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