I guess through your life, many people have told you to be positive. Today I will tell you why you should not be too positive.
I have a friend who is always very positive. Everything is great, no matter what life throws at him. But lately we have been talking less and less because his positivity creates too much negative energy around me. Anytime I tell him a story, it is always good and I have never really heard an opinion. Whenever we have a fight, he would never admit it. He just lives in his positive, happy, perfect bubble, and tries to avoid bad things in life at any price. After a while, you feel like you are talking to a robot. Believe me Siri is more interesting. He told me that he was hurt a lot during his younger year. He used to be a fighter like me, but all he got was pain. Now he believes in unconditional love. He is happy with whatever he gets. The more I talk to him the more I think he is not happy at all. He is just running away from reality and avoid facing his pains. He does not stand up for what he think is good for him anymore. Everybody loves themselves. If you do not stand up for yourself, nobody will do it for you (click to tweet). And you might end up with a miserable life.
Pain does not disappear, it only move from one place to another. (click to tweet)
Like everything in life, pain does not disappear by itself. If you try to avoid it now, you will have to face it again some point in your life. It will hurt a lot more, if you accumulate all your pains. Accepting the pain and learning from your experience is part of life. If you trying to avoid it, you will have to remember to avoid those pains. You will carry them with you everywhere you go. It is better to face and forget it.
If the world only has positive energy, there is no positive energy. (click to tweet)
Pains and negative energy are necessaries of life. Very different from Western philosophy, Asian is all about balance. Opposite forces are interconnect and interdependent in natural world. Everything in our lives is based on that principle, from food to war strategies. There is pain in happiness, and there is happiness in pain. Let’s use my life story as an example. If my family did not lose everything, I would still be a spoiled brat who treats everyone like trash. But because unfortunate things happened to my family, I learned the meaning of life and became a better person. Facing your pain is not adding negative energy to your life, it is part of positive energy. If you do not feel the pain, you do not know what happiness is. It helps you understand life better and treasure happiness more. Life is about dealing with different forces and find a balance that works for you. These forces exist for a reason, and there is no way to avoid them. The thin line between happiness and sadness is how you balance them.
“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.” – Aurelius Augustinus (click to tweet)
Lastly, being positive all the time does not make an individual perfect. Remember most inventions came from the worst accidents. Yogi Berra once said “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” Being too positive makes other people think you are putting on a mask. It is ok to express your feeling. It is ok to be selfish sometime. It is ok to feel the pain in order to open for happiness. It is okay to be less than perfect, because you never know it might be your best state.
My dear friend, it does not matter if I am right or wrong. Nothing is perfect. The key to happiness is not surrounding yourself with only positive or negative energy but finding a balance. Don’t forget without pain, you cannot feel happiness, and without happiness you won’t know what pain is.
It is your turn: Do you think too much positivity is bad? Why/why not?
Cammi Pham (@cammipham) is a digital marketer by day at ThinkRenegade, writer by night, unlearner 24/7. Cammi lives by her personal motto, “Learn, Unlearn, Relearn.”
Email: hi@cammipham.com