Neil Thompson’s Lesson for Living – Reframing negatives as positives
Every cloud has a silver lining may well be a cliché, but that does not mean that the idea does not contain more than an element of truth. Of course, it would be an exaggeration to argue that every negative (cloud) has within it a positive (a silver lining) of some description, but it is certainly the case that negative events will often also bring some degree of positivity.
In a sense, this is a reflection of the complexity of life. There is a very common tendency to want to simplify things as much as possible, and that often leads to an oversimplification, a distortion of reality – a situation has to be either good or bad; it can’t be a mixture of both. Proverbs and slogans will often fall into this category. What we are dealing with, then, is the need to recognise that the complexity of life means that a high proportion of the situations we encounter will have both positive and negative elements – both light and shade. It can be helpful to be aware of this when engaged in situations seen predominantly as negative. If we are not careful, we can allow the negative impact of a situation to blind us to any positive elements…
