People are always asking me how am I so positive?

People assume that being positive is the easy choice,
that positivity is much more simple than negativity.

Who doesn’t want to feel good about stuff right?
Just have positive frame of mind,
its just an attitude.

I mean it’s really tough to be in a negative frame of mind,
to have all those thoughts and scenarios whirling around in your head.
It’s exhausting and way harder than staying positive.

But the truth is that being negative is easy the option,
it definitely hurts more and is emotionally tough but it’s the easy option.

Negativity Is a bit like the grand canyon.
the grand canyon is amazing to behold,
but it’s just a groove that water once found in solid rock.
Over millennia the water continued to run over that groove carrying imperceptibly small pieces of rock and silt away.

Our negative thoughts and emotions are the same.
They dig a groove in our mind and it is  much easier to allow those thoughts,
feelings emotions,
deeply held beliefs,
scenarios
and mental pictures to continue unchecked and unrestrained.
To allow negativity to keep digging out a grand canyon in our mind,

One of the worst, most horrible examples of this is fat talk.
You know the talk that we girls do to each other where one of us says

“Aghh I hate my fat arse”
and then our best friend says right back
“your arse is hot, it’s my horrible non-existant top lip that needs to get fixed, I'm getting fillers”
and so on in a spiral.

The first negative comment starts digging the groove and the other comments follow creating an interpersonal grand canyon of negativity.
That particular grand canyon leads to contagious eating disorders,
a reliance on cosmetic surgery and painful gaping wound in our picture of ourselves,
a Grand Canyon of self hate.

So weirdly,
negativity is easy,
start with a small groove and the thoughts that follow continue to dig out a Grand Canyon.

On the other hand positivity requires work.
It is actually a series of practices.
It requires focus it require that ability to pull yourself back from negativity,
to examine that thought and to counter it with a positive or neutral thought.

When I started dating my boyfriend 6 or 7 years ago I wasn’t that far from the depths of my eating disorder. I was past the worst but the negative groove was still so deep.

One day he challenged me to say one nice thing about myself.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t find anything.

Anything about the way I looked.
Anything about the way I was.
Anything about what I could do.

So he challenged me to start saying one thing nice about myself a day.
It was the start of something amazing.

It was also the start of a realisation that being positive was a practice.
That to dig out a Grand Canyon of happiness
I would have to do the work

Seeing my therapist and engaging in that process is work and when I do it right I’m exhausted.

Mediation is a practice,
I have to clear space in my day and sit down with myself.
Mediation is like training it allows you to do enough reps so that when your mind jumps to the negative you can pull it out of that groove you are building before it becomes the grand canyon.

It’s crucial

Making sure that I use the right thoughts,
the right words
and take the right actions is key
and it requires constant vigilance.

In this whole world the only things I can control are my
thoughts
words
and actions.
and that control takes discipline.

So many times people come to me talking about how the want to transform their body.
I’m one of the best in the world at that.
But in truth
you actually want liberation
from deeply held negative feelings,

You want to lose 5kg
so that you can “feel more confident”
which means to look in the mirror and be happy with the reflection coming back at you
But you are still a prisoner in your own mind.
You think/hope/guess that actions will annihilate your pain.

“I ate more then i was supposed to yesterday,
I’m never going to lose weight,
I have to lose this fucking fat
I’m so horrible to look at and because of my disgusting body,
I’ll never have someone to love me,
I’m more horrible then they can even guess anyway
I’ll be alone,
I’ll never have children
and it’s all because I’m so weak and lazy
So I’ll go to the gym and do a weights session and two hours on the treadmill.”

You believe that you can out-exercise your pain.
But actions are only a part of the solution.

I see it all the time when girls start in The Sports Model Project
and they refuse to believe that they need to eat more and exercise way less than they have been.
They have internalised that liberation must only come from action

But….

Liberation comes in this order
Right thoughts
Right words (especially to ourselves)
Right actions.

Positivity takes work
Start now and dig out your Grand Canyon of happiness.

Love And Light
Hattie
xoxox