The #beplus Initiative: #bepositive

A Negative Waterfall

You just watched a movie, read a book, bought a car, or even went to a park. And you know what, you had a bad experience. The pacing was bad, the plot was bad, the headroom too low, the playground equipment rusted. So what do you do?

Oh, I'm sure you go right on the internet, find a forum or site for review and let the world know your dislike for whatever got you frustrated. Then you make sure you convince everyone to think like you and feel the same way about said thing.

What's this all about? Well, last week I revealed what The #beplus Initiative is.

Today, I'll expand on what it is with one of the many rules that guide it. As I discuss these rules, they are in random order so as not to place more weight on one rule than the other. They all actually equal up to one rule. That rule being #beplus!

In the scenarios mentioned above, the focus of everything went to negativity. As a society, we have been ingrained with the idea that we need to speak up when we don't like something. The internet has fostered this more due to our anonymity. We can pretty much say whatever we want and hide behind a forum name and image of a cute cat for our avatar.

I'd argue that more people want to voice their opinion when they are dissatisfied than when they are satisfied. Satisfied people are typically content and so don't have a motivation to go off on angry tangents.

What if you train your brain to think a little differently though. Maybe all those things mentioned at the start of this post are true. But what positive things can you find in them?

A Positive Waterfall - Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

Maybe the movie had great special effects, the book had a unique style to the writing, the car got great gas mileage, and the park had a large field that could be used for doing something outside.

Be positive. In most things, we can find the positive side of things. We can let others know. But certainly, we would want to avoid focusing on the negativity. When we do that, we tend to turn the entire thing into a bad thing.

So the next time you find yourself seeing the bad in something tell your brain to consider the positive things. Training it in this way will no doubt help you put things in a better light but also help you be more content. And in the process, you won't be taking others down with negative thinking.