This is the perfect personal development challenge for me to initiate today. I’m heading to my parents’ house this afternoon for the long weekend. My parents have a house with a big yard and a pool, so they always have a cookout for my entire extended family. (My dad is one of seven and everyone has at least two kids, so it’s A LOT of people!) I love my family and I’m very close to them, but… well, you know how it is. Ginormous family gatherings are often fraught with emotion and history and can get pretty stressful.

But back to my point…

I’m going to take the positivity challenge! Would you like to play along?

Here’s what it entails… For one full week, we will try to focus on the positive. When we encounter an obstacle or difficulty, we’ll try to see the silver lining. (Note: This is different from pretending that everything is wonderful when it is clearly not. It’s the difference between “I have a cold–it’s so unfair that I feel like crap” and “I have a cold, but hey–I get to stay home from work and watch Dr. Phil!”)

We’ll focus on what we can learn or gain from a potentially negative situation rather than the inconvenience or discomfort it may cause. The idea is that, by the end of the week, we will begin to experience the amazing benefits of positive thinking and will be on our way to building a permanent positivity habit!

The creator of the positivity challenge has three recommendations to get us through the week: 

1. Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don´t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.
2. Realize that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind…
3. Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me, it was months, but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.

Here’s wishing all of you a happy (and POSITIVE) holiday weekend!

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