A positive attitude is not a personality trait. It’s a decision you have to keep making.
Some people seem to carry it naturally. They listen to something inside them, an intuition, a gut feeling, and they trust it more than the loud voice of the conscious mind that keeps running the numbers. Others get there by a different road, through faith, meditation, devotion, nature, or whatever gives them an answer. The questions don’t really change from one person to the next. They all have the same underlying concerns. Who am I, what is this all for, what happens when… Nobody fully knows, and most of us spend a good chunk of our lives pretending we’re not bothered by that.
We all share the wanting to feel good, because most of the time we are not. The mind fills up with worries and fears, and we look for something to distract, suppress or fix it. We have whole industries dedicated to that. Entertainment. Alcohol. Tobacco. Sex. Gambling. Over time the unattended mind builds pressure. And pressure, when it isn’t handled, explodes.
That explosion usually looks like a revolution. We blow things up. Quit the job, change the look, change the diet, move to a different city, swear we’re a different person now, rebuild the whole personality in the hope of finally getting a different result. The old ways stopped working, so we throw them out and grab a new set of rules, beliefs and habits to take their place. And it works, for a while. The novelty buys us some peace. Then, slowly, the turmoil comes back and we feel the pressure again, because we changed everything except the part that was actually struggling.
Real change, though, is not a revolution. It is a surrender. It comes from acceptance. Acceptance of yourself. Acceptance of others. Acceptance of the universe. Acceptance of the unknown. We embrace everything as it is. The good, the bad and the ugly.
When you genuinely accept life, life gives it back to you. You notice that people start liking you more. Appreciating you more. Finding you more attractive, even. Your connections stop being negotiations and turn into partnerships, built on respect instead of leverage. And this applies to family, friendship, work and romantic endeavours.
Accepting doesn’t mean you stop tending to things. You still have to invest time and energy in the things you want to see growing for them to stick around. The difference is that you’re no longer trying to control the world or the outcome of your actions.
Call it positive energy from the universe if you want. You receive it and you pass it on to whoever is standing next to you. And by extending that to others, it will come back to you. Sometimes in unexpected ways.