Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

[Applause]

every cloud has a silver lining

and this is pretty ironic coming from

someone like me

if you want to know me personally

chances are

you would most probably agree that i am

an extremely negative person

always clouded with these negative ideas

of the most

negative situations with the most

negative

consequences even my mom sincerely

thinks likewise

take right now for instance i am somehow

already predicting that i am going to

mess up this talk badly

that my idea is going to come across as

lame

and that nobody is going to even watch

this talk

have you ever been through a similar

scenario

where your brain just automatically

turns out a whole list

of the worst possible outcomes you could

possibly go through currently

and you feel so overwhelmed anxious and

your palms

start sweating profusely just like how

you procrastinate

all your work to the very end and by the

time the holidays are coming to an end

you feel so overwhelmed by the immense

workload

but hey we’re not fortune tellers so why

do we always like to predict our futures

and in such negative ways why do we like

to make our own selves

feel worse from my perspective

as a teenager who is definitely 78

pessimistic and 22 percent optimistic

i tend to instinctively think of the

worst

every time i feel a tinge of happiness

or i feel good about myself or about

something that i have accomplished

it will start off as something a little

more encouraging

before escalating into something very

negative later on

i can’t help it it’s like ingrained in

my way of thinking

a bad habit however

no bad habits come with permanence

thankfully

recently i’ve been self-reflecting a

little on my thought process

and i’ve discovered a hidden pattern in

it

i for one very recently had just

completed an exam

and my immediate thought was yippee i am

done and dusted with this test feeling a

wave of relief washed over me

only to come out of the examination hall

shortly after

thinking that i was definitely going to

flunk the paper

i’m definitely going to get a single

digit score

my parents were not going to talk to me

the same anymore

and i just disappointed not only my

parents but my teachers

and everyone else in the world this is

what i would like to call

the snowballing effect initially

we start off with a little pile of snow

and we carefully

shape it into the shape of a snowball

just like our thoughts we start off with

a steady

and calm mindset like hey we did okay

not great but fine but then we

instinctively

proceed to gather more snow and

continuously add

on to the weight of our original

snowball

similarly we subconsciously proceed to

add on to our piling thoughts

unconsciously bearing the birth of

newborn negative thoughts

in the end we are presented with a

ginormous snowball

and we find ourselves barely holding on

to the snowball

struggling with its weight just like how

at the end

we are overwhelmed with this with this

bombarding negative thoughts of the most

negative outcomes

of our okay scenarios but hey

let’s go back to the very beginning when

we doing just fine at the start

what exactly went wrong then

it turns out that the culprit

responsible for our agony

is the one and only overthinking

we all tend to overthink that’s human

nature for you

but we also need to acknowledge that

overthinking to a large

extent can become extremely unhealthy

and lead to severe psychological

problems

which then should not be underestimated

however here’s a quick solution to cub

simple overthinking which requires

little effort to accomplish

and that is to primarily focus on your

very first

thought we can’t keep up those negative

thoughts

from entering our minds every now and

then

they are like bacterial it’s everywhere

and is very persistent

but what we can do is to shift our

attention

over to the star of the show our very

first

thought but why we will realize that in

the journey of snowballing thoughts

our first thought is the more positive

star

and as the more we think about it the

more negative thoughts will be generated

later on if i had stuck

to my very first thought the relief i

felt after finishing my exam

i will not overthink and snowball into

negativity

every cloud has a silver lining i

believe we are all capable

of finding the positivity hidden in

every situation

let’s all smile a little more even when

things

are hard and tough and you feel like

giving up

and you feel like you are going to feel

miserably and that there is no more hope

left

a smile can do you wonders not only will

it look good on you

but try it now don’t you feel a sudden

wave of warm sunshine watch over you

don’t you feel that there are tingling

bubbles floating around you

i hope i’ve made your day thank you