Stop adding up the bad, start adding up the good

At my Creative Writing For The Mind Body & Soul classes we talk about holding on to the past, why do we do it? Why do we hold on to negative experiences, and why do we allow the good things that happen in our lives just slowly disappear from our minds. We allow the bad things that happen in our lives to dominate our thoughts and shape our everyday lives and hold us back. We then stack up all the bad things and forget that the good even happen. Then we go on this mission to find happiness and give it an impossible and unreachable place in our minds. We say things like, “okay that was a fun time but there are 20 bad things that happened in my life before that 1 good thing” minimizing the good and giving the bad more value then it deserves. Which is not cool at all, because it shouldn’t be a competition between good and bad. The truth is that we have trained our self’s, cycling

the bad things and not the good things. It takes time and practice to stop adding up the bad and learning that holding on to the bad accomplishes nothing except for holding us back and crushing positive experiences.

When we hold on to those bad thing’s we think about them over and over again, building them bigger and bigger everyday till they are just so dominating that we only see them and never the good things. Our thoughts shift to negative, our states of mind switch as well, we see nothing good, we see things in only one way. In the 1st and 2nd sections of Creative Writing For The Mind, Body & Soul we talk about thought records, journal entries and using writing as a therapeutic tool. We learn to write about situations in our lives, we slowly with practice learn to change our negative thought process to positive. It is very in lighting and inspiring as we learn to slow down our thoughts and give them the love and attention they deserve, we learn to see things in different ways. We change the negative to positive!

We also take those same tools and we learn to write about the good things in life and enforce that we deserve to have them. We start adding up the good every day and not the bad. We take the time to do something we love to do, and then write about it. We write how and why we deserve to do the things we love. This can be anything from sitting and having a coffee or tea by our self’s and enjoying quite time, watching birds out side our window and getting lost in the moment. Then sitting down and writing about it. When we do this simple act we are practicing mindfulness and we are learning to celebrate it, we are enforcing the good things in our lives. Doing this is so much more important then thinking about the past. We learn that we don’t have to search for happiness but we create it our self’s everyday and we soon feel comfortable experiencing it. We can then hold on to these great memories, these great experiences and learn to be proud of feeling the way we feel.

What does this look like? How do I do it? You may ask. It is so very easy, read the example below. In this thought record I enforce my good statements in the Bracketed lines under my original thoughts. This is a positive thought record; thought records don’t always have to be about things we wish to change but positive things we enjoy.

I took a day off work

Happy 100% relaxed 100%

Today I took a day off work to relax and enjoy myself.

Today I woke up and I sat on my back porch, I had my morning coffee. I sat and watch the birds fly around my back yard, listened to my pond and watched my fish swim around.

(I am more then happy to take a day to myself and start it off so peacefully I deserve to be happy and enjoy my life, I deserve to get lost in the moment and enjoy nature)

After I finished my coffee I wrote in my journal and enjoyed doing it.

( I take pride in using my tools, I love that I have writing as special place were I can write about all the things that happen in my life)

I also went for a nice long run. While I ran I got lost in the moment I looked at my surroundings, practiced mindfulness and reach a deep meditative state.

(I love to run it is one of my favourite things today I get lost in the moment and allow my self to be free and happy, not thinking of anything and enjoying my time alone.)

I am very proud 100% of the fact that I am able to completely enjoy a day off work!! Something that I could never do before.

( I am able to enjoy life like everyone else in the world, I deserve to be happy and I deserve to have a day to myself and enjoy my life, I only have one life, so I can make my own happiness)

This how you can stop adding up the bad and start adding up the good, going out of your way to enjoy and remember good things and most import above all learn to create your own happy times. You can use your over active, smart, brilliant mind for good just as easy as you do for bad. Start adding up the good today do something you love and celebrate it and re enforce it, truly love it. Sit down and write about it. You deserve to be happy just like everyone else in the world!

“Only with open conversation can we break the stigma behind depression, let’s start talking and do It together!”