The Green & Red Platform (Searching for Positivity)
We cannot control many of the situations that occur in our lives, but we can control how we respond to them. As psychology suggests it is not the event itself that matters, but our perception of it. The interpretation we form about a situation or a person will give rise to certain feelings and behaviors.
The following platforms show us two different ways of thinking and acting about an event.
On the one hand, on the Red Platform there is anger, guilt, blame, responsibility and "victimhood" stories (external factors are considered responsible), as well as fear, anxiety, doubt and negative thinking.
On the other hand, on the Green Platform there is joy, love, inspiration, enthusiasm, commitment, optimism, awareness, acceptance and positive action, as well as "can do" stories and positive thinking.
So how can we choose the Green Platform more often, i.e. choose positive feelings and thoughts?
We first need to make an analogy between the Green Platform and an orange. Even if we cut or squeeze it, what we get will still be an orange. The same happens on the Green Platform; regardless of the circumstances what we will feel and express in our environment in the end will have a positive denominator, because that is all that exists within us.
Specifically, when something happens, the steps we adopt should be as follows:
Fully experience the situation, fully respect your feelings.
Accept the situation, as if you had chosen it.
Positive action: Look for something positive and also act in a positive way.
However, acceptance cannot exist without positive action, otherwise you will be driven to inaction. Accept what is happening, but I act upon it with positivity.
- It is important to focus on the “now”. To experience the moments we live. Our obsession with "destination", reminiscing the past and thinking about what our future holds, does not help us find positivity in our lives.
- A key pillar of the Green Platform is awareness. We need to avoid generalizing, distorting and erasing the facts. Self-Deception cannot lead to Self-Improvement. It is quite helpful to shift the focus of the story towards ourselves , that is, to focus on the role we ourselves have in this story and to look for alternatives.
- Self-fulfilling prophecies. What we expect, that will come. If we focus on something negative we will wait for it to come. Even our brain, depending on what we set as a goal or what we expect to happen, sorts all the stimuli that we receive from the environment and places it in the "important bin" or the "trash can".
We will all find ourselves on the Red Platform now and then; what matters is how long we stay there. It is important that we make the switch to the Green Platform soon; to cultivate positivity constantly so that we make a habit of heading there no matter the circumstances.
Changes in our lives are difficult but also very often pleasant. We need to remember that we are the ones who play the leading role in our lives:
"Give me the serenity to accept the people I can't change. (They are the way they are). The courage and awareness to change the one I can. (Guess who?) and the wisdom to know that that's me."