worldmegan

(Part One, if you missed it.)

I learned these things from three hot chicks:

Wonderful ideas energize me, and that makes me really happy!

Our amygdalas are focused on negative emotions. Did you know that? If you have any memory at all of being a lizard or a monkey or a cave chick, you remember that your amygdala took careful account of every shitty thing that happened to you—for the express purpose of avoiding it next time! That time you almost got eaten by that dinosaur? Your amygdala totally filed it away with a big red sticker. DO NOT GET EATEN BY DINOSAUR.

So it’s not terribly surprising that we hoomans tend to remember negativity. You and I who remember the bad parts and end up in a downward spiral of unhappy, we are doing something that comes naturally—but we don’t have to keep kicking ourselves for it. It’s what we all do. Human beings are just not high enough on the food chain to have discarded their excellent memory for negativity.

There is a solution! (And it’s NOT anything to do with cyclical self-punishment.) You’re not stupid, you know when something wonderful has happened to you. You know when something pleases you, you know when something has given you a good feeling. So say so! “That makes me really happy!” Well, it does! And the best part of it is, it’s incredibly contagious. If you find yourself saying it all the time, chances are the people who spend time with you will find themselves saying it, too!

Damn! Just TYPING it makes me really happy!

We are made of meat.

Yup, read it again. We are made of meat. We are not machines, we are not perfect, we are flawed, we are constantly changing, we are organic, growing creatures, and we are incredibly wonderful. Problems, negative emotions, psychological issues, physical frailties, they are a part of us. They make us what we are. Cells must die so that new cells may replace them. We must change. We must grow. So the next time you’re kicking yourself for feeling bad… for thinking the “wrong” thoughts… for having made a mistake… do you get what I’m saying? It’s okay. It’s okay to feel those things! No downward spiral is necessary. We are made of meat!

I cannot describe the wiggling, screeching glee I experience every time I remember that I am made of meat. And you are made of meat, too! We are all made of MEAT! It’s okay to be human. There’s nothing wrong with that! It’s okay if I didn’t do the precise, logically thing. I am not an entirely precise, logical person! Nobody is. If you are like me (and who knows if you are?) you too have felt the downward spiral. Something goes wrong. You feel a negative emotion. You identify your negative emotion. You are embarrassed and resentful of your negative emotion! You feel another negative emotion in relation to having felt a negative emotion. You kick yourself for this new negative emotion! And the negative emotions, oh, they grow numerous and much stronger… they outnumber us ten thousand to one! We cannot defeat them, so we join them…

Poo.

Yes! I said poo! Do not join the legions of negativity! They don’t need you! They breed like rabbits! We need you. We need you to help prove the sheer power of positive thinking. We want you. We love you and you’re important to us. Your happiness is important to us. Because what is the human race if all we do is cry and resent? Where is the thing that makes us strong? If we don’t stand together and make something better, where are we then?

G.I. Joe is so frickin’ cool.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know there’s a problem. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t define the problem. (Unless you get seriously lucky.) Those legions of negativity, they whisper that we are bad because we have a problem. But truthfully, we are that much closer to solving the problem, just because we know what’s going on! Dude, G.I. Joe had it down. How cheesy does it sound now? Knowing is half the battle. Duh.

I searched high and low for a video clip to link in; I couldn’t find one. YouTube would probably get sued. You think about this. Visit the Usual Error site and think about joining us at one of the workshops. I have Part Three to write… ;}