Accentuating the Positive

{3 minutes to read} Crisis often represents an opportunity for people to learn about themselves, to learn to deal with adversity, and to grow.

When my son was about 14, he came to me and said, “Why do so many bad things happen to me and not to others?” He was mostly referring to challenges encountered in everyday life, in school, with friends, a sprained ankle, being sick and not being able to attend an event he was very excited about.

I told him that no one in life can avoid adversity and challenges; what is important is how we deal with them.

Take a sheet of paper. Write a list of positive emotions on one side of the sheet, and then write a list of negative emotions on the other side. If you are asked to summarize your feelings, which side will you focus on?

When we are asked to describe positive and negative emotions about a specific situation, we most often tend to dwell on the negative aspects rather than on the positive. And when we do consider the positive, we often “qualify” our response with “…yes, but…”

When people are experiencing a difficult time in their lives, such as a serious illness, a divorce, or the loss of a spouse, they often are not able to see any positive side to their experience, and rarely are they able during that time to think about some of the positives that may have come out of this crisis.

I have often heard cancer patients talk about how their illness transformed them and helped them see life through a different lens.
Widows who had a good marriage will be devastated and, for a while, unable to cope with being alone and facing challenges by themselves. But at some point, as much as they continue to miss their spouse, they may begin to recognize their own strengths as they face adversity alone. And they will remember with joy many aspects of their married life that they may have taken for granted during the marriage.
Couples going through divorce will also experience the terrible loss and fear of moving forward without their spouse. But many say that after the fact, they learned so much about themselves, about why they married that person, about what they handled well or less well.

Although hard to believe at the time, there are positive aspects to most crises. We can learn from these experiences, about ourselves and others, about our strengths and our weaknesses. If we are willing to acknowledge that within the crises there are positive elements, we can then shift our focus, and move forward with our lives in a more productive and enriching way.

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Jennifer Safian

jennifer safian. divorce and family mediator
divorce and family mediation
upper east side of manhattan (nyc)
new york, ny
(917) 881 5206
jpsafian@gmail.com