I don’t know if this happens to you, but it certainly happens to me.

Life is going along – happy, wonderful, good things happening – then suddenly it can all change and you can’t figure out why.

A couple of years ago I remember it was all good fun, everything was just going magically, then in the space of 15 minutes it transformed. It stayed that way for two glum weeks.

While, of course, this felt horrible, there is a silver lining. And it’s that silver lining that I want to share with you today.

While trying to find my way out of all this nasty negative stuff, I had a moment of profanity. It allowed me to flip negativity in general on its head.

I’d just had a long day – sixteen hours to be more or less precise, several of which had been splattered with unpleasantness. I had just flicked the kettle on and was just considering comfort eating anything that looked like food while running through the worst of the day.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have this little voice in the back of my mind that sometimes whispers a gem of wisdom – it also whispers quite a bit of old tosh too – but I like to think I have a talent for filtering that out!

So, there I was, looking at the light of my life – the glow of the refrigerator at this moment – when the gem of wisdom came out of the blue.

“What if all this negative stuff isn’t negative?”

Strange?

I thought for a moment. Can negative really be positive?

That’s when the little voice said, “It’s not positive or negative. It just is.”

“Marvelous”, I thought, “A Zen Buddhist has hijacked my grey matter”. I shut the fridge door, poured my drink and pondered…

True enough when things happen, they are what they are. We know this because, you and I could be in the same room, experience the same thing, and interpret it in completely different ways. What makes one person sad or angry can make another laugh or smile.

But when you’re in this negative pool, how do you get out of it? How can you just see it for the positive?

I believe it begins just there (with your awareness open) – at the moment where you realise you don’t have to react (re-act) to the situation in a conditioned way; at the moment you know you don’t have to look at the situation as negative. If you’re not attached to your feeling you can let it go. If you don’t want to feel that way, you can release it.

When you lose the attachment to the feeling, it begins to lose power. When you start to look for the good in the experience, you start to increase your energy and resourcefulness in handling it. As a result answers come.

In coaching this happens time and again. A client recently told me they had lost a contract. They also had a legal issue on the go and it was draining the business finances.

When we reframed the experience, the legal matter no longer presented as a problem – in fact it resolved quickly. The lost contract presented an opportunity to look for new business. As a result the client found four new contracts that now pay him more than the one he lost.

In a family situation, when children (or partners) feel tired, they tend to take it out on the closest person to them. You could take this on as being negativity or you could see it for what it is – they feel under the weather. To heal the situation, they may need some help. If you feel resourceful and able, you can help them – return them to the love they feel disconnected from. The negativity will then evaporate sooner rather than later.

Easier said than done? Maybe.

But it’s far more rewarding than getting sucked in to the negative.

Why not give it a go?

Love and best wishes

Neil

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Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. To find out more, visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

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