Positive and negative thinking

There is no positive or negative thinking. There is only thinking. Engaging in only positive or only negative thinking is just half thinking. It is a judgement placed on your thinking.

Everything just IS, whether it is positive or negative depends on our perspective, the meaning we give it, emotions that it brings in us. Also, on what we think it should be, what we want it to be, or our preference.

For a holiday maker thinking that it is going to rain tomorrow is negative, however for a farmer it could be very positive. 

I could never understand why saying “the glass is half full” is optimistic (positive) and “the glass is half empty” is pessimistic (negative). What is in the glass? Do I want it to be full or empty?

If it is medication for a child and they need to drink it; wouldn’t a statement, “the glass is half empty” be more optimistic. What if it has some sticky gunk in it that I am trying to get out? Is it still optimistic to say it is half full?

Yet, people make this judgement without really thinking about it. They must be using the unexamined assumption that more is better. This is assumption is so imbedded in our psyche that we subconsciously perceive and judge “more”, “full” as better. It one of the most powerful assumptions that drives our consumption

Everything in life depends on duality; without positive and negative there will be no electricity, no magnets. What you consider negative may be positive for someone else. Rejecting what you do not like or consider not favourable and labelling it as negative, stops you from thinking about it.

Because you do not want to be negative, you make a judgment without thinking.

However, would you cross the road without looking if there is a car coming and label the thought about checking it as negative. I do not think so.

Social entrepreneur, Jamie Oliver

Social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur that has higher level of awareness, higher level of consciousness.  Is connected to the spirit and has a long term sustainability as one of the governing values.  Here long term  is defined by generations not years.  This long term redefines his/her definition of profit and turns it to value.

He sees that in the long term he can only keep on taking as long as he keeps on giving and he can keep on giving as long as he keep on taking. This keeps the flow going; giving more or taking more disturbs the flow. Please refer to Social Entrepreneur 1

He sees that to be sustainable he has to provide value.

In a long term there is no us them, there is no conflict of interest between shareholders , customers management or workers, we are all here to provide value, we are all interested in sustainability of the venture. Orientation on profit, greed creates barriers to the flow instead of providing value to your customers; you are trying to justify your existence this is not happiness. You are living in fear of loosing your source of income. What you are doing becomes not important.

The best example for social entrepreneur is Jamie Oliver and his kitchen. His project in which he was teaching underprivileged people to run a restaurant.  It was social in the outcome  – providing people with good nutrition, it was social in the way it was delivered providing training for the participants, it was an enterprise because it was to made to be sustainable (in old language it was to make profit)

Social Entrepreneurs

A social entrepreneurs is an entrepreneur that looks beyond the profits at the social, economical and environmental impacts of their ventures.

He/she has a long term perspective and look at sustainability of their business and sees that this can be achieved by sharing. Their giving back does not come from a notion of superiority but from realisation that wealth is a flow and giving back is part of the wealth creation.

The way I see it is, that wealth creation is like a giant river that flows all around the world. A social entrepreneur sees the river as the flow, not the water and realises that if he/she gets greedy and blocks the river they will have more water but it will diminish the flow and eventually, as the water goes around he world, they will get less inflow.

Water is money, flow is wealth.

Of course one can build a dam collect the water and feel superior to the ones downstream, oh yea they have the power to give them the water or not.  If they choose to give, they can feel so good about themselves.  But in the long time frame they will notice that the inflow to their dam is getting smaller and they might think that this is because they were giving the water while the opposite is true.

I guess another way of looking at this is Karma.

On a less metaphorical note why do you think Warren Buffett strongly opposed G Bush tax cuts for the rich and was promoting tax cut for the poor?  To make a profit businesses need consumers, the more the better.  It does not matter that you give it to the poor they will hand it back to you anyway.  Until this concept is widely understood we will have one economic downturn after another, as we did for the past years.  To change his cycles we need a new economic model but this is another subject.