Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Hi this is Emerald and welcome to the diamond net and today I want to talk to you about how to get rid of your negative traits. However, the truth is that you can't get rid of your negative traits because they're your traits. They're just like your body parts. Now his sounds like bad news but it really isn't because the truth is that there are no such thing as negative traits either or positive traits for that matter. There are just traits. If you feel that they are positive then they are positive if you feel that they are negative, then they are negative. In fact positive and negative are just values that you've assigned to traits. It's just like saying these are the traits that like and these are the traits that I don't like. So, to try to get rid of your negative traits is incredibly foolish because not only does it cause repression, it's also impossible. When you reject a trait or disapprove of a trait, it is relegated partially or wholly to the shadow where it functions without your conscious knowledge or control. So, to give you a metaphor you want to think of your psyche like it's a room and you want to think of consciousness like a light that illuminates the entire room at least from a natural state of being. Now, when we're in the room of the psyche we see lots of things in there. However, those things are immovable and unchangeable those are our traits. So, we can't just take a trait that we don't like and throw it outside of the room. It's there for good. So, if we disapprove of a trait we have to dim the light of consciousness just so that we can no longer see that negative trait or that trait that we have dubbed negative. And so it causes a restriction of consciousness to do this. Only when a trait is completely enveloped in shadow can we have the illusion that we've gotten rid of the negative trait. However, what we've really done is that we've undercut our ability for authenticity and for consciousness. Our goal should be to make our personality as expansive as possible and not just whittle away at or refine our personality so we come up with this perfect persona for ourselves. So, at this point your probably thinking 'Well what now Emerald, what am I supposed to do? Am I just supposed to abandon self-improvement? Has all of my effort been for nothing? Sounds pretty disempowering doesn't it? But it really isn't in fact the piece of advice that I'm about to give you could be the most empowering piece of advice that you might come across. In fact, all the power is in your hands to create the greatest version of yourself and to live the very best life that you can. But you might ask 'How can I do that if I can't even get rid of my negative traits?' Well there is one way to get rid of a negative trait and that's to reframe it as a positive trait. You need to stop thinking of your traits as negative. You must understand that all traits are neutral and exactly as they should be. Now the expression of those traits can be beneficial or detrimental. Healthy or unhealthy. But the traits themselves just are. So, you want to first make a distinction between a trait and the expression of that trait. So, for example, leadership is a trait and it's actually a neutral trait. We, in our society tend to think of leadership as a very positive thing but it's actually neutral. It can be expressed in ways that are beneficial or detrimental. Like and example of positive way to express leadership would be someone like Martin Luther King Jr. and a detrimental way to express leadership would be someone like Adolf Hitler. They were both leaders but they were very very different in the way they expressed their leadership. To give a metaphor you want to think of a trait like very rich nutrient dense soil. Now we can choose to grow anything we want in that soil. We can choose to grow bad things we can choose to grow good things. The main thing is going to depend on our choice and the amount of energy we use to cultivate them. So you want to think of the fruit from the plants that we cultivate in our soil of our traits as the particular expressions of those traits. Once we realize this we can take al of our traits both positive and negative and make them the best that they can be. In this way we can turn sewage water into wine. But how to we turn a negative trait into a positive trait anyway? How can we do this when we've historically felt negative about that particular trait? Well the first thing is to find ways to love and approve of your negative traits. You must understand that even your negative traits exist for a positive reason. For example, if you have social anxiety that actually exists for a positive reason because it shows that you have a strong desire to connect with other people but you also don't want to mess up the potential for that connection. And so your social anxiety seeks to keep you from social ostracism even if it ends up causing social ostracism, it's actually in place for a positive reason. But even a trait like this that causes so many issues can be seen in a positive light and can be integrated in a positive way. So, try to find reasons to love that trait. Now, don't lie to yourself and tell yourself 'Oh I love how my social anxiety ends up making me look like an idiot in front of people.' That's not true, that's just a very passive aggressive form of self-deception if you say that. But you want to find some aspect of that trait that's genuinely beneficial to you. So, you might say 'Oh because I've had social anxiety, maybe I've kept kept away from making friendships with people who would judge me. Maybe I was able to find people who are better friends to me because I've actually stayed away from these toxic relationships where I can't be vulnerable around people.' When we cultivate approval for these negative traits, we invite them back into our conscious awareness with open arms. It then transforms from a shadow trait to a trait of our conscious awareness. Where if given the proper love and attention, it can blossom into many beautiful things in your personality. This is how the consciousness expands. When we learn to love our disowned traits the light of consciousness gets brighter and we begin to feel genuinely comfortable in our own skin. But then you might ask 'What about traits that I can't find a positive expression for? How am I supposed to learn to love a trait if I really can't genuinely see the positive?' Well there are certainly some traits that are harder to like than others particularly if your society or social group doesn't like that trait or if you've experienced traumas from a person who exhibits that trait. So, even if it's difficult, it isn't impossible to find genuine positivity in a trait because all traits truly are neutral. The first step is to disengage from any negative self talk that you have in relation to that trait. Don't criticize yourself for having it just accept that you have it in you even if you can't see the positivity in it yet. Secondly, you must become aware of that trait completely. Now I recommend going ahead and getting out a piece of paper and a writing utensil and writing these questions down and answering them in sequence. That way you can go back and examine your answers later. Here are the questions. Number one What is the trait that you don't like? Describe it fully. Number two, How does it make you feel to have that trait? Number three, What do you think it means about you as a person? Number four, If someone else had that trait, would you feel negatively toward them too? If you don't feel negatively toward them, why are you okay with them having that trait but not yourself? Number five, Why don't you like having this trait? Number six, Does this trait stop you from getting something that you want? Number seven, If so, what is it that you want that this trait keeps you from? How do you think this trait keeps you from being happy or being loved? Once you've answered all these questions and become fully aware of your feelings toward that trait you want to go back and scan your answers for signs of positivity. You especially want to look at the question where I asked you how you feel about another person who has that trait. Often times, we're much harder on ourselves than we are on others. And so often times with ourself we want to get rid of all of our negative traits because we want to be lovable. Whereas if we see another person with that trait it's no big deal because we don't expect them to be perfect. It's a sign that we want to be perfect, we want to have the most love and we feel like love isn't going to be given to us if we don't fit a certain person's standards or everybody's standards. Even knowing about this drive for perfection and striving for love and approval ca help us untie some of our negative feelings about our traits. Most everyone understands that it is impossible to be perfect but still continue to strive for perfection. But you have to understand that even if you were able to achieve perfection there would still be people who were haters. There would still be people who didn't like you. It's a losing game. But you might also ask 'How do I know if a trait is actually mine? Don't some traits come up from repression and trauma and things like that? What if it's some adaptation that I've done that's not really authentic to me?' Well the truth is that all of your traits are authentic. Even your shadow traits are authentic. The truth is that being inauthentic is 100% impossible. You are always being you no matter what. Actually, this truth kind of reminds me of a passage that I was reading in the "Air Guitar" by Dave Hickey who is actually an art critic. It's a really great book, you should definitely read it. But Dave Hickey was talking about Liberace's persona and he had said something to the nature of 'Under all the fake tinsel and fake glitter is real tinsel and real glitter.' But seriously, all of your traits are yours, it's all you. You have to learn to love all of your traits so make friends with your demons. When we can make peace with our negative traits amazing things happen and they yield hidden treasures to us. To give a personal example, when I was in elementary school and middle school I was very often made fun of because I was unusual nerdy and eccentric and all the time I was constantly the butt of every joke because I was incredibly sensitive to teasing. So, I was always coming up with schemes to try to fit in so that I didn't have to deal with the pain of being socially outcasted and I remember when I was eleven and about to star middle school, I came up with this big five page long plan for how I was going to dress and how I was going to act, who my friends were going to be and I was going to try to befriend the popular kids so that I wasn't so unpopular. Now, of course this didn't work because I am unusual I am very nerdy and I am eccentric. But whenever I turned thirteen I finally decided that I was going to embrace it. And magical things happened. I no longer cared if I was popular anymore, I just sought to be the best nerd that I could be and become really accepting and interesting and authentic. And I really let my freak flag fly too. And nobody messed with me anymore. They knew that they couldn't shake me so they just lost interest. and in fact, I started to attract people who were a lot like me and I was even sort of popular in the alternative crowd because I just felt so comfortable in my own skin and my confidence brought people to me. So, by embracing the traits that I thought were keeping me from being accepted, I actually found acceptance. And it was really one of the best things that I could have done for myself as a thirteen year old. That transition into my teen years was a lot smoother and now I have some great traits because I embraced those negative traits of mine those "negative traits" early on in my teen years. So, you can never improve anything by making a trait weaker or denying that a particular trait exists. You can only improve yourself by adding to traits that you already have. So, I want to look at a couple of people who took a negative trait and transformed it into something really really great. Like, take George Orwell for instance. He had a very pessimistic outlook but his works were just so brilliant like 1984 and Animal Farm if you've ever read them. He actually pinpoints certain things about imperialism that makes everybody really uncomfortable maybe to face that truth. But he was able to distill it into two amazing books as well as other works too. So, for George Orwell, pessimism was one of his most positive traits. Or we could look at Chuck Close. Now Chuck Close is an incredibly prolific painter. He's still working today. He started back in the 1960's doing these really large photorealistic portraits of people including himself. He ways really relied on fine motor skill and his ability to do things. But in 1988, he had an injury where an artery in his spine collapsed causing him to be paralyzed from the waste down and also causing him to lose some of his motor function in his fingers. And so he had to find a brand new way to paint. And so he created an entirely new style of painting. He stuck with Photorealism but instead he sectioned all of his paintings, very very large paintings into three inch by three inch squares and hew would just draw big blobs of color. However, with all of these different squares placed right next to each other, if you back up far away, it looked just like a Photorealistic portrait only it has a really interesting texture to it. And so he was able to take something very negative a very negative trait of his that he acquired later on in life and turn it into something that's very very positive. And I think that's why Chuck Close has had the staying power that he's had. He's one of the biggest people in the art world today. So, find the negative in the positive and use your negative traits like tools to unearth deep layers of personal growth and development. Make your consciousness as wide and deep as you can. Well that's all that I have for now. I hope that you enjoyed this video. If you did go ahead and give it a big thumbs up and click the subscribe button below. Also, stay tuned for more videos on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I do book reviews. I do a Q&A segment. I do other big topic videos like this. Otherwise i hope that you enjoyed and until next time, keep becoming more you.