Increase mental and emotional well-being. Let us feel miserable and unhappy!

Do you wonder if I am happy and in balance and if I feel really good with my self and my life? Do I practise positive thinking? Absolutely! But not always and not all the time! I am also neurotic, anxious, nervous, sad, angry, uncertain, hopeless, miserable, unhappy and worried just like most people. And I have the right to be sad and feel all this other “negative feelings”. It is a vital part of my mental and emotional well-being!

At first I want to make clear that in this article I am not writing about depression or issues like that. This article is just about mentally healthy people even if I know there is a thin line between what is regarded as mentally healthy and not. Maybe there aren't any such people that can be regarded as mentally healthy! The reason for my statement is that this article is not in any way a treatment. It is just about a way to live life as a human being and have a good quality of life.

So lets continue…

Positive thinking isn´t

the same as happiness!

Eyes that do not cry do not see!

Isn't it funny or even odd how we build up ideas or images about our selves and others and make assumptions about how people around us live and feels. We think they have constant mental and emotional well-being! In the same way we also have imaginations about how we are supposed to live and feel. And a big part of the facade is to have a positive attitude and feel happy. The trouble with this idea of constant happiness comes when we compare this image (that isn't true) with our selves.

Imagine what would happen if we could stop that and instead realise that everybody is a bit weird or half crazy from time to time. And we are all right just as we are with all our faults and shortcomings and we don’t need to be happy all the time!

To feel bad, neurotic and unhappy or be angry now and then has become almost forbidden. It is like we try to wipe the negative feelings out of our lives and force our selves to behave and many use positive thinking as a cure to do that! We are constantly told to think positive and by doing so we will reach our goals; that attractive job, be thinner and become better looking and even healthier and most important, we will be happy and have a better quality of life! But is it that easy? Or should it be?

We can learn to use positive thinking as well as other feelings as a way to choose how we want to see our reality. We have been almost brain washed with the “right and positive way” to think, but who can say what is the right way to think, and who can say that it is right to have positive thoughts and be happy all the time and in every circumstances.

It must be OK to feel angry, depressed and miserable now and then. To withdraw one self from others totally and be allowed to mope around the house and be unhappy! To sink deep in crying and tears, to curse, to swear, to hit something or just wonder over life. At least for one day or a couple of days! After a while we will again wake up one day in admiration over the beauty and good that exists around us. And we will feel amazed over the gift it is to wake up to yet another day in this peculiar world.

Positive thinking doesn't mean that we can skip or block feelings like grief or anger. Positive thinking is more about the ability to see the opportunities instead of the obstacles and to take responsibility for our selves and what happen to us.

To go against nature and try and feel happy on a day or in a situation where you are sad or angry is totally meaningless and I think it only takes away focus from the solution to the problem. You can’t solve a situation like that with positive thinking and we can´t solve everything with positive thinking. Sometimes a more realistic approach will be more beneficial.

Anger

Anger is a natural emotion that everybody feels now and then. It is a response to an external threat that can be mentally or physically! We use anger to say no!

Sadness

Sadness is vital in order to be able to feel empathy and be in connection with our feelings!

Fear

Is our answer to danger and is vital for our own protection.

It is a myth that we must feel happy and have positive thoughts all the time in order to be successful and get what we want. And what happens on the inevitable day when we don’t feel happy? Then we regard our self as a failure and/or an unhappy person. In some way we have connected happiness to be the same as positive thinking. And that can´t bee right! If humans where supposed to be happy all the time I imagine that our mouths would have been constant smiling and unable to point downwards!

But our mouths are not naturally stiff and pointing upwards. Instead our mouth and our faces have the possibility to show all kinds of emotions. It is coordination between our mouth, our eyes, eyebrows and face as a whole that shows the great palette of emotions possible for humans.

We communicate with the aid of our faces and I am getting pretty tired of seeing always smiling and seemingly happy people! When I talk to these always smiling persons with stiff smiles there is no joy in their eyes. Sometimes the eyes show the opposite really. And I know that they have fallen into the positive and happiness trap with no clue of why they feel so miserable.

The brain wash of our minds with positive thinking has almost made us believe that if we just think positive everything will be al right and turn out well. And when something bad happens to us or if we become ill we tend to see it like a failure. But it isn´t!

It is just life happening around us!

We need some realistic thoughts, some action, anger, sadness and all kinds of emotions to solve our problems. If we use all our emotions we are more likely to solve problems and see a way out of our problems. That is positive thinking! After you have solved them you can smile again. Not ignore the problem as something that has struck us because we where not positive enough!

Bad things, or life it selves, happens to everybody! The only difference is that those who have a positive view of live knows that after bad times comes good times! That is what we can benefit from having positive thoughts and a positive philosophy about life. It is healthy to have positive thoughts when it is possible to see the possibilities instead of the obstacles.

When we deal with problems and learn to distinguish the things that build and develop us from the things that breaks us we increase our quality of life. If we can use all our emotions we will have mental wellbeing as well as emotional wellbeing.

You can’t expect problems to sort them selves just with the aid of positive thinking and a smile on your face. What we can do is to use all our emotions and try to solve the problems. If that means you have to feel miserable, cry or hit something for several days; so be it!

We must stop to use positive thinking as the only way to happiness. We need the other emotions as well. If you need help to feel miserable and unhappy you can use these videos. They will help you!