Negative into Positive

A couple of weeks ago I attended a series of seminars which were about the psychology of investing money, tips to build businesses and the key to being successful. I know, it sounds a bit strange to mention financial topics, entrepreneurship and the key to success in an aikido blog but I hope that, by the end of this post, you will understand why I mention them here.

Just before leaving home to attend these seminars I had found a small collection of O-Sensei quotes in one of my files in my computer. I started reading them to refresh my memories about these quotes and went to attend the first seminar.

What I heard during these talks was surprising and stunning: I was there with several of O-Sensei’s quotes in my head and the things the speakers talked about were present in the O-Sensei quotes too, almost all of them. I’d like to talk about one of these points now.

First I’m going to write about what I heard in one of the talks, then my own interpretation of the story, and finally, the corresponding O-Sensei quote so everyone can see how the Unity, which O-Sensei talked about so much, can appear in everyday life.

One of the seminar speakers talked about the results of his research in which he examined and compared the life stories of several hundred very rich people. He found that none of these people perceived failure negatively. They didn’t try to blame others for the hardship they experienced. They all looked at their failures in things as a source of learning. They didn’t blame others, didn’t look for faults in others but they admitted that the failures were caused by themselves. In other words, they took responsibility for their own actions.

But what does this way of thinking really mean?

If you are able to take responsibility for your own actions and you are able to admit full responsibility for your own failures then failures will not be negative experiences but they will be something to learn from. As soon as this attitude appears with regards to hardship you experience, a positive feeling will also appear; a feeling of gratitude, a feeling that will move you forward in your own path. As long as you have negative feelings they will only block you from getting forward. To what or whom can you be grateful? You can be grateful to the person your ‘bad’ experience is related to for showing you which direction not to follow. You can be grateful to faith for putting you in your current situation. You can be grateful to the Universe for giving you another lesson about life. You can choose whichever option you like or suites you, but if you observe carefully, it is only one principle hidden in various forms and words.

Turning negative feelings into positive is an extremely hard task. I cannot say I have completely mastered it myself. There is still a lot to learn but the sooner we start living consciously according to the above principle the larger the steps will be that we make in our own path.

Finally, here is the O-Sensei quote so you can also reflect on it:

“Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in Aikido” – Morihei Ueshiba