“And what if it is not going to work out?”, I ask her. “Oh, but it is going to work!”. I can sense tension when she is saying this. When I check with her to see if she can sense this tension, she becomes quiet. She focuses inwards. “Yes, I can feel tension indeed. This just has to work. I don’t want to put my attention to it not working. Before you know it, I will create the failure of this project”.
Positive thinking: thoughts become things
You hear it all the time: thoughts become things and what you give your attention, will grow. Focus on the positive and you will easily create your own success. In itself a great advice. There’s a truth in the premise that your inner stance, thoughts, and emotions influence the world around you. So if you focus a lot on the positive things, e.g. your project becoming a success, creating that success will be easier. This is also what I experience in my (business) life. Even more so, if you deeply connect with the positive outcome, visualizing it, you will automatically move in this direction. Often there is help from unexpected sources, coincidence, or synchronicity. Focusing on the positive isn’t wrong at all. But still …What tension is embedded in positive thinking?
As I noticed with this coachee, this advice to think positive, becomes a dogma. You have to think positively or else it’s your own fault that you don’t get the success you would like. Even stronger, by allowing negative thoughts, you will automatically create this negative outcome. In my experience, this will often lead to fear and tension. This is not helping the creation process at all. From a systemic perspective, but also other modalities like the Sedona method, Buddhism, and non-duality, it is important to include everything. Whenever you exclude, deny, or hide something or someone, the system will find a way to include it again. Often this will show in not a very helpful way like stress, fear, or a sense that something is holding you back.In this case, it means including the negative side. So allow the idea of failure, negative thoughts, and the fear that it will not work out. Acknowledge these emotions and thoughts. Realize that it might not work out the way you’d like it.Can you include the negative?
I am not saying that you have to drown yourself in negativity. You don’t have to really focus on the negative side but only allow and acknowledge it. Just allow the negative to be. Observe what happens if you connect with the negative. Breathe in, breathe out. Find a way to make your relationship with the negative neutral. By not pushing the negative into the shadow or denying it, you are including it. It will have a place in the system and will not appear in a nasty way while you are trying to make your project a success. Now you fully focus on the positive outcome, the positive emotions, the positive thoughts. You’ll notice that the power of the positive is so much stronger now because you have given the negative a place so it doesn’t have to scream from the shadow. Everything that you give attention will become quiet is also true.Think positive and include the negative
So, if you would like to reach a goal, a dream? Don’t only focus on the positive, but also realize that it can go wrong and that you might have negative thoughts and emotions. Then you can focus on the positive and you’ll see that you can reach your goals more easily.