I have been thinking about ‘behaviour’ for some time now. I believe that it is just a manifestation of ‘our purpose, our intentions, beliefs, values, opinions, perspectives’ that get shaped from our learning from our past experiences and from our hopes and expectations from our future. ‘Our actions, our words, our expressions form our behaviours.
Last night, my thoughts around ‘behaviour’ resurfaced when I read an article on ‘Toxic Positivity’. The link to this article was posted by a friend who seemed to be deeply troubled by everything that it happening - the discrimination of minorities, the dire state of migrant workers and the sorry state of the daily wage earners. The article spoke about how people are feigning positivity through their Instagram photos, Facebook posts and other social media - while in reality they are all messed up. In simple words they are stressed out and unhappy.
In the beginning of the lockdown period, I was feeling bitter and unhappy about many things. I was troubled by how unjust our society was...how unfair some of the people I knew were. I was in the ‘blame everyone’ mode. I blamed China for not acting with responsibility. I blamed the affluent class for being unfair. I blamed our government for not coming up with a sound lockdown plan. I feared the worst of the worst to happen. While I was experiencing this negativity, I was urged by many to be positive and to be thankful for everything I had. If at that point I had resorted to putting up happy pictures on social media - I would be displaying a false positivity which according to this article is ‘Toxic Positivity’. I am glad I didn’t.
What I decided to do instead was to delve deeper into my negative feelings - understand their root cause and realistically analyse what was in my hands...what could I do in such a situation? What I learnt was that I had choices - I had a choice to remain stuck in my fears and my negativity and spread negativity all around me or work toward doing something about it in a positive way. It dawned to me that I can start with myself. I realized that I needed to do some inner work. ‘Books’ came to my rescue here and they helped me sort out my feelings, reflect on my values and belief systems and check whether my actions were in alignment with my feelings, my thoughts and with what I wanted. This is yet work in progress as with each passing day, I learn something new about myself.
This exercise helped me shift myself from the ‘problem mode’ to a ‘solution focus.’ I am focusing on what I can do.... Once this shift occurred, I started seeing positive things all around me. I started seeing more and more positive actions all around me - So when a news report stated that childline received 92,000 calls over the past week, I felt happy that we have an initiative like childline for people to seek help from. I felt thankful that we have many good samaritans who are out there working hard providing food and ration - everybody doing their bit - It is rightly said that your state of mind governs what you see. This shift brought in more positivity in me...through my writings and through my actions at home.
Thus it is an individual choice whether to wear the mask of toxic positivity or whether to face one’s feelings and trust the universe. I choose to be positive - do you?
Originally published on Facebook on April 11, 2020
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