Hi, can you tell me how to be more positive? I am finding my self not to be positive about a lot of things.

I sure can’t cast any stones for getting caught in that vice-grip. To change… wow… to change. It can be a journey, or it can be a decision. This is most likely the most accurate truth that can be offered.

The Journey

Not believing anything that your experience is teaching you, or what other wizened travellers may have to share with you, you must embark upon your own trail blazing the countryside with curiosity, love, wonder, as well as times of anger, hurt, sadness, victimization, etc. Call it what you want, you can take your time and make some bad choices, or you can really start to ‘listen’ and make some good choices.

The Decision

Choices are the reason anything happens in life. They may not even be our choices that directly impacts us at any given moment, and yet, choices are what brought us to this stage in our life. And most importantly, the most powerful choice, the most empowering choice, and therefore the most liberating choice, is the choice of your attitude.

The Choices

The Journey to Pain is not one that took place by accident. After enough time has passed, the observant and truthful eye can see the slippery slope of some poor choices until the landslide took them the rest of the way to the bottom. Been there, done that. Getting out wasn’t easy.

Getting Out

The negative experiences are tremendously painful. The emotional trauma impacts the physical body intensely. Initial hits in the body create chemical reactions, thoughts get triggered, emotions get reinforced, and the storm carries you away. This is where I always run away from the overwhelming sense of drowning. I fight it. And yet, I was losing to it.

What was Missing?

Those landslides can become suffocating. It’s the best metaphorical description I can muster to come close to the sensation, effect, and affect of a series of landslides in a personal and professional life. Without people, without love, without that social engagement that penetrates the cold, a numbness sets in. You may see everything, you may know everything, but you cannot act upon it, nor engage it fully, and everything seems to always be just out of reach. The answer lies in your heart.

Releasing the Heart

My own recent experience of transformation entails a deeply personal story that I am not able to tell or retell at this point. Suffice to say, it involves the loss of a child. The sudden sensory experience of child-loss overwhelmed my physical body for a brief second or two Sunday evening with tremendous and painful force. A ripping outward from my kidneys were ice shards it seemed. The pain excruciating, the loss complete, as was the pain. Unbearable.

Just as forcefully, a power of what I can only describe as Love pushed forth through me from back-to-front through my chest (heart) and literally pushed the negative energy deep into the earth. How? I don’t know. Trauma, release, a series of coincidences as I simply wanted to reclaim what was mine to have: Joy. And I learn how much it is and always was a choice.

And I wonder at the magnificence and power of a mother who in fact lost her child. What courage, what love, what strength! Dare I continue to not claim my power of choice, and my choice of power? And your choice of power will also dictate a direction for your path. Your choices are very important.

To learn that took a whole lot more than I can tell right here. You’ll have to pay me to have that conversation.