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I’d rather sit with someone who is negative all day long than be with someone pushing positivity on me.
Why? Because they are real. Sometimes, it just sucks, and it’s okay to express it.
Life has positives and negatives—it just does. It’s designed that way. Science proves this.
It’s dismissing the journey they are currently going through in their own process.
Many gurus will say, “Stay positive.” I don’t buy that mentality. There is a lot to learn from negativity. It’s there for a reason. They aren’t accepting this person’s own process and remembering that they, too, were negative in their own journey, where they might have hit the bottom.
If we live outside of duality, then negative is just an expression and without judgment, it is what it is. Positivity is a judgment, just like negativity is. Either way, it’s our projection.
I have no issue with someone sharing the crappy stuff they are going through because it is what they are experiencing. I can offer at least a listening ear and nonjudgment.
One of the things I consistently hear from people I’ve spoken to or worked with is that I don’t judge them, and it works miracles when we just are present with someone with an open heart and when judgment isn’t even present. We offer them so much more than advice.
Humans have an innate desire to be heard. If they don’t feel heard by one person, they will seek it out from another. As Aimee Baitman says, “Our need to be heard is greater than our fear of being judged.” I totally agree. That is my experience, too.
Really, who gave us the right to judge what they are going through? Who are we to judge that they should be over it by now? That they should have healed by now? That they should change their mindset to be positive?
In my own life, I’ve gained a lot of insight from “negativity.” I really am happy I didn’t cover it up with positivity. Sometimes it isn’t negativity; it is reality. In our need to meet the positivity quota, we don’t stop to really notice it isn’t negative; it just is.
You cannot say you trust the process, the universe, God, or whatever you call a higher power and in another breath, you tell someone their process should be done by now. It should change. It should be different.
“If You are going through hell, keep going.” ~ Winston Churchill
It’s teetering on the fence of toxic positivity where we use positivity as a weapon.
We are either walking away from someone because we don’t want to be around “negativity,” or we are telling them they are being negative. This might show up in the form of over-talking, eye-rolling, smirking, or other body language where we show our dissatisfaction. We are covertly saying that whatever they are being isn’t acceptable.
We have every right to not associate with people who do not support us or find good in us, or treat us with respect. We do not have to show them we are somehow more evolved than they are by our harsh judgment (either expressed verbally or with body language), that they are not desired because of their negativity. I’ve seen this in action when someone who believes they are evolved says that “it is frustrating to be around people who are not awake.”
It’s a fine line indeed. One is accepting where they are and the other is honoring it and noticing how it affects us, looking at that, and then deciding where our judgment of them is coming from.
Is it coming from an egoic ideal that “negative is bad?” Is it coming from a place of superiority? That somehow our life is going well and we take credit for it and what we are doing is far more acceptable than the experiences they are having currently? It’s there for us, too.
I see this a lot in my work. This idea that their life is going well and so that means they are doing it right. Maybe, but what they are going through at any given moment is what they need to go through and they might possibly be doing it right, too.
It’s just showing up differently.
When we do this, most likely they will feel dismissed. They are not likely to just snap into place and bypass the hard crap they are going through, and bam! It is all healed. They might all of a sudden snap out of it and then have to process it later on because they took a detour. Either way, what they have to go through is what they have to go through. We aren’t a judge and jury.
Who are we to say they shouldn’t hit rock bottom?
Acceptance of their journey goes a long way into shifting a world that is quickly getting stuck in their perception of positivity, even when our perception of positivity is just that: our perception.
To me, this is important as a coach, as a friend, and as a human. To accept the person’s experiences and not judge where they are on their journey.
I might not like it, it might irritate me, or even cause me anger. But that is for me to look at and not project outwardly that somehow, I’m more evolved than they are.
Trust me, they feel it.
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