Feeding negativity.

So there's this natural thing that people do when they fall into that really strange and lonely cycle of negativity. When our own heads overwhelm us and everything really does feel like you're the only person around, it feels like nobody else cares, like nobody else wants to hear about the craziness and emptiness in your head- and it's a very weird place to be. The thing that people do is this: they take their negative experience and mindset and they start to feed that negativity.

We can fall into this loop where loneliness or sadness, anger or nothingness becomes what we know and what we're used to. For example, if we're used to being alone we will cancel plans and stay in all night thinking about those plans. We will take personally the "seen" messages and resent ourselves or other people for our loneliness, falling deeper into a negative mindset.

That's just one example of how people feed negativity. Negativity in any form, bad energy or karma or flow, or whatever label you want to give it, can be fed on the smallest things that we do- we can be our biggest obstacle. Why? Because our brains are amazing. We have the capacity to build ourselves into this incredible human being using our own heads. We can decide we are beautiful, we can decide we are confident and capable and that we can achieve whatever limits our own brain puts on us. Successful people do this a lot, they believe they can so they do. Our brains are our biggest enablers.

Equally, our brains can be our greatest obstacle. We can convince ourself we are alone, that we are less than, that we are sad or chubby or inadequate. We have the power to reduce ourselves into darkness, make ourselves feel small and insignificant.



It's so easy to feed a negative mindset- you have a bad day, a bad experience with a person or you make someone upset. you're stressed about work or school and you come home and crash. Your body is in overdrive because you're anxious or stressed or sad and therefore you feel this heavy tiredness. You don't want to move, you don't want to eat good food and socialise and go forward, you just want to it and be sad and soak it up. You want to watch trashy TV and wonder about Kim Kardashian's issues more than your own, you want to binge eat crappy food and scroll through Instragram and feel NEGATIVE.

Don't be embarrassed, don't feel like by stating this stuff I'm trying to call you out on your flaws because everyone does this. Sometimes it's good to feel sad and binge and feel a little sorry for yourself BUT it is not acceptable or healthy to let yourself do this every time something bad happens. The same way an alcoholic responds destructively to hardships in life by picking up a bottle of wine, tequila with breakfast, vodka midweek to soften the blow of work on Thursday morning... people who allow themselves to be consumed by negativity feed it through their actions. You sleep when you need to be productive, you miss out on hanging out with your friends, socialising networking, living your life!? By choosing negativity, feeling sorry for yourself as my mum used to (quite harshly) put it.

The act of choosing negativity can affect people badly in many ways. You have to think of happiness as a total choice that you're in control of. You can choose happiness. You can choose to let those little things get to you and ruin your day or you can pick yourself up and get on with it. You are the only person who can truly control how you feel, you have the capacity to identify and control your emotions, so why not do it in a way that improves your life?

When you're trying to have a less negative outlook on life, appreciate what you're doing and remove yourself from feelings of unhappiness, loneliness or just plain emptiness it's really important to be able to identify in your own mind where and how to make a change. Once you can identify your moods, your triggers and your actions you can then make changes that will enable you to cope better and handle your day to day challenges more effectively.

Life is never going to be perfect, and it's also too short to lie to yourself and think that there is an end goal of a perfect life. t's just not going to happen- you can plan every hour of your days for the rest fo your life, throw money at it, clothes, cars, homes at it, but you will always no matter your situation, face stressful scenarios. You will no matter your walk of life be hurt, be stressed, be anxious or angry or scared at one point or another in your life, we're human, it's an unfortunate side effect of our own condition. You just have to do the best you can to lead a fulfilling and happy life.

This is a list I wrote when thinking about how I tried responding more positively to panic attacks. I used to be at my most productive an optimistic about an hour after I had one, it was this weird time where I was kind of exhausted but also kind of relieved because although often whatever I had been anxious or stressed about was still most likely an issue, after I had a panic attack I tended to rationalise, to plan and organise myself. It's a weirdly ironic time to get a sudden wave of optimism but there we go. Below is a list of things I think are helpful in tying to avoid feeding negativity.

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1. Recognise your behaviour.

When I get into that weird negative head space I've noticed I have a lot of reoccurring behaviour and now that I know what I do when I allow myself to be negative I can recognise it in myself.

I tend to avoid any kind of social interaction. I get sad and lonely and then proceed to make myself feel worse by not messaging anyone or texting anyone to hang out or chat or converse in any way that would improve my mood. I tend to avoid going out and making plans, I convince myself they're going to be a disaster, that people would have a way better time without me and that I am not wanted or needed, therefore resulting in a lot of time spent on the floor of my room trying to find an excuse not to go out and convincing myself I am totally alone in this world that we live in. Looking back on this behaviour in a normal everyday mindset of a fully functional and currently happy person I can see how ridiculous this kind of thing is, but the thing is it happens and it's important no matter how ridiculous your behavioural traits to identify your behaviour and take steps to avoid doing these things.

I listen to really sad or angry music. There's a song for everything, when I was 13 I had my first "boyfriend"- his name was harry, he liked my Facebook profile picture and we held hands a lot. He subsequently broke up with me by text. In fairness I wasn't actually that upset about the break up as both being obscenely awkward with each other it was probably for the best- sorry Harry. I listened to Taylor Swift 'Fearless' album for a week straight and then got over it, it was perfect break up music. I tend to gravitate towards music that fits my mood, if I'm going through a tougher day then you can usually tell by my Spotify playlists. If there's a lot of old school Paramore and loud sad songs then chances are I'm feeding the sad/ angry thoughts in my head and angrily laying on my bed while my laptop plays loudly. After a while I start getting a little too into the songs and the shoutiness and the lyrics and get all resentful and upset- more than I even was before? If I can feel myself doing that I tend to stop or switch the track to something less heavy or more positive.

I get pissed off at every little thing, and I mean everything. Messiness is my biggest thing when I am upset or anxious. Now here's the thing, I am not a particularly neat freak type person. I don't need to have my room at right angles at all time, there is clean laundry on my bed, my desk, piled in the bottom of my wardrobe. Make-up and hair products litter my floor on a fairly daily basis because even if I put them away they all seem to creep back out of their box when I'm flailing about trying to get ready to go somewhere. I like my room to be clean, like hoovered and dusted, and I couldn't be one of those people who leaves food in their room but I'm not crazy about cleanliness. That is until I'm stressed or upset. I get really  mad if theres plates and cups out of the dishwasher, I hoover with a little bit of craziness if the carpet isn't looking s good. I tidy things into boxes with what my mother has pointed out is a very very serious face on and I get mad at every member of my family for not keeping the house in pristine condition. I now kind of know when I'm getting a little crazy and wiping surfaces with a little bit of malice... I'm nuts when I'm anxious.

2. Productivity makes every person feel better.

The reason I started this blog was to have a positive creative outlet where I could be productive in a way that would benefit both me and other people. I write a lot of little things just in a journal and stuff too, I've always liked writing and being creative, it's always been something I find so satisfying and calming. I tend to find when I am angry or upset I get really fidgety and I need to occupy my time with something. When I redirect my negative energy I tend to get a lot of shit done if I'm honest. I plan a couple of blog posts, my room gets tidied, I cook, I make to do lists- all that kind of stuff is a good and productive use of your time that not only occupies your thoughts and prevents your obsessing over your anxieties but also helps to organise your life and reduce stress in other areas.

3. If you can't help it, limit yourself.

Sometimes even when you are recognising your own behaviour, it can be really difficult to stop what you're doing and return to this normal clam place. Even if you can hear your own thoughts taking a turn for the more depressing side or more anxious side, it can be really difficult to pull yourself together out of that mentality. So if you really can't help but worry or stress or feel sad or lonely- it's totally normal, and acceptable to feel those things, sometimes you need to feel that way for a while so you can process things and THEN move along with your life. So, instead of stopping yourself immediately, limit yourself. Say "I am going to give this 10 minutes more of my time and then I am going to get on with my life", or "I will listen to 2 more sad songs and then get some clothes on and go out after some Beyonce", or "Screw this, I am going to chat to my best friend after I mope about for half an hour max". Do not let your bad moment and bad mood continue through your day, you can have a bad couple of hours, or hour, you can have a bad morning but don't let your mood ruin your own day because that is a slippery slope into being in a bad mood for a couple of days, or weeks, or months.

4. Find out what your quick fixes are. Mine go a little like this...

• Music, the cheesier the better- I tend to swing over to the Taylor Swift, One Direction side of thinks to reaffirm my shocking and mildly irritating belief in love. Then I usually follow with a little Beyonce or Rihanna to remind myself I'm strong and sexy and cool as hell. (I'm not but damn do I feel like it after a few tracks.
• Comfortable clothes- wear something that will make you feel good, that you know you look damn fine in and just put it on. Do your hair or your make-up just for yourself and you don't even have to go out. Just feel good in what you're wearing.
• Funny Youtube videos- vloggers, comedy videos, cat videos, whatever makes you smile!
• Socialising- you won't feel like it but I promise it will help. Make plans to hang out with a friend, talk to them about your worries or don't. Get a coffee, have them come over, make some food, chill out and just talk and interact. I swear it helps to talk to people, it helps to not be alone sometimes even if all you want to do is be by yourself. 

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Every single person in this world deserves to be happy and feel accepted and at peace with their life, every person has the right to live their life to the fullest and experience some level of self fulfilment and joy. Life is not always easy, sometimes it will be a real struggle and we have to cope with those times as best we can- how we handle the tough stuff is what makes us who we are, not our reactions to when life is smooth sailing.

Everyone has the capacity to make themselves happy and live a happy life, you're not only deserving but capable of creating that life for yourself. But, you have to choose that life. It is so so easy to feed negativity and allow it to consume you for days. It's so scary how many days you lose to negative energy, where it feels like you're just floating day to day trying to feel more than emptiness but
it can be so so different, it can be so much better. So don't lose days to that kind of mindset, life is too damn short to lose days over anything, you have to be able to see this bigger picture and make yourself a life you are proud of and happy to lead.

Tips: Do the things that make you happy.

At some points in life people don't have any advice to give you. Your friends, your mum and your dad, your boyfriend or girlfriend, even your grandparent's, who seem to have an opinion or advice about everything in life, due to a combination of both years of experience and nosiness, will sometimes not have a pearl of wisdom for you. They will not have a comforting direction to point you in sometimes because as you grow up, more and more, there are some decisions you need to make for yourself.

Your friends, parent, boyfriends, girlfriends, teachers, school office ladies, favourite Starbuck's man, brothers or sisters are never going to be the ones to decide the important things in your life. They are not always going to be able to deal with your stuff for you no mater how many times they've done it before, and there comes a time where you're making a decision, struggling and way in over your head and all they can offer you is "do what makes you happy".

The majority of the time, most people find this response wholly unhelpful and can be really irritated by it. Sometimes you feel like you are in desperate need of some guidance, but truth be told, if you're at the stage where the people in your life are telling you simply to do what makes you happy, then you need to be the one to take control of your own situation.

Doing what makes you happy does not always mean you are a selfish person. Doing what makes you happy all the time or at the expense of others makes you a selfish person. 

Some people are capable of living their lives in an entirely self-centred bubble of indulgence, where they act purely in their own interests for the purposes of furthering their own ends and interests. Some people live in a selfish way because they do only what makes them happy with no consideration for those around them. You will probably know people like this and will also know that these people tend to be destructive in that although they can be fun and spontaneous and wild that they will not pick up the pieces of you if they break you along the way. It is unsustainable to try and live doing only things that make you happy because sometimes you need to be a grown up and take on the responsibilities you have.

However, equally living to make others happy is also not sustainable. The term 'people-pleasing' is entirely apt here: living purely to accommodate the needs of others will tire you in such a way that you can deteriorate mentally as well as physically and sometimes its important to bare in mind your own health in more ways than one in order to create a life for yourself that is not selfish but sustainable. It's all about balance. The balance between the interests of ones self and the interests of what we love.

When dealing with things like anxiety and depression it is so so important to allow yourself room to breathe and do the things that make you happy, because often when you're in a place where anxiety or depression or generally consuming negativity overwhelms you, it can only really be you that can pull yourself out of that state of mind. When dealing with those issues people can feel really isolated and alone in their issues and in their life in general- which of course is not the case at all as globally, more than 350 million people of all ages suffer from depression and recent research suggests that as many as 1 in 6 young people will experience an anxiety condition at some point in their lives. This is the thing: you are not alone.

Often people dealing with their own issues feel like something is going to come and save them, whether that be a person or medication, a spiritual calling etc etc. Sometimes this really does happen. Due to the fact that more and more in modern society, mental health is being more widely addressed and discussed, there have been huge advances in medical fields within therapy and the pharmaceutical industry to try and combat such wide spread issues like depression and anxiety. But here's the thing, even with the drugs or the therapy or the calming oils and anything like that, you have to want to feel better- and within this wanting to feel better you have to be active in trying to recover or maintain a level of functionality and happiness in your life. Hence why personally I feel that doing things that makes you happy, or once made you happy, if you're stuck in a cycle of depression or overwhelming anxiety. The things that made you happy once made you happy for a reason, embrace those reasons and try to reach what you felt before.

It is very easy to feel isolated and alone, it is very easy to avoid people or social situations because of the complications that may arise. It is easy to resist love and affection which is shocking because it may be what you need the most, but you don't realise it. It is easy through learned behaviour to do what allows us to feel numb or to feel nothing at all for fear of falling to something stronger like anger or sadness. But you shouldn't- life is not a case of surviving 75 years of your own mind! Life is for  LIVING and loving and finding who you are, and then maybe in the lives of very few or possibly in the lives of many, making a positive difference and mark on the world before we leave. Doing the things we love and that make us happy allows us to more fully live our lives, rather than survive.

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If you need any more persuasion to love yourself then, here, some reasons why you should do the things that make you happy:

Doing what makes you happy does not have to be a big deal. When I say do what makes you happy it does not always mean make huge life choices that are tailored specifically to a direction of interest in your life, it can be very small things. For example, taking time out of your day to listen to music away from people, read, take a bath and use all of those hugely overpriced bath bombs you bought on a whim and never touched. Condition the crap out of your hair, read a crappy romantic book you enjoy- little things that you do can make so much difference to your overall mood.

Doing what makes you happy can help you repair yourself. This process can work in two ways. Firstly, if you are making decisions based upon what makes you happy in life, decision making is often made much easier because you know what will make you personally happy and what will not. Often for people who suffer with anxiety or depression decision making can be hard- because you second guess yourself and your decisions often not focussing on your own needs or interests instead worrying about 100 different consequences or people's opinions, imagining yourself into absurd and negative scenarios. But if you need to make a fast decisions that will in no way infringe the freedom of other's then focussing your decision making around what makes you happy will allow you to make faster and more defined decisions.

After a long day or a hard day where it was difficult to ground yourself in your own thoughts, doing what makes you happy can lift your mood again and repair your for the next day. Involving yourself entirely in something that will make you happy kind of anchors you, emotionally, mentally- it puts you in a state where your focus is yourself, which can allow you to focus on healing yourself too.

Doing what makes you happy can allow you to develop as a person. Doing what makes you happy allows you to realise what it is that you enjoy, what it is that you're good at so that you can then go on to pursue it. Doing what makes you happy allows you to realise what brings you down so that you can identify with and distance whatever or whoever it is from yourself so that you can live feeling as free and happy as you possibly can.

Doing what makes you happy is healthy. Going on from what I previously mentioned about doing what makes you happy allowing you to identify what makes you unhappy, this process of creating distance between yourself and negative energy can bring a great deal of calm and balance to your life. I'm not entirely sure about the whole ying and yang cycle of the world but what I have gathered from it is that the concept of balance is central to the world. Balance leads to health, it's simple.

Some people believe that on an ecological level, in the ideas of biocentric equality etc, some people subscribe to a kind of holism (an idea that every living thing in the universe is intrinsically linked to each other, and stresses the importance of studying relationships between organisms rather than individuals in a really atomistic view of society). Whatever reason people have for believing in balance, it seems to create the greatest happiness. Balance allows for harmony, for natural processes to sync and become one whole system that allows individuals to thrive and it is so important to create balance within our own lives, within a work or education and home life, or even within our own minds between our positive and negative thoughts, the selfless and the selfish etc.

This whole thing brings me back to my original idea in this post- the idea that sometimes you have to make decisions that no one else can help you with and that will require you, however scary or infuriating or saddening, to make choices by yourself. In many situations it is obviously important to consider the thoughts of others, however: if a decisions is going to affect you deeply and not really have an impact on those around you, if you are not harming anyone then it is important to do what makes you happy- because this life is too damn short to exist and not live.

Years pass quicker and quicker as we get older and it is easy to fall into a trap of monotonous existence. Why are the best years of your life only a period of time? Why not extend happiness across your whole existence and really live it? I don't know about how to achieve self realisation, nor do I have a quick fix to provide a person with happiness, but I do know that it is important to foster happiness and feed it in the same way we feed negativity or consumerism, love or hate or any big emotion. If you have the capacity to do what makes you happy and live your life to its very fullest potential, as every single person on this earth does... then why not?