Positive Thinking…Really?
‘Just stay positive!’ ‘Just think positively and everything will work out!’ ‘The power of positive thinking!’ To a life-long pessimist such utterances may seem intolerable. Despite sounding practical on the surface, such expressions may seem like nothing more than warm and fuzzy nonsense that people say when they can’t think of anything impactful. This kind of happy talk rarely seems as practical or applicable as concrete measures and detailed strategies to tackle the problems we face in everyday life and overcome procrastination.
By this point in your life, if the numerous studies showing optimists to live longer than pessimists hasn’t persuaded you to change your thinking habits, then it is likely that the numerous studies showing optimists as being less likely to procrastinate hasn’t made a difference either. The reality is that you are less likely to do something if negative thinking clouds your judgement. What that means is that if you genuinely believe that you cannot do something, you won’t even bother trying.
Despite sounding sappy, it really does combat procrastination.
How this relates to staying focused and avoiding procrastination is simple. If you maintain a positive mood and outlook all day, you are more likely to begin work in a timely manner because the work won’t seem as bad and unpleasant as it does through the eyes of a pessimist, or someone who happens to be in a bad mood or going through a rough patch.
And that is why we advise you just put one foot in front of the other and get started. Use FocusMe to block out any distractions and put one foot in front of the other and start typing. Once you get on a role you can start to utilize our Pomodoro timer feature to make sure you work at an optimal rhythm.
Positivity Challenge? Please! Not another one of those…
Over the years I have heard of week or month long positivity challenges, where participants pledge to stay positive no matter what for the allotted period of time. As a pessimist who disguised his pessimistic tendencies as being ‘realistic’, I was strangely drawn to these challenges but I never lasted for more than a couple of days. This wasn’t long enough to create a lasting change in myself. It wasn’t until I randomly stumbled upon a very cool and popular book in Russia called Reality Transurfing, written by a quantum physicist Vadim Zeland, that I was able to create lasting changes to my thought patterns.
Trans-what?
Reality Transurfing is very popular in Russia, think on a scale comparable to Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’ in the West. For whatever reason, it is almost entirely unheard of outside of the Russian speaking world. I only have a few Russian speaking friends and I was very surprised when they all knew about or had actually read the book. I have a relative who is a shaman and had the book sitting unread on the bookshelf. I won’t lie – it was the cool title and trippy cover image that enticed me enough to check out the reviews on Amazon that were extremely positive. Statements like ‘Be lucky you even found this book,’ convinced me to read it. Despite being terribly wordy with a very poor translation, it quickly became my favorite book of all time.
Many metaphysical texts and new age writings state that the world is our mirror, that it reflects our thoughts back to us. Heck, even the Chinese have an expression that says, ‘The benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom.’ I don’t know about you, but before I read Reality Transurfing, this kind of talk sounded and felt like nothing more than flowery new-age BS word salad.
Transurfing? Is that some kind of extreme sport?
What Transurfing did was give me a new model of how to view reality and how our experience in this world might actually be created by the way we think, and therefore we can consciously shape our life and experiences. Although the science is beyond me, there are plenty of physicists who claim that cutting edge quantum physics research backs this up by suggesting our consciousness creates our reality. This is in direct opposition to the common world view that we react to the physical world ‘as it really is’. Even the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant said, ‘We don’t see the world as it really is, but as we really are.’
It is important to keep in mind that the author of Transurfing himself states that Transurfing is nothing more than a model and it cannot explain everything. I found that for a very analytical person, having a model to follow made it so I that I can usually stay positive under some of the most annoying situations. So what exactly is Transurfing and how does one go about doing it?
An extreme sport for the mind.
The main idea is that time is static, so while we experience life as constantly moving forward in time, each individual moment actually exists and always will exist in informational form in a dimension call the ‘alternatives space.’ Every possible scenario that could ever be exists in information form in the alternatives space. Imagine using a tape reel to watch a movie. When playing, it appears to being moving forward at a constant pace. When you stop it and lay the film out frame by frame, each individual moment exists side by side in a static state.
Transurfing posits that there are entire lifelines in the alternatives space that run side by side and we can access these different lifelines by our consciousness, or thought vibrations. So if you can, try to imagine an infinite number of individual film frames laid out side by side and stacked on top of each other and the ‘movie’ or life we consciously experience is created by the frames that we light up with our thoughts. The way our consciousness lights up new frames and experiences reality is by our thought vibrations, and the higher our thought vibrations, the more positive the lifeline or wave that we get to ‘ride’ and experience. For me it was a totally new way of thinking about life. It may be very difficult or impossible to accept, but if you give it a try you might be surprised how much you like it.
That sounds like some serious woo-woo, but tell me more…
The model states that reality reacts to our thought vibrations with a delay effect. For example, when we dream, whatever we think of happens instantly, but we aren’t in conscious control. In our much denser physical reality of lower vibrations, it takes a while for reality to conform to our thoughts. Therefore, we should spend a few minutes every day visualizing the life we want to live, and then always react positively to events throughout the day no matter what happens.
The next time you get stuck in a traffic jam, instead of getting annoyed and upset, try getting really excited about how it might change your day for the better. According to Transurfing, if you expect something good to come out of it, then that will probably be the case. If you get upset and angry, you will probably continue to find more aggravating situations occurring throughout the day. There is no way you can know exactly how things will play out, but if you approach life with enthusiasm and positivity, according to Transurfing, those positive thought vibrations will spur you onto more positive lifelines where your experiences will just get better and better. Maybe being 15 minutes late to the gym will allow you to bump into someone who will later become an important business contact?
Take me back to REALITY please!
If this all seems a little too woo-woo I certainly understand that. That’s why I want to also provide a more traditional model that explains how individual world views are shaped. To use the analogy of being a child, if you were raised in a healthy family that provided unconditional love and applauded your efforts regardless of success or failure, it is natural for you to experience the world as full of future opportunities and successes waiting to happen. You won’t shy away from going for your goals and dreams with confidence because growing up, even if you failed you were still applauded.
On the other hand, if you were raised in a dysfunctional family, you would likely suffer from a lack of self-esteem. If the feedback you received was that everything you did was a failure, then you will either not bother to try at all, or you may end up overcompensating or developing some sort of complex in an attempt to prove your worth. This helps explain how those who see the cup as half full and those who see the cup as half empty are created.
Thankfully, with effort we can change our worldview by carefully observing our every life experience and examining our reactions to situations that occur. We are human after all, not an inanimate object like a rock. For example, if I notice myself becoming fearful at the thought of asking for a raise, I can ask myself why this is the case and mull that inquiry. Follow that feeling back into the past to previous memories when you felt this feeling. This is one way to untie that emotional knot and become free of emotions stemming from the past that you would prefer to no longer experience.
The more resources we have at our disposal, the more choices and potential we have to experience life to fullest. I find referring to both the Transurfing and more traditional model to be useful. It certainly doesn’t have to be one or the other. Ultimately, all we see are merely perspectives of reality, and our perspectives are mostly just predictions based on our previous experience. It follows that whatever I see in the world I see through the lens of my personal experience, thus I am seeing myself. And this explains the importance of guarding our thoughts, because we tend to experience whatever we think.
But I want to Transurf right now! Tell me what I can do now to overcome procrastination and be more productive.
Tonight as you lie in bed, imagine in your mind’s eye exactly what you would see if you effortlessly started work tomorrow on time. Feel what it would be like to focus solely on your work without distraction. Imagine and really feel anything between now and completing your task as being beneficial to you doing a great job. No matter what comes up, it will lead to inspiration to create an incredible piece of work. Really feel it and see it. It might sound silly, but if you make an effort I guarantee you will notice a difference. Be prepared to really get into your work and be on top of your game, so don’t forget to use FocusMe to schedule a break in advance – we don’t want you to overwork yourself! Sign up for a free trial of FocusMe now, and until next time –Stay Positive!
Great article