Transforming negative energy into positive motivation

Negative energy exists all around us, emanating from various facets of our lives to varying degrees. It's so difficult not to become consumed by the obstacles that stand before us. When setbacks present themselves to you in a series of discouraging outcomes, it's hard not to assume a defeatist attitude or become pessimistic. Negativity diminishes your optimism, in turn begetting more negativity, and eventually your mindset alters altogether. But I believe that every challenge with which you're faced and every setback you're forced to endure prepares you for the road that still lays ahead. The most difficult aspect to any trial is trying to find the lesson in it, becoming a better self as a result of having to deal with new challenges.

When my brother passed away, my perspective on life and my relative understanding of struggle altered entirely. I thought I knew what challenges were, what struggle felt like. But when he died, it was like nothing I had felt or experienced before. The world dropped away beneath my feet and I was falling endlessly into an abyss. One day he was there and the next he was gone, in an instant. The deftness felt so harsh it was as if somebody came and stole him away in the night with no fair warning or fighting chance to ward off the forthcoming devastation. When you experience something like that, your body goes through trauma. You don't really believe what has happened and you go through a period of disillusionment. I can't really articulate the feeling, but try and picture one of those moments when you see something so astonishing that it elicits the phrase, "I can't believe it, did that really just happen?" After the trauma subsides, you go through denial as a way of protecting your emotional well-being. You refuse to acknowledge what has happened and part of you still latches on to the outlandish notion that the departed will reappear at some point. After the dust settles, so to speak, after denial eventually dissipates, a floodgate opens and waves of anger, sadness, bitterness, resentment, and guilt come crashing down on your head like the heaviest anvil you can possibly imagine. The subsequent feelings do not reside ephemerally; they burrow their talons into the very fibers of your mind and roost for what feels like will be infinity.

In the movie Life of Pi, Pi poignantly inquires at the conclusion of his story that if life becomes an exercise in letting go of the things and people you love, then is it so much to ask for 5-10 minutes to say goodbye? To have a chance to disclose the most endearing sentiments to the ones you love in order to ensure that they know how you really feel? We rarely get those chances in life; we always take for granted the availability of time with them to express those affections. When that chance is taken from you, though, you feel a restlessness like nothing you've ever felt before. On a much smaller scale, it's like when you have a hunger for something to eat but absolutely nothing you have sounds minutely appetizing. Regardless of what you decide upon, your appetite will never be satiated.

In order to counter the restlessness I felt inside, I exercised with a fervor that I heretofore had never. When you exercise or do something exciting, your body releases a natural hormone called endorphins. My limited understanding of the physiological effects of this hormone preclude me from detailing the actual process of this chemical reaction, but I know that in layman's terms the hormone makes you feel happier for an ephemeral time afterward. I found that when I exercised, I felt happier, I had some channel through which I could filter all of the feelings that were bottled up inside of me. If I didn't exercise, I felt like a soda bottle being shaken up with no chance for the pressure to release. I sought this endorphin high all the time; I tried to get more of it by exercising more; I tried to become fitter so I could exercise for longer and feel higher. I read about nutrition, hydration, different training methods, anything that could possibly lengthen my endurance to train for longer so I could always be in that state of endorphin euphoria. Eventually, I saw how exercise could help cultivate my mental outlook, how it could transform my feelings of negativity into peaceful meditations of positive channeling.

Jay-Z raps in one of his songs, "Time don't go back, it goes forward." Challenges will hinder your forward progress and the degree of those trials will do so to varying extents. However, if you whittle away the time in the present ruminating on the setbacks you have faced in the past, then you ultimately diminish the time you have in your life to cultivate a better self. Remember that you are always in complete control of your personal realm; your feelings of happiness, anger, sadness, and joy are always under your immediate command. Nothing can ever relinquish you of your personal agency and ability to respond. Meditate on all of the negativity in your life, the specific things that are hampering you, and store them in a figurative box. Store them so tightly that the box is bursting at the seams. When you exercise, imagine yourself smashing this box in the act of exercising, using the negativity as fuel to push yourself just a little bit further. Smash the box until there's nothing left, until it's a pile of ashes.

Renounce your preconceived notions of your own personal physical capacity and let go of your inhibitions. Close your eyes and meditate on all of the obstacles that stand before you. Focus on them and confront them head on. When you exercise, immerse yourself in the interaction with these negative aspects and try to ascertain positive elements from them. I struggle with not feeling resentful or bitter every single day. Losing my brother has underscored for me the brevity of life. Exercise and the meditation accompanied with it has elucidated the importance of valuing the time you do get with the ones you love and the opportunities you have to forge relationships with them. Your life is a perpetual test of your resolve. Your body can go anywhere; your mind will take it there.