THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY

Every day I turn on my social media to be greeted by many things: drama, seemingly perfect lives, and more recently, an over-whelming amount of empty positivity. I am a huge believer of the power of the mind, manifestation, and positive thinking. What I’m NOT a believer in, are thoughtless quotes, accompanied by meaningless selfies, telling everyone to keep their complaints to themselves. Telling people that negativity doesn’t solve anything, that complaining is useless, and that staying positive will solve all…this is bullshit.

I’m normally pretty positive on a day-to-day. I try to live my life as honestly and kindly as I can, and usually I do well with it, but sometimes I struggle. What I’ve learned over the last year or so, is that it’s the negative that changes things. Maybe if the friends that I’ve lost to suicide in the past year had had the courage to speak their truth publicly, someone could’ve helped. Instead, we all saw the best of them: the best of their lives, the perfect picture of family, vacations, love…everything that we have all been conditioned to put out there on social media. If only they had the strength to show us their vulnerability, someone could’ve said the one thing they needed to hear to get them through the rough spot. But humans aren’t built that way anymore. We are built to give up on people who complain too much, who have too much going on, who ARE too much. So we flood our social media with ideals, rather than reality. We are all guilty.

Isn’t negativity what inspires CHANGE? If you see something wrong, should you not speak out? We are living through a NIGHTMARE right now, and if all you can offer up to the doctors and nurses who are watching people die every day while working overtime, or to the entrepreneurs who are losing their businesses and mental health in lop-sided lockdowns, or those suffering through non-stop domestic abuse, is some shitty, empty, “stay positive” quote, you are not a life coach…and you may just be fueling division and adding to the frustration.

If Rosa Parks had simply gotten up from her seat, where would we be? If everyone had stayed silent about George Floyd’s death, would we have the awareness that we are finally beginning to have? The answer is no.

Yes, positive thinking is powerful. It inspires confidence, personal growth, and healing. But I’m tired of negativity getting all the terrible reviews. You need both. Like anything in life, it’s a balancing act. Getting those thoughts out of your system is necessary, especially in a time where we are being told we are on the same team, while being manipulatively driven apart.

Change won’t happen if you just accept your surroundings and make the best of it. Change will only happen if you allow yourself to feel the discomfort, find the confidence to take a stand, and MAKE it happen.

Expressing frustrations doesn’t make you ungrateful for the positive things in your life. It means you want better. It means you can spot something wrong, and you’re trying to fix it.

I am unapologetically passionate. About everything. My family, my business, my relationships, my LIFE…and my country. Something is wrong, and we should ALL be trying to fix it.

“Change won’t happen if you just accept your surroundings and make the best of it. Change will only happen if you allow yourself to feel the discomfort, find the confidence to take a stand, and MAKE it happen.”

YOU’VE CHANGED

I was browsing through Instagram the other day, just scrolling through, half-involved, when my friend Nolan’s story made me pause. It was a meme, of course, with a caterpillar telling a butterfly “You’ve changed”. The butterfly swiftly responds, “We’re suppose to”. It hit me right in the gut.

How many times have you been in an argument with a partner and they accuse you of having changed? Your automatic reaction is to respond defensively, as though they’ve insulted you. But the reality is that you are doing exactly what you are supposed to do: you are evolving. And perhaps you are out-growing your surroundings.

A few years ago I went through a series of what I like to call “unfortunate events”. I remember hating myself, and thinking I just wanted to go back to being the NORMAL me. I wished away the anxiety I was starting to feel; I’d lay in bed staring at the ceiling wondering how I came to be someone I couldn’t understand or relate to anymore. I just wanted to go back to who I was before. Unfortunately, that girl didn’t exist anymore. I was lost.

But it doesn’t only happen to ourselves. How often have we been in a relationship and suddenly realized we don’t recognize our partner anymore? How many times have we met up with an old friend, only to discover that we have grown apart?

That is life. We are products of our experiences. We are meant to grow apart, so that we can find the person we can grow WITH. We are meant to experience hardship, so it can shape us into a stronger version of ourselves. We are meant to experience joy, so that we can share it with others. And every time we experience something, we are meant to CHANGE. You are never going to be the person you were yesterday, and that is a good thing. It means you are learning. You are absorbing the lessons, and letting them mold you.

Sometimes you have to become worse, before you can become better; that’s the hard part. We get temporarily lost, before we finally feel found. But we are products of our own experiences – works in progress – and everything that happens to us, every decision we make, helps morph us into our final product. So when you finally break out of that cocoon of broken promises, broken hearts, and broken dreams, you get to fully spread your wings and conquer NEW dreams, find new loves, and mend broken hearts.

“You’ve changed.”

“Thank you.”

Who Do You Want To Be

This morning I locked myself in the washroom and cried. And I criiied and I cried. We are 3 months into a pandemic, into uncertainty about our future, into forced lockdowns of our businesses and isolation from loved ones. Daily contradictory information has us not knowing what to believe.

Today I felt a vaguely familiar feeling deep down low in my tummy…anxiety. And so I cried.

I haven’t felt that feeling in over a year. Truthfully, I haven’t always had a battle with anxiety. There were a few months a couple of years ago where it was wreaking havoc on my life, but I managed to get my mind clear. But does anxiety ever disappear?

I am one of the strongest women I know. It’s true, I’m not just saying it. But sometimes, even the strongest falter, and need to make decisions as to who they want to be. I want to be a good mother, and so rather than bury my head in my pillow, I force myself to my feet. The past 2 days, that has been a struggle. Anxiety.

I want to be successful. And so I’m wrapping up my pity party immediately. It was during a Facetime call with my brother that it became clear as day that this year is only half done, and I need to decide WHO I WANT TO BE. “You’re strong,” he said to me, in the surprising instant when I lost myself and was crying with vulnerability. “Maybe not in this moment, but in most moments. You are a strong woman.”

“When all this started” he said, “I asked myself ‘Who do I want to be while this is happening? Do I want to be the one to pull everyone down, or lift everyone up?”

And now I’m asking myself that same question: who do I want to be? I don’t have the luxury of waiting another week to answer this. I have 2 little faces that rely on me every day, to help them get the most out of their OWN days. So I’m here: I am going to be the person that I need right now. The support system for the one that feels like they are falling apart. The shoulder, for the person who is locking themselves in the washroom to cry with privacy. The laughter, (yes I can be funny) for the person who’s had nothing but bad news lately.

I’m exhausted with the bad news. I’m exhausted with the uncertainty. I have (almost) come to terms with the fact that our leaders have no idea what they are doing, and that I can’t change their decisions. But I am done giving others so much power over my happiness, and what I am doing.

The world is a mess right now, and we are all victims of circumstance, but we have to gather any bit of strength that we can find in ourselves and reclaim our lives.

It’s time to take that moment, whether you’re crying in the washroom behind a locked door, or catching yourself laughing with joy, and ask yourself: while the world is in chaos around you, who do YOU want to be?