Positive thinking and other such things I know nothing about

[kellinator]

I've been thinking lately that the reason so many marvelously suckalicious things happen to me is because I expect them to.

Ever seen Red Dwarf? If not, you should. Go watch it now and then come back and read the rest of this post. If you have (and that's all of you now, because I just know that you all do exactly what I tell you to!) then remember the episode "Better Than Life"? The crew is playing this awesome virtual reality game called Better Than Life, where you can have all your wildest desires come true. At first things are great, as you'd expect, but then the crew members find themselves in danger because even in a virtual reality paradise, Rimmer imagines bad things happening to him. That's me. When my mind wanders, it frequently takes me into worst-possible-case scenarios. Most days I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I would love to follow through on metaphorge's advice and practice perfectly positive thinking, but there are two problems:

1). I don't know how;

2). More importantly, I'm not sure if I can let myself. You know what my bio page says? "Her mission in life is to make the bad things funny." That's what I do. I bitch. And the only reason I get away with it as much as I do is I attempt to do it in an amusing manner. atomicnumber51 would have hung up on me and banished me to Too Lame For Hogwarts if I didn't do my bitching so snarkily.

I'm not Little Miss Mary Fucking Sunshine. And even if becoming her would solve all my problems, would I still be me?

Comments

[tikimama.livejournal.com]

Defeatest thinking. You are who you are because you are, you are not the things that happen to you. If you want good things to happen, you have to allow for them, to realize that it's ok. If not, you'll keep seeking out people and situations that give you that familiar disappointment and pain.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Red Dwarf? Way funny! My brother introduced me to it.

and I have no answer to the "do bad things happen because you expect them to?" question. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I wish I could give you a pat answer, but other than 42, there are no pat answers.

Re:

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

This reminds me, I should probably go ahead and email your brother. New friends are always good.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I was wondering, but couldn't think of a tactful and non-nosy way to ask...

[lac.livejournal.com]

I don't think you need to be Miss Mary Sunshine...hell, I'm not. No one should expect you to be anything less or more than you are.

That being said...you may want to look at the fact that the snarkiness may be taking over. You have to be able to see the good in things and in yourself sometimes. Being self deprecating is funny...for a bit and then it just becomes bigger than you and it becomes an issue.

You are wonderfully snarky about things that you shold be snarky about...but what I see is you...and I hope you don't take offense...is you hiding behind your snarkiness. I think you have a hell of a lot to offer the world...I really do but, you have to be able to think about some things in a positive light and you have to learn to not be so hard on yourself.

How you do this is unfortunatly up to you. I speak from experience here...I was a LOT like you and I got seriously fed up with myself. I'm a much kinder, gentler version of myself than I used to be. It's a happy medium. I just basically had to find out what made me happy, what things I can take consolation and joy from and go with those and try to make my days not so laden with me being miserable and just make myself happy.

I think you do know what makes yourself happy or at least what makes you smile (and not just being snarky missy!)...it's hard to find your way sometimes but I have faith you can do it.

Re:

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for posting this. I think you're right; I am hiding behind the snark. And at a certain point it drives people away.

I don't know what's going to change it... Maybe I'll get a notebook and every night write five good things about the world and five good things about myself. You think it'll help?

[lac.livejournal.com]

First off...I love that you mention Red Dwarf by the way, I love RD.

I think that's a good start, absolutely. If you have to sit down and think about it, after awhile...it should become a lot easier for you. But you can't qualify it with...XYZ Is good, but ABC, which is connected is bad. If it's good, it's good. I just started to concentrate on the positive things in my life...friends, working with the kitties, etc and it really changed my attitude about a lot of things.

[gina.livejournal.com]

I love Red Dwarf. You're probably one of the few people who wouldn't think my cat is named for some nasty anal sexual act. :)

[kmeghan.livejournal.com]

Damn i love red dwarf. it used to be on PBS, but not anymore.. and that makes me sad. That show actually helped me pass a test once. :)

Re:

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Really? How?

[kmeghan.livejournal.com]

well.. it was when i was out at the farm on camups (when I used to ride horses) and we had to take a test. We had to do this horrible thing to the geldings to get a hard deposit of"smegma" out of their ureathra's (SP?) and I couldn't for the life of my remember what the hell it was called on the written test. but i thought of red dwarf.. and I got it right. :0)

(it's gross I know.. the things I used to do for horses)