Hate when people say let go of all the negativity; like negativity is some force or energy that I can shed off. Wish it was that easy! Ironically it is the people that put the negativity there in the first place. I want to call this negativity as a ‘mood’. This negativity they talk about is a bad mood, and you need to keep away from it to have a good day because it is good days and multiple of them that forms a good life.
What ‘good’ is depends on one’s definition of what ‘bad’ is. If you know what’s wrong for you, you should avoid things that make you feel bad for the rest of your day. Unfortunately for us, multiple aspects make sure of spoiling your day. It is like someone coding a few bad mood inducers in a day, trying to mess up. All you got to do is to be resilient to such inducing agents.
Such agents can be objects that remind you of bad memories or can be people who are already having a bad day. You can avoid looking at and going to the items that make you feel bad. But it is unfair to say “get lost” to a person who is having a bad day. It is in human nature to go and console those people in sorrow.
You can console them if you want to, but it’s not that you are a bad person if you don’t. It is a choice, and if you choose to console them, it is not that you are good, it’s just that you prefer to comfort sad people. Everyone has ‘sad guys’ in their life. These sad guys are the inducing agents of bad mood. They don’t know that they are doing that, they are in sorrow themselves, but their grief passes on through their facial expressions, responses and words. Words of a person in distress, given the right vocabulary, can make every listener sad.
So, when someone told you to let go of all the negativity, they indirectly mean to dump these bad mood-inducing objects and people. They may not mean that, but it is the process behind letting the negativity go. In real life, we have energies that make us work, but this positivity/negativity are not one of those scientific energies. They are a figure of speech meaning mood. Let us not consider vibes as some invisible waves transmitting from minds of people, but let us assume vibes to be words, responses and reactions of people.
If you see a person in sad expression, you would at least feel like asking them what’s wrong, depends on you if you don’t. But you at least think ‘Why are they sad?’. You drift away thinking about what might have made them sad, and you keep on relating it to your life, reminding you of your own set of painful or bad memories. It might trigger sadness in you; hence the vibes passed. Butterfly effin’ effect! That butter eating kid with the bad mood in California can create a chain of bad moods till Syria and make a militant blast himself! With the internet and sharing thoughts, it is even more possible..
To these sad guys that make our day terrible by being sad, it’s not your mistake, but you should be aware what your mood makes you speak and how those words impact the listener’s mood. You are not ‘vibing’ through invisible waves of energy, but you are passing on bad mood through your facial expressions and your blabbering lips. All you can do is telling the sad guy not to be sad, offering them a solution. Yet, it is their call to take the solution or stop being sad.
You can’t just vibe out the sad guy the way they vibed you into a bad mood. But you can help them kill their sadness gradually, and it might help you get back on track with your ‘positive’ mood. This help is to feel good for yourself, and there is nothing noble about it. But if you choose not to help there is still a chance that you are in a bad mood, thinking about your own set of memories triggered because of that sad guy in your life. You need to understand that if you can not help the sad guy, and if there is nothing you can do to make them positive; you need to drop the trials. You should stop trying and care about your own mood. Your failure of a trial should not make you sad. Because if that made you miserable, you are a ‘sad guy’ in someone else’s life.
This is how the chain works, passing bad moods, being a sad guy in someone’s life. It is not voluntary, and it is not a choice to get low. But how you react to a situation is your call. After you receive an event, it might trigger sadness, happiness or thousand other emotions, but how you react is a choice. Not right at that moment, because at that moment you might respond in an emotional rush. When you are in an emotional rush, you should let it out by either speaking out or acting it out. If you hold on to that emotion, it carries forward throughout the day, and again you become the sad guy.
Not finding an outlet to let your bad mood out, makes you loathe about it all day and you end up moaning, whining and being a guy that speaks out negative words. You even react and respond negatively to almost everything. These responses hurt people, and if they didn’t let that out, they become you, the ‘sad guy’!
We need to break the chain of passing on the bad mood. A bad mood is attractive because it adds some weight to your character. You think it gives you some definition, but it won’t. For breaking the chain, you need to be aware of your mood, reactions and expressions. Do not suppress your inner emotional rush; that is not what I’m trying to say here. Ironically, suppressing your emotions will make you whiny and sad. Act when you want to act, let it all out. Do not carry the burden of emotions and feelings that you can’t lift anymore. Be open and expressive about your feelings, make sure every emotion is justified right, and you won’t carry it forward. Avoid the sad guy’s sadness impacting your mood. Even if you console them, you need not take it personally.
Tell the sad guy of your life, “Not today!”
Penfluky 