The Power of Positive Thinking is not just about embracing the positive, it is about accepting the negative. Time Magazine recently reported that when we acknowledge our negative thoughts, they cease to have pwoer over us. We become less reactive and more in control.

Unfortunately, most cognitive psychologists out there would have us believe that we just need will-power. That’s all it will take. Just think yourself better by overcoming your thoughts.

Now, if you’ve been readig my blog for a while, you already know that I believe in choosing the positive. But I also believe that God created us perfect just the way we are. Which means that a lot of what we view about ourselves as negative is just not a bad thing.

The ability to take a negative thought–and according to research we have several thousand of them a day–and acknowledge them as part of the river of consciousness that runs through our heads is powerful medicine.

Don’t think about ice cream.

Are you thinking about ice cream? Of course you are. That’s because the conscious and intuitive minds don’t care about “not” or “don’t”. So we should be mindful of our thoughts as they currently exist. Feeling a little depressed? It’s God’s way of telling you to rebalance yourself in some way. So, embrace. Feel depressed. In fact, go all the way with it. Get the big bowl of comfort food, rent the tear-jerkiest movie you can find, and wallow in it. Enjoy your feelings of depression. Allow your mind and body to move through it.

I’m not saying that if you feel a little depressed you should lock yourself in to your house and become a reclusive shut-in. Quite the opposite, I’m saying, our bodies and minds have natural rythms and we should honor those. By exploring and acknowledging our thoughts and feelings we can understand that they are part of what makes us who we are. They are part of our perfection.

They do not own us. We can acknowledge a thought without becoming the thought itself.

How, then, can we choose the positive if we are acknowledging the negative?

How about our information diet? How about who we choose to spend time with and what information we choose to digest? You can change the channel and watch a different television show, flip the page to a different story, grab an uplifting book, attend a different church service, hang out with different friends, cruise to a different part of the “internets”, etc. You control what you eat. And the more positive energy you surround yourself with, the more you become part of the positive energy.

But this does not mean that you reject the thoughts and feelings that make up who you are. Instead, acknowledge it all so that it doesn’t become who you are.