you can develop a knack for thinking in a positive or negative way, and the more of whichever one you do, the better at it you get. Like, if you expose yourself to a lot of negativity (sensationalist news, for example, or certain toxic people), you train your mind into thinking in that manner; on the other hand, if you expose yourself to more positive stories and people, it becomes easier to look at the bright side, I think. So maybe it's not the positive thinking that's the choice, but the situations you expose yourself to, that determine your thinking.

That's a very good point. Keeping up with current events can really bum you out. Luckily I found someone who was funny enough to filter news for me without making everything feel morbid all the time. The risk with that though is potentially being influenced by someone's political views just because you think they're charismatic and funny. I let that happen to me when I was younger and more suggestible.

Thanks for all of the responses guys. I'm definitely taking these on board and at the very least considering them.

 

[Solez]

Definitely - I think that keeping up with current affairs will give you more reasons to be unhappy and to doubt yourself, etc. So as you say, it's good to find someone who presents it in a more light-hearted fashion.

 

[Bellsprout]

It's a choice, but it's not always an easy choice. I think at the same time some people are just more prone to being negative and vice versa. Basically some people have to work harder to have a positive outlook than others. But there really is so many factors that impacts your outlook it's quite hard to say for sure.