Last week the garage at my apartment building was broken into. I have a storage locker inside the garage, where I keep various athletic gear, which was also broken into. In that storage locker, there were two items of significant value that could have been stolen: my mountain bike and my skis. The thieves, probably for reasons of convenience, took my bike.
The obvious reaction in this situation would be to get really upset … but that didn’t happen. I was a little upset, but mostly I was relieved. Why?
Well, upon opening my storage locker, I immediately registered two facts: my bike was gone but my skis were not. And I quickly decided that this was lucky on several accounts:
- They could have taken both items, but only took one. It could have been worse. Seeing my skis there in my locker, definitively not stolen, I felt the relief of a near-miss.
- My skis mean a lot more to me than my bike. I like riding my bike, but I don’t mountain bike anymore, so I don’t really need that type of bike. On the other hand, I am still extremely passionate about skiing, and I love this pair of skis. I have over 300 days on them, and I’m very accustomed to the way they ride. When I wear them, they’re like an extension of my body. I’ve never had that relationship with this bike.
- Replacing my skis would cost more money than replacing my bike. I’ll get another bike, but since I no longer mountain bike, I have no reason to spend much money on a new bike. I’ll probably just get a used road bike on Craigslist. But I definitely would have bought new skis and new bindings had my skis been taken. And that would be expensive.
While it was certainly unlucky that there was a robbery at all, given that there was a robbery, I had gotten lucky. Furthermore, I not only recognized that there was a bright side to the situation, I deliberately chose to focus on it. Had I interpreted the situation differently, I would have been much less happy. This, I believe, is an example of positive thinking done right.
I didn’t delude myself into thinking that this robbery was somehow a good thing. It plainly wasn’t. I didn’t think of it as a “blessing in disguise” designed to teach me a lesson about materialism or privilege. And I didn’t throw up my hands and do nothing. I registered my bike with a bike-theft registry. I filed a police report. I spoke with my landlord about improving building security. And I removed my other valuables from the storage locker. I took positive action in response to this bad thing happening.
It did occur to me that I had just spent $150 replacing some of the old components on my bike, and that I had only gotten to ride it twice since then. It did occur to me that the ski season had just ended and bike season was just beginning. I wasn’t happy about losing the bike. We’d had some good times together.
But I also wasn’t overly upset. I accepted it readily, in part due to the reasons stated above, and, in part due to the depth of my mental health practices. By meditating* every day for almost three years, I’ve become much more content in general and much more difficult to ruffle. By regularly writing in a gratitude journal for several years, I’ve trained my brain to focus on what I have to be grateful for rather than what I have to be upset about. As a result, when something like this happens, I don’t lose sight of the fact that most things in my life are going really well. And because I have a morning routine of self-care, my mind was well prepared to deal with a bit of bad news.
Positive thinking done right isn’t ignoring bad things when they happen. It’s accepting what has happened and choosing to move forward anyway. Positive thinking done right isn’t deluding yourself into believing things that simply aren’t true. It’s remembering the truth that one bad thing happening does not negate all the good things in your life. Positive thinking done right is about what you choose to focus on.
Not every bad situation has a bright side, and you shouldn’t invent one in order to “stay positive.” But when there is a bright side, don’t ignore it.
*Acceptance is one of the four components of mindfulness, and meditation is the primary way to develop mindfulness.