Shift Your Mental Space and Find the Good in the Bad

I had a client ask me, “What do you do when bad things happen?” He referenced toxic positivity, something that he said feels prevalent in our society. Toxic positivity can be described as only focusing only on the “good things.” I think of it as turning away from struggle or pain, the deliberate suppression of a moment in which we could sit with some one who is hurting. We choose not to listen to understand because it might feel uncomfortable or there may be nothing we can “do” about it. I believe the best in people so I also believe that many people were never taught to sit and listen when some one hurts. Maybe no one did that for us and we might feel that it is unnecessary or “just a part of life” and we need to push down or deny feelings.

I was fortunate to have a parent who was compassionate. When I was struggling she would say to me, “I am sorry for your pain. I wish I could take it from you. Since I can’t, I am going to sit here with you and listen.” Sometimes she would just hold me as I cried. I think a lot about how much her desire to turn towards my pain shaped my courage to hold the pain of others.

There is something about the way our brain works that makes us categorize the things that happen. We analyze “good” and “bad” and allow it to fuel whether or not our days, weeks and months are satisfying. I think it is true that our brain is protective in that way and I also think that there is no such thing as all bad and all good in this life. Think about your last vacation or something you looked forward to, like going to see your favorite band. There were some amazing highs and fun moments. I am also guessing there were a couple of things that made you think, “I didn’t like that. That doesn’t feel good.”

The same is true of our choices. I think we get very caught up in the idea that we might make a “good” or a “bad” choice. Then our brain may spiral about the potential pros and cons of each element of the choice. If we are honest, we cannot really find 100% good or 100% bad in anything.

Let’s practice:

An Exercise for the Good and the Bad Choices Inspired by Deepak Chopra

1.) Take out a pen and paper and write “good choices” on one side and “bad choices” on the other. Fill out the “good choices” section first. I write things like “Finishing my degrees” “Marrying my partner” “Becoming a parent” “Passing my licensure” “Working on my wellbeing” and “Working as a therapist.”

2.) Write the things you consider to be “bad choices” on the other side of the paper. You might find that these come easily if you tend to dwell on choices you are not proud of. I write things like “Sneaking out of my house as a teenager” “Not speaking up for myself in my relationships” “Staying too long in my marriage” “Substance use in my 20s” “Not getting my PhD.”

3.) Now look at your “good choices” category and think about something you might consider to be “bad” that happened within choosing that thing. In my first example of “finishing my degrees” I would say that I had a mental health collapse in college because I was not talking about how stressed I felt or asking for what I needed. My friends told me to see a therapist but I had too much shame to want to be vulnerable and seek one out. Not going to a therapist and having a mental health break in college was a “bad” thing that happened within my “good choice.”

4.) Now do the reverse. What good might have come out of the “bad choice”? If we take my example of “sneaking out of my house as a teenager” I think one of the things it did for me was to help me to establish that I did not always have to listen to what someone else wanted for me. Leaving my strict home at night gave me a sense of freedom. I was able to establish a bit more of a sense of myself outside of the punishments, hours of lectures and family routines.

To answer my client, I do not believe in bad or good. I believe in growing, so with any of the choices I make, I learn from them. If I make a choice that feels aligned and exciting, I do not expect that everything about it will be perfect. If I make a choice that I wish I had not made, I journal about it and look for the lesson. I integrate learning into each new experience and you can, too. There are not black and white choices, there are gray ones. And when painful things happen to me, I look at myself with compassion, I feel my feelings and I say, “I am sorry for your pain. I wish I could take it from you. Since I can’t, I will sit here with you and listen.”

I hope this helps.