We Live What We Choose To Live

In my previous article, I mentioned that this corner would be full of stories, anecdotes, and ideas aimed at improving our ability to be aware of what’s available in the present. I would like to talk a little about “Positive Awareness” a.k.a. Mind the Positive. Think of it as a movement of higher thought or a mindset. Or you may see it as a philosophy of life based not on a phenomenon behind a philosopher, but based on scientific grounds, such as Psychology, Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, Neuroscience, Quantum Physics, etc…

I wonder what emerges in your mind when I say “Mind the Positive”… In fact, the meaning these words bring together is deeper than themselves…. In essence, it says to have a positive look, facing towards positive scenarios; scanning and finding the good in the mind. Despite light blinds one’s eyes in darkness, once under the light, everything’s always bright…. There, this is more or less what positive awareness is!

It’s way too abstract… I know. To the analytical thinkers, these must seem too much hanging up in the air. Agree! When my father, 83 years old, and I talk about such topics, every single time, it feels as if we’re from different worlds . But, both my father and I, together with all the people on this planet, unite under shared feelings; we come to realize that only when we see that we feel same concerns, joys, fears, achievements, defeats, when we feel sufficient or insufficient…. Right now, we’re face-to-face with a phenomenon that unites billions of people… The coronavirus and the fear it strikes upon us!

Since Covid-19 entered into our lives, all of our lifestyles, habits, routines, or needs have completely changed. We used to wash our hands 3-5 times a day on average, mostly before meals, but now we wash them at least 10-15 times a day… With all sorts of processes, we clean and disinfect food items we bring or order in; some of us even leave them in the balcony for a day or two and only then take them in. We do all of this with a single motivation… to protect ourselves from the virus, to keep ourselves safe… and even more, to be able to peacefully say, “okay, that’s it; the corona will not enter this house anymore!”

Now the real question begins… How adequate are the precautions I have taken? To what extent and which chemicals will be enough to say, “it’s done!”? When and how will it be “enough”? For whom; me or the Coronavirus? Instead of answering these questions, I would like to put forward another striking thought: How much, in our perception, do we consider ourselves sufficient to protect ourselves from Corona? Because, unless we consider ourselves enough, what we do and the measures we take will never be enough. What will we do, for example, as we see number of cases rising, will we increase the measures we take even more? We are already washing hands 10 times a day, then we’ll perhaps increase to 15-20 times…. It’s like a tubeless dive into a bottomless pit!

Everything we do in life is related to the way we perceive events and the emotion and thought systems we regulate ourselves with. In this respect, our life begins and continues with our attitudes and behaviors we take. Corona is something that is not visible to the naked eye, but we are teetring on the brink of it with our feelings… I feel like calling it a virus and I can’t; I feel like saying that it is a bacteria but I can’t either… Its name is fear inside us! Something that comes into our lives, haunts our homes, terrorizes us. And that emotion of fear makes us do what we do in its own way… But how far? What’s the bottom?

There’s nothing as natural and human as fear. Every living thing recognizes the emotion of fear, knows it and lives with it. The feeling of fear is a signal emanating from within the person to protect themselves. Imagine standing with your toes at the edge of a cliff… What would be your first reaction? Wouldn’t you take a step back, so you don’t fall? Which emotion is there…? Fear! Well then, think of a little boy wanting to touch a dancing candle flame with his tiny hand… what emotion is there…? Curiosity! After touching the flame and burning himself, a new kind of fear is born and the curiosity about the flame is dead; whenever he sees the flame, from then on, he would keep away…

Ultimately, a certain amount of fear exists to protect ourselves; originated from bad experiences and negative events, it is a protective signal keeping us away from them. Yet too much of anything is harmful! Fear feeds on negativity… and it continues to give birth to new fears, for safeguarding motivation. It helps us visualize the worst possible scenarios, as if real; it even makes us vividly live a scenario that has never taken place… We better familiarized with this feeling, be friends with it; however, keep it away from sinking in, into our home, our bed, our privacy… At some point, we must keep it out.

How would that be? Let’s approach it from another side… Our job will be much easier… If we consider things from the positive rather than the negative side… If we look from the wealth and abundance perspective instead of the scarcity lane! Knowing that we will be safer with our fears… Not despite our fears… Evet without disregarding our fears… But with the awareness of its existence, by saying peacefully and with integrity, “I am taking all the precautions I can take, I am doing the best I can, I would do more if I could…” This way, we may feel safe and confident against the Corona threat… That sense of self-confidence is the greatest and most powerful antibody we can develop within ourselves!

On the other hand, what is it that we mostly do? We struggle in a spiral of thoughts that our measures are not enough. We consume ourselves in doubt, “whether I adequately protect myself from Corona with all the measures I am taking”; we follow the bad scenarios in the news and recent updates and feed our fears with negativity; we push ourselves to inadequacy, scarcity and poverty, and fight against something we cannot even see, nor understand. Instead of sustaining and nourishing poisonous thoughts within us, why not producing antibodies that are present in our own resources when we can? Why not look at our struggles for life from the perspective of abundance and existence, not from the face of scarcity and lack? It is up to us to choose, and consciously do it!

After all, what I’m trying to say is that we have not only one, but two options in the face of Corona or any other similar situation that puts us in trouble: things can go well, or they can go bad. What matters is our stance, how we look, how we behave. The greatest harm we can ever do to ourselves is locking into negativity and thinking only of the worst scenarios. On the other hand, locking fully in the positive and fooling ourselves with the unrealistic optimism “everything will be fine, everything will be awesome….” is a possible serious damage we better watch out.

Well, a balance between the two is the mastery of life. It lies in the ability to see what is as it is; doing our part with our own effort; and relying first on ourselves and then on the wisdom of the cosmic intelligence we’re surrounded with. There is perfection in the essence of that wisdom, there is an impeccable order, beauty, goodness, light, and abundance… We should remember that all of us have our own share to this wisdom, that we have come to these days with that wisdom, and we should focus on what exists in that wisdom.

So, here, this is what philosophy of mind the positive is!

From Barcelona with love.

April 14th, 2020