Positivity and Half-Fullism

Kirsten Harrell has started a group writing project in anticipation of “Positive Thinking Day” on September 13, and asked me to participate with my take on the benefits of positive thinking in our lives.

Positive thinking is at the core of my philosophy of “Half-Fullism” – the ability to deal with the literal world in a favorable way. How do I apply Half-Fullism in my daily life? Through 5 tenets that I revealed in a post I made last November (here are the headlines);

1. “Get off of the ground, but stay out of the clouds”
2. “Open mind, open skies”
3. “No brain pain, no net gain”
4. “Stay away from absolutes, absolutely”
5. “Just say no to naysayers”

I can’t practice these actions unless I have a positive point of view. These days, on the rare occasions when I don’t, things close down and all the possibilities evaporate. I stay earthbound. My mind closes. I can’t learn. Grey becomes black and white again, and negativity creeps back in.

I can get beyond this and back on the positivity train pretty easily now, but it always wasn’t that way. 15 years ago I was in a pretty good funk, and not feeling pretty good about myself. The glass was half-empty.

Somehow, some way, I needed to break out of it, and the only way possible was to will myself into positivity, and reap all the benefits from that mindset. How did I do it? I used another time-tested positivity technique.

I wrote it down.

What did I write? What I called my personal “declaration of independence“. I simply articulated who I thought I was, what I really wanted to be, and how I needed to get there. I established “rules” for myself that I pledged to follow.

I reset my positive intent with that document – I can’t emphasize how important it was to use my own written word as a springboard. From that point on, positivity won almost every internal battle, and eventually I got to where I wanted to be.

Half-Fullism wasn’t really born on that day for me, but it was a one of those “turning point” moments that reaffirmed it’s real power. I had realized that keepin’ it positive was important back in my teens and early twenties, and that intent was a big trigger.

Here’s what I wrote exactly one year ago today about this process of “becoming” a Half-Fuller:

“Since I started blogging people had been asking me how I “became” an optimist…… It just didn’t happen out of thin air. One day I had to say, “I’m going to be happy”, and decide to stop complaining (too much), to think forward rather than backward, to use more positive language, and to look at the glass half full instead of half empty.”

Yes, intent is really important, because if it is lost (like that period for me 15 years ago), it takes a breakthrough moment like a written “declaration of independence” to revive it.

It’s far simpler to reset our intentions every day - that is, to find a couple of minutes every morning with no distractions, and mentally prepare to be positive.

Some may refer to this as “The Secret” – I just call it drinking my daily dose of positivity, from a half-full glass (of course).

The benefits are bountiful – take your daily drink and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve been tagging a lot of folks lately with several other memes, so instead I will make this request of all my readers: Check out Kirsten’s post, and if you can find the time please participate in this wonderful writing project. Let’s spread the power of positivity as far and as wide as we can.

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