The switch.....from pessimism to optimism

Hello again hive lovers and bloggers, hope you all had a great weekend and you're doing great. The weekend is wrapped up and here comes Monday. I still cannot believe that October is coming to a close because we just got here yesterday, right hehe no worries, it's all good.

I stumbled upon this community when I saw a reblogged post and I'm like whaaaaaattt! so a community like this exists and I got no clue all this while? Well I'm here now and here to stay😁.

Growing up, I didn't have the best of experiences environmentally. My family at that time lived in a very toxic environment where
armed robberies, rape, brutality, dealing in drugs, thuggery and every manner of vice were the order of the day. I guess my parents chose that community because of the affordability of living and feeding expenses but what was not guaranteed was the safety of my mindset.

Despite finding ourselves in such an environment, my parents especially my dad made sure I had the best education even if that means a hole would be drilled in their pockets and budget ..he spared no expence at all.

I want to share my personal experience of how I made the switch from pessimism to optimism. Like I stated earlier, I was not happy with my environment because hardly a day passed without one bad news or the other. Night times were worse as we had to sleep with a fear of the unknown.

I hated coming back home from school to face the barbarism of the community where I resided then....it was that bad. I guess being surrounded with all these, kind of made me to become negative and anxious unknowingly. I walked with a fear in my every step whenever I was sent on errands.

To increase my distaste, an incident happened when I was only seven years old..it was a robberry. Some group of young boys "according to my parent's account in the morning" came to rob our building with weapons. When they got to our door, they used a master key to open the door and carry out their operation, asking for every penny in the hoise to be brought forth to them or they would cause some everlasting bodily damage.

You see it was already past 3am in the morning when they arrived at our apartment after carrying out several raids on other houses. The ruckus woke me up and somehow, my little seven year old self knew what was happening. So I laid still and pretended to sleep while peeping them from partially closed eyes. After about an hour and some minutes though it felt like forever they scurried off with money and my mum's jewelries. There was no mobile ohone at the time, so nowhere to get help. Till date I never told my parents that i witnessed that incident, I kept it bottled up and it fueled my anxiety and pessimism a lot.

I grew up but did my mind grow along with me? I guess not cos I was always fearful, anxious and downright negative that it affected my attitude and the way I related with others. I was rude, mean, always frowning and didn't care about people's feelings as long as I was ok and cool. I wasn't a bully or anything but once I am cross with someone, I go all out to lash out and serve cold revenge on anyone who crossed me. This made me not to have much friends and I was cool with it.

My turning point came after an issue I had with a girl led me to lashing out on her, insulting and degrading her...in short words, I Made her feel bad with my words that she ran away from me in tears while I stood watching her with a victory smirk. I was unaware of an observant human who saw everything I did. This adult male walked up to me, looked me in the eyes and said this ****if you want to live long, you better mend your ways and give up this attitude of yours****. That was all he said to me and walked away.

His words did not sink in until I was home reading a romance novel (my escape pods). I couldn't concentrate on what I was reading and his words kept ringing again and again in my head. For some unknown reason, I feared the thought of death. I had always imagined myself growing old with my one true love, having a dozen babies, watching them grow to having their kids and being able to play with the grandkids was interesting to me.all this is courtesy of the romance novels I read.

Right from that day, I made a decision to change. I prayed about it but I also took some practical steps to changing that mean attitude to a lovely one . Some of the things I did were....

• Attend counseling.

I started by watching programs where therapists discussed such issues and profer remedies, which I gladly followed and worked on. Then I spoke to physical counsellors(my pastors) , I usually posed the questions in a story form and when they give me their reply, I worked on it for myself.

• Lean to laugh

One of the therapist said on a program I was watching then that the best remedy to frowning was to laugh or smile as the case may be. So I began to work on myself using a mirror. I would stand in front of a mirror and smile for minutes gradually it stuck to me.

• Read helpful and insightful books

I also started reading motivational books and I must say that these books were helpful in causing a shift in my mindset and mode of thinking. I also added listening to tapes of happy men like Joel Osteen. I was determined to live and be a better person.

Today I have that testimony cos when I smile people don't know what I passed through to attaining it. Now I look two times younger than my real age cos of all the continuous smiling. Also I learnt how to treat people better and with respect. I worked on my speech, I don't say stuff to people except what I know would go gladden their hearts and put a smile on their faces.

This is my #selfdevelopment story of how I made the switch from pessimism to optimism.

All images used are mine.

Thanks for reading....shalom