Why the sunny side of life isn’t always the right side:

While there is something to be said for “staying on the sunny side of life,” the truth is, sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest thing you can do is admit it.

Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life’s problems, problems which, by the way, if you’re choosing the right values (like our previous post into values last week) should be invigorating you and motivating you.

It’s simple, really, things go wrong, people upset us, accidents happen. These things make us feel like shit. And that’s fine.

Negative emotions are a necessarv component of emotional health. To deny that negativity is to perpetuate problems rather than solve them.

The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with your values. Simple example of this:

For example, a value of mine is nonviolence (because it’s illegal right). Therefore, when I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I also make a point of not punching them in the face. Radical idea, I know. But the anger is not the problem. Anger is natural. Anger is a part of life. Anger is arguably quite healthy in many situations. (Remember, emotions are just feedback)

See, it’s the punching people in the face that’s the problem. Not the anger. The anger is merely the messenger for my fist in your face. Don’t blame the messenger. Blame my fist (or your face)

When we force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life’s problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness.

Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life. Thus to duck our problems is to lead a meaningless (even if supposedly pleasant) existence.

In the long run, completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends while struggling to make ends meet makes us happier than buying a new computer. These activities are stressful. arduous. and often unpleasant.

They also require withstanding problem after problem. Yet they are some of the most meaningful moments and joyous things we’ll ever do. They involve pain, struggle. even anger and despair, yet once they’re accomplished, we look back and get all misty eyed telling our grandkids about them.

As Freud once said, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

This is why these values pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive are poor ideals for a person’s life.

Some of the greatest moments of one’s life are not pleasant, not successful, not known, and not positive.

The point is to nail down some good values and pleasure and success will naturally emerge as a result. These things are side effects of good values. By themselves, they are empty highs.

What do you want out of life?

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” yada yada yada, your response is so common and expected that it doesn’t really mean anything.

Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make a shit tonne of money and be popular and well respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when they walk into every damn room.

Everybody wants that. It’s easy to want that.

A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out. Stick with me here I’ll explain more:

For example, most people want to get the corner office and make a boatload of money- but not many people want to suffer through sixty-hour workweeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, and arbitrary corporate hierarchies to escape the confines of an infinite cubicle hell.

Like I said previously, most people want to have great sex and an awesome relationship, but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings, and the emotional psychodrama to get there.

And so they settle. They settle and wonder, “What if?” for years and years, until the question morphs from “What if?” into “What else?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail, they say, What for?” If not for their lowered standards and expectations twenty years prior, then what for?

Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows (shock right?)

Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles. Whether you suffer from anxiety or loneliness or obsessive compulsive disorder or a dickhead boss who ruins half of your waking hours every day, the solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it.

People want an amazing physique.

But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress and sacrifice that come with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat planning your life out in tiny plate sized portions

Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can bench press a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder (yes people like this exist) are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.

This is not about willpower or grit. This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.” This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. Our problems birth our happiness, along with slightly better, slightly upgraded problems.

See, it’s a never ending upward spiral. And if you think at any point you’re allowed to stop climbing, I’m afraid you’re missing the point. Because the joy is in the climb itself.

Happy Friday! 🤝🏻🫡🧠

#positivity #psychology #lifecoach #liferules #lifelessons #blog #tacticalpsychology