POSITIVITY

​“We use hashtags to share ideas, and positivity is something worth sharing." — Jason Dimitropolis

In 2017 I joined forces with my long-time friend Jason Dimitropolis to help him with his mission to spread positivity in our world. Through his company Hashtag Positivity we’ve gone into several schools and businesses to share positivity principles and strategies, and one thing we’re always sure to share is what it really means to live a life of positivity because there’s often some misunderstanding behind it.

A common complaints about positivity is that it ignores reality and encourages people to walk around with “rose-colored glasses,” but this is a misguided view of positivity.  Any perspective of the world that ignores reality is one that prevents us from being witness to the awesome wonder that life holds, and that’s not positivity—that’s just sad!

A better view of positivity sees it as a lifestyle that enables us to see the amazing opportunity in any situation, allowing us to approach everything—regardless of circumstances or criticism—with a focus on what is “good” rather than on what is “bad.” In this way, even if things don’t work out as we’d hoped, positivity allows us to accept what happens, come what may, believing that things always work out just as it needs to.  And if we don’t happen to like the way that things work out, positivity keeps us open to learning from the experience rather than closing ourselves off to our growth and development.

The Magic Word Positivity suggests that we are exactly where we should be considering everything we’ve done to get here. In other words, everything we experience today is a result of everything we’ve done leading up to today. Choosing positivity reminds us to take personal responsibility for our lives, and if we don’t like the results of our experiences then that doesn’t mean we have to wait around for others to change or for our circumstances to change; rather, it means that we need to change, to grow to become more than perhaps we ever dreamed we could be. In other words, positivity is a call to not just go through life, but to instead grow through life.
 
REFLECTION
What are you doing today to facilitate positive experiences?