Cultivating Positivity
In this article, Anna is talking about cultivating positivity.
PREFACE: I wrote this post at the end of April for mental health awareness month. Mental health isn’t something we should only think about for one month, however. This post was written in the thick of quarantine, which was one of my main reasons for writing it, but I believe that it is still incredibly relevant today as well. We will continue to experience low points in our lives, so it is important to take the good with the bad and find the small moments of happiness to keep us going. Enjoy!
It can be hard to hold onto happiness and positivity in the midst of everything happening in our world. I know that I have been struggling a lot with maintaining a bright attitude lately. The negativity and depressing truth of what is going on around us is suffocating, and I feel that needs to be recognized. I had a teacher in high school who once had us all yell “this sucks!” right after they dropped a pop quiz on us. On the count of three we all yelled. I feel like we need that right now. Ready? One, two, three: This sucks! It's important to get that out, and to acknowledge that everything is not always great. And that’s ok. Everything doesn’t have to be amazing, but with what is going on in the world it’s important to look for what is good around us or risked getting dragged down by that looming force of depression and negativity that may be spreading faster than the virus.
A few weeks ago, it was pouring down rain. Grey clouds blanketed the sky in every direction. Then, out of nowhere, the setting sun broke through the clouds, bathing the world in a golden light. Raindrops fell like a thousand glittering diamonds to the silver that coated the concrete. It was beautiful, and it happened during the gloomiest, rainiest day.
One thing that has helped me tremendously through this trying time is looking for these little moments. Positivity and happiness aren’t created by large, monumental experiences. Sure, those are the ones that might stand out to you, but they aren’t the whole story. A dance isn’t a dance because there is a perfectly executed turn combo or a complicated and death-defying trick. There are also the smaller parts to consider: the transition steps, the slight tilt of the head, the pas de bourrée before a pirouette. Combined, all of these parts make up the incredible thing that is a dance. I believe the same can be said about happiness and positivity.
We might not be having the times of our lives right now, but that does not mean there aren’t little kernels of happiness just waiting to be discovered. A blooming flower outside of your window, a walk around the block, a steaming cup of tea and a good book, movie night with the fam, that one song that has been on repeat the whole time I’ve been writing this blog post. All of these moments are here for us, we only need to open our eyes and see them for what they are.
Sometimes it can seem that you don’t even have those little moments in our lives. But, hey, maybe you put on clothes today that weren’t pajamas or maybe you finally decided to cook something other than Kraft mac and cheese. Those are small happy moments!
That isn’t to say that everything will be sunshine and rainbows. Reality has an annoying way of reminding us that, but we can look for small moments of happiness that help us to condition our minds to find the positive side of things. We can give precedence to the small happy moments instead of the large depressing one. If you think about it, there are way more small moments than big moments. If we can find all the small happy moments in our lives, they can outweigh the big depressing moment that is looming over us, lending us their positivity to carry on.
I challenge you all to keep a journal. I didn’t used to think journaling was my thing, but I was prompted to start journaling during my first quarter of college. The transition was super difficult for me emotionally, and I found myself dwelling on everything that I deemed bad in my life. To counteract that, every night I’ve been writing down at least one good thing, one small happy moment, and using those combined moments to lift my spirits. Sometimes the moments are very small, like finishing my homework and having time to relax or sleeping in an extra hour on the weekend.
These moments are still there though, and they can have just as much influence over your mood as spotting does over your turns. An audience member doesn’t typically look at a dancer who just performed eight pirouettes and think, “wow, they were just spotting”. Their reaction is going to be more along the lines of “Oh my gosh they just did a million pirouettes!”. Spotting might be overlooked by others, but it's incredibly important to the pirouette, just like the small moments are incredibly important to your mood.
The sky might be dark, and we might be soaking wet and sick of standing out in the pouring rain waiting for the storm to pass. We can make the most of this rain, though. We can take each small happy moment we find, each glimmer of the sun through a break in the clouds, and use it to find the strength to continue.
And if I made just one person smile on the inside while reading this, that is my happy moment.