Negativity Sucks

I will admit it - I can be a pretty negative person.

What!?! Me? Yes, me.

In fact, I have a tendency to be more negative than I am positive...sometimes.

Sort of a crappy revelation from a guy who outwardly appears so positive all the time right?

A few weeks ago, someone blasted me on social media for being "too positive." So after reading those comments, which I assumed were made as a joke, the darkness came and sort of stayed. What if it wasn't a joke? What if this person was calling bullshit on everything I was outwardly trying to do. I mean, my audience hasn't grown much, no one watches my videos and my Twitter following has barely grown in a year. So what if he's right. If the rest of the world thought my positive approach to creating Ripples out there in the world wasn't really really making the dent in the world that I had hoped.

You could say those comments came at the worst time as I was already going through a period of personal and professional unrest. So self-doubt was at an all-time high for a variety of reasons.

Then the waves started crashing in around me.

That damn negativity started to take hold. Eventually, it started to permeate my mood, my attitude, and my being.

So this guy who is all the time outwardly positive began to become super negative. Then I started to doubt everything! Did what I was trying to do through Ripple actually make any difference? Was I the guy to be running my software company? Did the people who reached out to me really care about me or just wanted what they could get from me.

The internal conversations were dark, torrid, and quite honestly debilitating in a lot of ways.

I've battled depression and self-doubt before but this was different. I felt like I was honestly wearing a suit of negativeness that had no zippers or buttons. I simply could not get it off and it was suffocating me.

Ever felt like that? Have you ever been in a place so deep and dark that you forget what the light even looks like?

Well, I did.

Fortunately, the storm passed. The self-doubt subsided and I got myself righted. Is that a word? It is now.

How did I do it?

Next time my friends. Next time.

Ripple On!!!