Defending Positivity

 

“I don’t care to be another mouth piece sprouting negative propaganda and being otherwise unproductive. I want to continually learn and find ways to add value and bring some Pizazz to my game – so I can enrich my life experiences and the life experiences of others. Justice is important to me and the spirit of cooperation, which fuels success, can manifest that vision. I want to surround myself with positive strategists.”

Natasha Stone

Positive Thinking is defined in the following terms by the English Oxford Dictionary:

Psychology

“The practice or result of concentrating one’s mind affirmatively on the good and constructive aspects of a matter so as to eliminate negative or destructive attitudes and emotions.”

Concentrating one’s mind affirmatively on matters is significantly harder to practice when we are faced with situations which we regard as tragedies, misfortunes, or unfortunate catastrophes.

I believe that we eventually find ourselves organically driven to a point where we become quite frustrated with how we are feeling about unfortunate events and express a desire to heal and move on. Without this feeling of frustration we would be stuck, repeating the same situations, or numbing ourselves through distractions. 

Feeling defeated or like a failure eats away at one’s spirit and is a gateway to manifesting toxic distractions. In Gestalt Therapy, Fritz Perls the father of Gestalt identified and referred to this ugly feeling as ‘unfinished business’.

I am sharing with you what is known as the Gestalt Prayer. It is not a prayer in the traditional sense of praying to a higher power or spiritual entity like God but more or less it is a very powerful statement that was created by the founder of Gestalt. I specifically find it beneficial to reflect or meditate on this statement when I am dealing with insoluble problems. 

I endorse the principles underlying the Gestalt Prayer and think it is worthy of consideration to anyone who may perhaps need to consider disengaging or reducing harmful or unfulfilling interactions with others.

The Gestalt Prayer

I do my thing and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I,

and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.

If not, it can’t be helped.

(Fritz Perls, “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim”, 1969)

If you are interested in reading or learning more about Gestalt Therapy then I recommend you read;

“Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality”. Authors: Fritz (Frederick) Perls, Paul Goodman and Ralph Hefferline.

Sometimes events happen to us which we didn’t desire, ask for, or invite. There is not much we can do about things we cannot control because if we don’t or can’t accept that something happened outside of our control then we can drive ourselves and others to madness as we try to figure out elements to an event which actually hold no rhyme or reason at that particular time. Death is an example of something we cannot control – we can prolong death but we can’t stop it from happening.

In a situation which is outside of our control then worrying about it won’t make it go away. We can only stop worrying the moment when we decide that we are sufficiently frustrated and no longer desire to continue tormenting ourselves worrying about matters which we are unable to control. This is what I feel is a good example of a deeper application and understanding of defending the notion of positivity when the situation is anything but positive.