~ Waylon Lewis {Walk the Talk Show Podcast, Video}
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Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis presents:
This week on our long-running “Walk the Talk Show” podcast and video series, with awards and millions of views over the years…
Waylon speaks with the Elephant community about the trap of positivity and how it can actually do the opposite of what we think, and result in us turning away from the outside world and instead showing up in the world in a more cold or withdrawn manner.
Instead, if we are accepting, and powerful, and courageous, and brave, and vulnerable, by opening up to the world around us as it is—reality—we can hear, and learn from it and instead of sitting in stress or fear of hearing it, we can say, how can I help? How am I a part of this?
And those are good questions to ask, because they then allow us to look at solutions.
“Our hearts are not available if we’re concerned first with feeling happy and relaxed. When our loyalty is to feeling happy and relaxed, it’s actually a very stressful place to be because we’re constantly trying to push away negative things and cling to positive things.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis
Watch the video:
“Positivity, meaning, you look at something negative very briefly and then you kind of withdraw from it. You say, ‘no, no, no, no.’ And you choose to believe, ‘This is the world I’m in. This is how I look at things.’
And it’s much more rainbow or rose-tinted. Which, again, sounds good because our egos can be very uncomfortable with hard things, with painful things, with that little twitch or or twinge in our heart. We often want to get away from that, whether it’s in love or in a breakup or in terms of looking at the planet, or the effects of our own actions.
It’s important not to ‘fall’ for positivity, but to be able to look at things honestly—kind of like good journalists who look at everything honestly.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis
Can’t watch the video? Why not listen?
“Doing good, being wholesome, being positive—that’s all beautiful—but positivity, which is sort of bending the truth towards a more comfortable, happy thing actually turns a lot of people into operating with a Stepford wife quality where they have a kind of cold, frozen smile.
A homeless person, comes up to you. ‘Ah, nice. I’m gonna move on with my day.’ Elderly person comes up to you. ‘Oh, cool. You know, good luck.’ A sick person or dying person comes up to you and, ‘Eh.’
Fittingly, those were the challenges that faced the Buddha when he was awakening to the truth of suffering. Those are the challenges that Jesus embraced, too. That’s where compassion and empathy comes from.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis
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“Let’s get out of the mindset of pushing away the scary or negative, and clinging to the good and comfortable. That’s a ‘cocoon‘ way of approaching life, and we’re not little babies in cocoons.
We’re peaceful warriors who can engage for benefit in our world.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis
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“What I am requesting is participation. Elephant has 13 million fans on social media and millions of readers, but we are only able to bring folks together around caring, fact-based conversation—people who disagree but can do so agreeably or respectfully—if you participate and right now independent media is getting killed by Facebook, et cetera.
They smother and suppress links. So when you go to elephantjournal.com, when you go to elephantjournal.com/best and get our free newsletter, when you go to elephantjournal.com/post and write something and share it—you keep independent media live, but more importantly, you keep respectful conversation, community, and caring facts alive.” ~ Waylon H. Lewis
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Image: @waylonlewis/Instagram
Editor: Molly Murphy
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