by Tamara Kulish from https://www.tamarakulish.com/

Anger begets more anger, fear more fear, and gratitude has the power to change

Moving from an angry and negative inner head space requires more than just “thinking positive”. In fact, the “Think Positive” mantra has become a toxic zone, whereby if someone is still feeling negative, angry or out of sorts after doing their best to just “Think Positive”, often people blame them for just not trying hard enough. Once again, someone who is already struggling within themselves is told they’re not enough.

Author unknown

So is it useless then?

As much as we would like to, simply wishing or trying to just be positive doesn’t address the many steps needed to be actively worked on nor does it magically dispel all the pain, angst and anger.

The good news is we can work on some changes within our minds and our hearts that help us with our healing process and help our outlook to change from quite dark to lighter and lighter.

You’ll find more tips on walking this journey in: What the “Positivity” process doesn’t like to talk about, There’s a fine line between positivity and denial, as well as Anxiety – dealing with the shoulds and coulds….

Pooja writes about her own life journey and this sentence in one of her posts stood out to me as a huge “Aha”, not only for her, but for others too. “This year, I promised myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I was going to choose to focus on the positive instead. And I have been doing just that.” Pooja, from her blog Filled With Love And Gratitude – Lifesfinewhine

As my mental health improves thanks to therapy and personal effort, I have realised the importance of gratitude. When I was at lower points, I still had so much to be grateful for but chose to focus on the negative. This year, I promised myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I was going to choose to focus on the positive instead. And I have been doing just that.

Two things I’ve realised from this is that a lot of envy, jealousy, hate, comes from personal insecurity. The more I chose to love others and approach them with empathy, the less I felt negative emotions in myself. You don’t need to tear others down to feel good about yourself when you’re a happy and secure person. The other thing I’ve realised is that the more we practice gratitude, the more we’ll have to be grateful for. When we choose to be positive and loving towards others, that will find itself back to us too.

Pooja, from her blog Filled With Love And Gratitude – Lifesfinewhine

I discovered that for myself too. When I had made the switch I hadn’t realized how negative my thoughts were, to myself particularly and towards life in general.

Always focusing on what’s wrong and seeing every problem ends up taking up our mental bandwidth, so our brains can’t see the positives. If we do see the positives, they’re shrouded in a mist of “yes, but, it will end quickly and I’ll have to pay for enjoying this moment.”

Practicing feeling grateful for every positive ended up helping to quiet those fears. It’s a simple practice with profound abilities to rewire our brains.

When I switched to looking for the positives and feeling grateful for them, it would be nice to say that all the negatives faded away, but that wasn’t so. The negatives shrunk to a smaller space in my life, for now I was seeing things in a more balanced way. Instead of fearing that feeling good would trigger more bad stuff as a punishment, I was able to see that if I didn’t have the skills to tackle a problem, I certainly had the ability to develop the skills and that was very empowering.

The people around me felt the shift inside of me too. I suppose I was no longer telegraphing a sense of powerlessness and feeling incapable of making any changes in my life. It took a lot of practicing, of falling down and getting back up, of having hours of overwhelming despair and darkness, to finally seeing a glimmer when my brain started to show signs of being rewired.

We need to look for the small things

Practicing feeling grateful for the many little things slowly helps to rewire our brains. We’re not just slapping a happy smile on our face and calling it done but instead practicing a shift in perspective. When we keep a look out for the small positive things and then choose to feel gratitude for them, we start to look for other things, and if we pay attention we see more and more.

Practicing feeling grateful doesn’t remove the problems from our lives, it actually helps to put us in a frame of mind to better see the solutions and to start to feel the confidence that we could actually tackle them instead of only seeing a mountain of problems and feeling stuck and powerless.

Our load hasn’t shifted much, but how we see things changes, and that in turn can help us to set some healthier boundaries in our lives, for we see we can be worthy of good things.

So, my challenge to you is to start out looking for 1 small thing every day to feel grateful for. When that feels comfortable, practice looking for 2 things, and so on until this becomes more natural to you.

Please let me know how this goes for you!

I’m going to leave you with a few more posts to stir more thinking and doing:

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
https://tamarakulish.com/

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Removing Inner Blocks ||  Anger Journal || Guided Anxiety Journal  ||  Joy & Mindfulness Journal   ||  My Boundaries Journal  || My Inner Thoughts Journal   

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24 thoughts on “Anger begets more anger, fear more fear, and gratitude has the power to change”

  1. I am so guilty of expecting the worst. I take the cliche approach of that way I can only be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed. It’s not a great way to live. Our family has recently instituted a gratitude jar, however. I’m trying to look more for the positive.

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    1. I love the idea of a gratitude jar. I heard of someone who created a file card system for everyoneday of the year, and made a point of writing down the things that they felt grateful for that day. They kept at it and after a few years saw so many things that they would otherwise have forgotten or brushed away.

      I used to expect the worst, because I inwardly believed that the worst was attracted to me, so as you said when something good happens its a surprise.

      I’ve since made efforts to release any preconceptions or judgment about what may happen and instead to simply allow things to unfold. I’ve seen that often something that appears to be a negative ends up being a blessing in disguise, because the changes that at first felt forced upon me were actually the directions I needed to take but had been too chicken to instigate them myself.

      Releasing the expectations of the negatives was very freeing for my spirit. Allowing life to unfold as it may allows me to see how the universe is working things out behind the scenes.

      Keep looking for the positives! 🥰

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      1. I think typically what I do is think both worst and best case scenario. Often, the outcome is somewhere in between. But I try to think of different outcomes so I can be prepared to handle whatever it is. The idea of simply not thinking about the outcome is foreign. 😛 I hear you on stuff being blessings in disguise. I’ve seen that happen many times for people.

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  3. Hi Tamara,
    I was doing that today but I realized that my sugar levels fell and I got cold. In the middle of a sunny day in the park while teaching my art class. I’m grateful for so many big and little things yet it doesn’t negate the fact that emotions are directly connected to other things that are outside of my control. Most of the time I try to avoid experiencing them instead of feeling them and leaving them behind.
    I’m still grateful for realizing I’m not alone in this, we are fighting our selves hoping to win. Objectively speaking life is a walk in the park but our inner battles are what prevents us from enjoying it.

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    1. Yes, blood sugar issues are very real and must be monitored. I have it and many in my family do also. We often need to plan to take snacks with us.

      Ah yes, our emotions. They can be in direct response to what is happening or they can stem from our fear of what could still befall us or from anger from things that already happened to us.

      I never recommend brushing our emotions under the rug, even if they are massive and difficult to look at. Instead I suggest a practice of gently sitting with an emotion, to trace where it comes from. There’s often layers there, stretching back into childhood.

      You may find some therapeutic counseling to be of great aid to help you unmask your triggers and in defusing those emotions in a way that is healing and helps you to move forward.

      Doing the inner work of healing is very hard and takes time and a lot of effort, but we get rewarded by a heart that feels much lighter and able to feel we deserve to feel all the good stuff in life.

      Blessings to you on your journey.

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      1. Therapy is a great way to feel supported on this journey, I agree. Also layers of our emotions and finding their root can be quite a challenge. What I find helpful is all the support you can find in others. Somehow we have to rely on people and spiritual beings to carry us thru

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    1. Yes, exactly totally agree with you. I watched myself as I was consciously making those new choices and was really astounded to observe that finding and really seeing the small things and choosing to be grateful for them instead of brushing them off, how that all worked in layers to shift my way of thinking about myself and my life. I’d heard of it before but had dismissed it as pseudo nonsense. When I decided to give it a real go, I was surprised how effective it was.

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  5. I found good bits, and the changer was in seeing something within myself in some very powerful events in my life. I saw that each time I fell down, each time I got frustrated, and each time I got angry…I realised it was at myself. I wasn’t dealing with or more importantly understanding why. And when I finally did I finally realised that those doubts and fears were the driver.

    It wasn’t anyone or thing else but my frustration of not understanding me, and how I faced them. And in that one instant I was sick of being in that zone and decided to face my fear. In there was an answer that we all have…and the moment you see that driver, in all that you do, you will finally see that why, understand that it is a journey within itself…to find you…and the love you have ever doubted, denied or pushed away…because of those misunderstood fears.

    Understand the why…and your free. Totally, beautifully, free.

    Great post Tamara, and yes what you say is definitely a major building block of that journey to become something else, something more so you can reach that love we block to reach those doubts and fears we hold. See them for what they are…a guide to find us, an incredible positive to understand it is for us, hard as it can be, and realise it is to break that wall we build and see the truth behind it.

    A great share kind lady, thank you. If we but met many years ago to start the beauty of this pathway 🤗❤️🙏

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    1. Mark you said it very clearly and well. We struggle against ourselves. Many years ago I had asked myself why do I do that, and I sat with it gently. I then saw that I had internalized all the criticisms and bad behavior that had been directed towards me. I was completing the work my abusers had started.

      The way to change a lot of that was through words. The words I then selected to say to myself. It became a system override. I was reprogramming my brain.

      Then I discovered the power of words paired with positive emotions and the most powerful one turned out to be gratitude. Even in small doses it has a lasting cumulative effect of slowly replacing the old damage.

      As you know, it takes time and repeated efforts, but the results are stupendous, we finally are free to be ourselves in the best possible ways.

      Bravo, and thank you for your comment.

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