Stop Trying to Get Rid of Negativity/Bad Habits! Do This Instead.

Everybody tells you to get rid of some bad habit you've got. You tell yourself the same and focus on banishing the banshee. It refuses to go. The resolutions and abstinence all fail. Where did you go wrong? I'll let you in on a trick-- one that hard experience taught me. 

Consider this: You're trying to get rid of negativity that is sitting upon you like winter fog. It refuses to let the sun shine in your life. It refuses to let you blossom as you know you should. You're disappointed with your failure to get this negative thing out of your life. You've tried and tried and tried and failed. You're on the brink of frustration. You feel guilty at being unable to change. Or worse, you embrace your self as irremediable or irredeemable and indulge freely in your bad habits. 

If you accept that your war is against a bad habit (maybe an addiction?), then you, by default accept that it is your enemy which you must overcome. And if you give it as much attention, the enemy seems formidable and you lose weight infront of it. It is a tiring business to fight enemies. How long will you be able to go on? 

Instead, if you just make room for good things in your life, you, by default make the bad habits trivial. You leave them because you have set your eyes on things which are way bigger. The mind is a room with a fixed amount of space. If negativity is occupying it you can't blossom. You need to let good things in, and automatically the bad leaves. If the room is dark, no matter how much you curse darkness it won't go away. But if you just light a lamp, no matter how small the flame, the room is no longer dark. The darkness gets small and recedes to the shadows by itself. All the behaviour that seemed to be so persistent seems so trivial then. 

So don't fight darkness. Don't complain about it. Just light a flame and let it be. 

Set your eyes on bigger and better things in life. Whenever you find yourself getting drawn to the negative, remind your mind of the big positive goals you are eyeing. Bring your focus back. You'll be surprised how quickly you've left all the toxicity behind.  In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”