Friday, October 7, 2011

The Positives of Negativity

I have a friend who told me once that anger isn't always bad - you just have to keep a firm leash on it and channel it into achieving something positive. It was a life-changing moment for me when he said that.  I'm quick and passionate with my emotions, often to my own detriment.  I'd accepted long ago that it will probably be several more lifetimes before I reach anything approaching Nirvana.  But with those words I realised that providing I control my negative emotions (especially anger), I can use them as motivation to achieve or a spark to ignite others to action.

This week's negative emotion is not anger, it's just anxiety.  There are a bunch of bad situations I have no control over at the moment and while some of them are closer to home than others, all of them are tying my guts in knots and giving me restless nights.  Since there's almost nothing I can do about most of them (especially the work-related stuff), I've decided to distract myself with cleaning, catching up on sewing and exercising.  Still wondering what the hell that little conversation actually meant?  Do another 20 sit-ups.  Worried about your husband's back?  Go clean the spare room.

I am not the sort to obsess for long.  Most things in life, as far as I'm concerned, are not worth more than 24 hours' worth of mental energy and angst.  But somehow I've landed in a sort of thicket of issues and the sheer number of them means they're taking longer to push through than usual.  So rather than fight my way out of here I'll just take this coming week of leave and channel all my frustrations into productive endeavors.  Like cleaning out the walk-in wardrobe in the spare room...

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