Positive Energy, Neuroscience, & Mosquitos: Cultivating The Right Mood To Help Grow Your Creativity (and maintain your well being)
by StrangeFlow
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I
had a friend (I’ll call him, ‘Matt’) who once told me of a situation he had with his roommate. He said he shared a place with a woman who was a raging alcoholic, and every night, she would come home, drink tons of liquor, act crazy and irrational, and then black out – only to do the same thing the next day. Definitely, a stressful situation. Matt said he had to confront her about it one day, as he sat her down and explained to her how she was acting, and that she was stealing his positive energy and making his life much harder and way more stressful than it needed to be.
Well, the thing that struck me the most about the story (other than the obvious notion that raging alcoholics are extremely tiresome) was that phrase he used – that his roommate was “stealing his positive energy.”
It’s such a great phrase because when you stop for a second and analyze your life in that way, you really get a clear picture of the social interactions that take place in your routine. If someone is trying to bring you down, they are trying to steal from you. What do you do when someone steals from you? I was robbed about three months ago, and besides feeling violated and angry, I started locking my doors. The same could be said about people who steal your positive attitude away from you: lock your doors to keep them out.
That doesn’t mean being a recluse and getting paranoid that everyone’s going to try to take something from you, but why waste time with certain people who are more than likely going to try to bring you down? If you’re bringing positive energy to the table, that’s something you’re offering everyone around you – and if they not only bring nothing to the table, but if the also go so far as to try to diminish your motivated and healthy attitude (be it with hostility, persistent and unnecessary criticism, ridicule, or abusiveness) believe me when I say, they’re not worth five minutes of your time, and you will always be closer to happiness the moment you decide to not stick around for their narrow-minded selfishness.
One thing that you have to be stubborn about is getting yourself away from negativity, as much as possible – and that includes negative people. Negative people suck out your energy like a mosquito sucks out your blood – as well, both the mosquito and the negative acquaintance typically do their damage before you even realize it… So, from here on out, I’m going to refer to these people as mosquitos…
Now, let me take a step back and contradict everything I just said by pointing out that I’m not saying you should get away from someone because they make some sarcastic remark, or need to rant about something bad that happened to them. Obviously, people need to express negative emotions. But what I mean by negative people, overall, are people that are unnecessarily negative all (or most) of the time, and people who try to push your mood closer towards negativity than it needs to go. I’m talking about the kinds of people who can’ t deal with their own negativity, and try to push it onto you, so they feel better and you feel worse (taking your positivity for their negativity) – it’s one of the most selfish things I’ve ever seen, it’s happened to all of us, and it’s something that you might as well be conscious of.
So, I think I’ve done enough talking against negative people and broke outlooks, so I’d now like to talk about positivity…
Positive people come in all shapes, sizes, genders, races, ages, income levels, and situations in life. The one thing they all have in common? Their willingness to look passed negativity to instead see things from a much more productive point of view. They want to think about the future and all of its wonderful possibilities, and they do best around positive folks that are like them.
Surround yourself with people who accept, encourage, and excite you; instead of those who only criticize, stifle, and make you feel bad about seeing things a little bit differently than they do. Let the negative ones keep their nonsensically mediocre ideas and accomplish nothing; ignore them and you’ll instantly rise up in the world, psychologically.
Sure, you could try to get them to be more enthusiastic and motivated, but if they’re really hesitant, don’t stick around long enough to let them degrade your mood. Or, to put it another way: you can offer them positivity, but if they’re trying to compete with your energy by overriding it with their overwhelmingly hostile energy, get out of there as fast as you can! Don’t waste another thought on the situation!
I wrote the following quotation down on a sheet of paper and I see it everyday – it is a little cheesy, but I’m not really concerned too much about that:
“Let the Negative and unmotivated neurons in my brain decay, & never bother me again.”
You physically grow parts of your brain bigger and stronger with every thought you have. If you’re obsessed with positivity, growth, ambition, and creativity; and you’re actively going out of your way to have thoughts in all of these categories on a regular basis, the parts of the brain responsible for these types of thoughts will literally get bigger. That’s not some new-age / completely un-provable concept, either; it’s just neuroscience.
So what can you do with a brain that is physically trained for immediate positive thinking and super-ambition? Channel it into your working life, and make enough money to quit your day job? Well, if that’s what you so choose, then why not?
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