Negative

Guest Post By: Manikandan Chandrasekharan (Minasco)

People say, “Be positive”. Why? Is negativity such a powerful thing? Is negativity a barrier? To succeed, must one always stay optimistic with positive energy surrounding him/ her? Do you find yourself as that individual who has faced negativity? Did that negativity make your life miserable? Didn’t you have anything to feel happy about? Didn’t you accomplish anything in the past?

I have attempted to write this article to answer these simple questions. Almost everyone who reads the first paragraph would have the answers in the form of opinions. But I am equally confident that people would still read the remaining part of the article. I am confident because of a simple fact that if everyone knew the answers then there wouldn't have been so many bestseller books on staying positive or optimism. I would just like to give my honest opinions.

People who have advised me to stay positive are ones who have been close to me. They say it because they mean it. My father, my Professors and my close friends have all said it to me. Why would they ask me to stay optimistic? The answer is simple. Every one of them faced negativity. No one can avoid it. It is very powerful. No barrier can stop it. To succeed is not about staying positive. Staying positive is like the color black. Just as the absence of white light is black, absence of negativity is positivity. To stay positive, rise above negativity.

Negativity is like the colors of the optical spectrum. The vibrant colors that I am talking about are the opinions from many people, situations faced by the individual, the time of occurrence, self-doubt, short of support, haunting images of past failures and the absence of a smile. Every individual faces any one of these striking factors at least once in their lifetime. These don’t make life miserable. They teach us something. The bottom-line of many movies like Rambo Balboa, The Pursuit of Happiness among many others also say the same thing. All they say is, “Believe in yourself and overcome negativity.” That’s all it takes to be positive and to succeed.

Let the negativity come, question your abilities and bring the negative energy along with it. You just have to believe in yourself and move forward. You have won in the past; you just have to repeat it. It takes a mammoth effort to earn the first dollar note, not thereafter. It takes a billion bucks to bring the first unit of drug into the market, not thereafter. The same way, it takes immense courage to overcome negativity once, not thereafter. And if you don’t remember a time when you succeeded, let me remind you the day when you were born. You succeeded in breathing and living on your own.

You can succeed if you have positive energy. But don’t forget, that positive energy is just the absence of negativity which you have prevailed over. This is my first blog. The grammar might not be great but I am sure it’s understandable. It took me 22 years of my life to write the first one, but I am sure the first step is always the most difficult one. I crossed this barrier today. Strangely, the moment I wrote the previous line, I had a thought of some other concept for my second blog. But I guess that’s not a surprise as I have already taken the first step.

-Minasco