A few months ago, while I still had some reading material fresh on my mind, I spent a while with my long-time friends reminiscing about high school. A light bulb came on; suddenly I understood exactly what I had read about thought patterns forming either positive or negative pathways in the brain!
Now consider those pathways are the thought patterns in your brain; one is negative and one is positive.
I find myself thinking negatively more often than I think positively, and to get back to the conversation I had with my friends, I have found that it is affecting not only my day to day thoughts, but the memories I visit the most as well.
One of my friends told a story about how three of us got back at her ex boyfriend, and said that the image of me carrying out this act of revenge pretty well sums up how awesome our friendship is. She was so excited to share this memory with me, and I could not remember it. It took a lot of "Wait, which one was that again?" and "We did that?" and a lot of, "How do you not remember, you drove us there!" before I even began to remember, and even now the memory is fuzzy.
I love that story, and I hate that I had forgotten about it, especially when I remember such awful moments so clearly. I could tell you about the terrible, consuming guilt I had after realizing that my prom date had a different idea of what our date was than I did, more guilt for breaking off a friendship in seventh grade, or even go all the way back to when the play dough eater bit the center of my back in preschool because I was playing with the dough she wanted to eat and I had a huge bruise to show for it... They're endless. I could go on for hours about all the negative experiences that I remember so well.
So I asked a few other friends to tell me about an instance that they remember of me being a good friend (you know, so I can have something to pat my back for when I'm feeling down on myself). And the thing is, I didn't remember these stories either.
And to top it all off, I caught myself doing it again last night. I had had a particularly disappointing day, so my fiance put my feet in his lap, pulled my socks off, and gave me a foot massage. He even got out some lotion to do it, all without me asking! And when the massage was over, he nodded his head towards my nail polish collection and asked, "What color?". I was being pampered, and not ten minutes after the polish had dried, I was right back to complaining about my miserable day. "Stop focusing on the bad stuff; look," he picked my foot up off his lap to show me my newly painted toe nails.
He was right, I am so used to taking the negative route that I easily overlook the joys that are right in front of me.
It's a struggle that I've been dealing with for a long time, and it's something I will probably always be working on, but when my progress sinks in and I'm having an amazing day or week for no real reason, it's all worth it.
Now, I'm no expert. If you could benefit from some more well thought out ideas on this subject, an article I found helpful was How Positive Thinking Re-Wires Your Brain by Barrie Davenport. She gives a bit more background on the science there, and includes a few examples of various thought processes and action steps to work your way back to positivity. You might spend a few minutes clicking around the site too, it looks like they have some pretty great information.
Another suggestion is to read What Happy People Know by Dan Baker. Seriously, this book is amazing, and I have bought copies of it for multiple people. The stories he tells of his clients were incredible, some even made me cry. If you read this, I would love to hear what you think about it!
Have you had similar experiences with memories or negativity? Do you have any suggestions for positive thinking or encouraging words? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below! And, as always, thank you for coming by!
Jessica