It’s easy being negative, it has become as easy as breathing these days. From my own observations I’ve noticed people look straight to the negatives and ignore the positives. Look to the news, social media, or the people in your own lives. You may be a person that is less negative but overall everyone is complaining instead of bringing themselves or people up. Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a culprit of this as well. I’ve just gotten better within the last year and a half about being more positive, and I’m going to tell you why I changed. I would say the movie "Tomorrowland" jump started the process. In this movie they reference an old Cherokee tale about two wolves.
“An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
This story struck a chord within myself. To me it was such a profound story, and such a simple one. Stop feeding the the evil wolf, essentially the negative wolf. I would complain all the time, I still complain but not as much as I have in the past. Well at least I hope I don’t. You name it though, I would complain about it. My weight, college, money, living situations, lack of love life, family, friends, the state of the world, my job, what I want to do with my life, anything and everything. I was sending so much negative energy out into the world, and zero positive energy. After seeing this movie, and the message it gave me, I did a self check. I made a decision to start turning around my thinking, and don’t get me wrong it took awhile. I read a lot of Jon Gordon and Mitch Albom books, and that helped speed up the process. Not only did I change my way of thinking, but I changed what I did in my life too. Instead of complaining all the time, I started to look for solutions. I’m now a problem fixer, I will do my best to find a solution to the problem at hand. It upsets me when I can’t find a solution, especially if it’s for someone else. That’s when I let the negativity win, because I think I have failed the other person. For myself I do my best to fix the problem and reel in the complaining. I was too heavy, so I lost weight. I hated my living situation, so I moved out. I worked in retail and despised every second of it, so I found another job. I was giving the negative wolf a buffet to feast on, but I realized how much of a mistake that was and stopped. I took away that buffet and slowly started to feed the positive wolf. This was not overnight. I had been feeding the negative wolf for so long that my positive one had been starving. It’s also still a daily battle to feed the right wolf, I struggle some days and the negative wolf loves it. Regardless of some of the bad days, I NEVER let the negative wolf gain control again.
