Day 131 - Toxic Positivity 

📖Daily Reading

 Proverbs 25

🎥 Video  

Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.

 

📝 Reflection 

 

Proverbs 25: 

 19- Putting confidence in an unreliable person in times of trouble isn like chewing with a broken tooth or walking on a lame foot. 

20- Singing cheerful songs to a person with a heavy heart is like taking someone’s coat in cold weather or pouring vinegar in a wound.

27- It’s not good to eat too much honey, and it’s not good to seek honors for yourself

28- A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls

 

Ok, so what is ‘toxic’ positivity? It is trying to put an overly positive spin on things, which has a good intention often behind it, but it does’t quite jive with reality. Now we all know how complaining can be taken too far and the consequences of that but we don’t look at it’s evil twin. In the self development world there is a lot of attention paid to motivating people, using affirmations, manifesting, just believing etc.. But when not fully understood or when you only stay on the surface level it can be self defeating, rather then self developing. A lot of the reason is ‘toxic’ positivity. 

Think back in the day of the skit on Saturday Night Live- Daily Affirmations by Stuart Smalley. Just look in the mirror and say things like ‘I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people life me!’  Just tell yourself that you believe these things, even if you don’t and eventually you will is the theory. Well guess what your brain calls ‘b@#sh@%t’ on it. This can lead to negative self talk or just ‘trying harder’. What we need to do is try different. To your soul this sounds fake, and like vinegar on a wound.

One of my favorite sayings I use now that my friend Loretta said one day and my brain grabbed onto it was ‘Grace but no excuses’. This phrase combined with what we now know about how the brain learns can all be gleaned from these scriptures in Proverbs. Proverbial wisdom here is telling us, that when we look at these verses within the context of the self. We are relying on our selves to do something and then not following through- maybe we make a grand New Years resolution to eliminate sugar and on day three we have a brownie. We will see this as a failure if we have a 100% compliance policy with ourselves and simultaneously we have motivated ourself with positive affirmations in the first few days saying things to ourselves like ‘I am amazing and I love to eat everything healthy.’  Your brain knows better, it is not going to believe this no matter how many times you tell yourself that. It doesn’t have evidence or experience yet to go with it. 

So when we have that brownie, we shame ourselves. Then someone says or maybe even we say to ourselves hey you deserved that brownie you had a hard day and you just dismiss the event - this can be like pouring vinegar on an open wound (all grace and all excuses). We are not allowing ourselves to feel the reality of being unreliable to ourselves. This is a delicate balance. We don’t want to go to the extreme and punish ourselves, but we also want to be realistic. 

So how do we do this differently with success and support from within? We can use a tool called thought or belief laddering. This allows our brain to climb up the thought and belief ladder from someone, in our example, who wants sugar all the time and can’t imagine a day without it to someone who loves to eat less sugar and really believes it and it is effortlessly living that way. The first rung of this ladder might be “it is possible for me to eat less sugar”. See how different this is? So it allows for where you are, then you can take a baby step and begin to build reliability with yourself. Which will lighten your heavy heart, build up walls of self control and not self deceiving with toxic positivity and then shame and guilt. 

✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt 

 Rather than trying harder, try different, try adding thought and belief laddering into your ‘tool box’. This also works very well with ‘Grace but no excuses’. When you don’t allow yourself and excuses you force yourself to learn from your ‘slip ups’, it also allows you to just keep going up that ladder.

📖Tomorrows Reading

 Proverbs 26

Coaching Opportunity

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