LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME

by Desiree Stewart

Have you ever run into a friend and when they asked, “How are you doing?” and you answered, “I’m doing great!” despite your heart feeling like it is being squeezed by an outside entity?

Now, I am not advising that you tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry how you are feeling. Vulnerability is not meant for every person that crosses your path. What I am asking, though, is if you feel you are stuck in this world of false positivity.

False positivity, otherwise known as toxic positivity, according to The Psychology Group, is defined to be “the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.”

We seem to have entered a period in time where it is believed that we must always be positive in order to be deemed healthy. That somehow, if we continually choose to be positive, the negative will just go away. But, in actuality, this is not true and can be extremely damaging in the long run. Rigid Positivity

“We are caught up in a rigid culture that values relentless positivity over emotional agility, true resilience, and thriving,” says Susan David, Ph.D., a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and author of the book Emotional Agility. “And when we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” The truth is, our emotions are neither positive or negative, rather, how we use or present those emotions are when they become a problem. If our anger causes us to yell at a loved one or throw items and destroy property, we are using those emotions in a negative manner. But having anger is not a bad emotion nor does it make you a bad person. Susan David, Ph.D. goes on to say “The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.” We have entered a A Hard Year period where it is Let’s be honest, the last year has been believed that somehow, if we continually choose emotionally taxing on to be positive, the almost everyone. The negative will just go constant level of change, stress, unknown, has put away almost everyone on edge. To say that we have all been positive and everything is grand would be a boldfaced lie for most people. Having hope for the future is different than feeling positive in the moment. So how do we ensure we are feeling our emotions and being resilient as we travel through the difficulties? Perhaps sharing a bit about me would be helpful. I am a full-range-of-emotion person. I’ve tried to not be. I’ve been told many times I’m too emotional, too sensitive. Over time I have tried to hold back my emotions - definitely not to show them and on occasion not to feel them. I can speak for myself and say that has

never worked well for me. At some point the emotions have become overwhelming and have ended up in a depressive episode or an explosion of feelings. Neither of those results have worked in my favour. There are ways we can deal with the full realm of emotions, however. Talk therapy, journaling, art, music therapy, sports, and fitness… all of these can be ways to provide an emotional outlet in a positive way. A World of Injustice Canadian author Jeff Brown talks about anger and its requirement in a world of injustice. “It’s time we raise healthy anger back to the rafters of acceptability and work together to clarify a way of expressing it that both holds everyone safe AND allows us to honor its inherent wisdom. There is needless, regressive conflict, and there is healthy, necessary, forward-moving conflict. The distinction lies in our intentions. Anger is a sacred force, when it is honored authentically, without destruction. In fact, I am certain that we will not create the world of divine possibility that many spiritual beings long for unless we get angry about the injustices that many of us face. The world improves when people express legitimate anger because it communicates a message that certain things that are happening are not acceptable. As we move towards a healthier collective vibration, appropriate anger shows us injustices that would not have even been noticed at earlier times. If we fully condemn healthy anger, we condemn ourselves to endure realities that don’t serve us. There is a place for healthy anger in an evolving world...” One of the things I personally love about the Bible is that there are many examples of people lamenting to God. One of my favourites is King David, who writes in the Psalms about his despair and frustrations. And yet in the next psalm he is writing about his hope in God and his hope for his people. Isn’t this the true reflection of life? That there are times that we can feel so hopeful and there are times that life knocks us to our knees. Through all of that we can feel joy and happiness, but we must acknowledge all of the feelings that come. The importance, once again, is to learn how to manage those emotions that show up and not let those emotions manage us. When we see injustice, we should feel anger! How can that anger be used to promote positive change? When we feel sadness, we can learn how to be more empathetic towards others. According to Susan David, Ph.D., “The most agile, resilient individuals, teams, organizations, families, communities are built on an openness to the normal

human emotions. It’s this that allows us to say, “What is my emotion telling me?” “Which action will bring me towards my values?” “Which will take me away from my values?” Emotional agility is the ability to be with your emotions with curiosity, compassion, and especially the courage to take valuesconnected steps.” .…there are times And really, if we pretend that everything we can feel so hopeful and there is positive, everything is great, everything is awesome, are we denying ourselves the opportunity to truly learn from our emotions? are times that Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art life knocks us to our knees of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, states that, “Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.”

Desiree is a HR professional with many years of experience within a diverse portfolio of employers and industries. Desiree completed a Master of Organizational Psychology in 2017, and is currently working on her Masters of Counselling Psychology. When not working full time and doing her schooling she is a mom to three wonderful teenage boys.