The Power of a Single Mom Positive Mindset

Someone told me said that my positive mindset is unrealistic in the face of institutional and societal obstacles some people face: people of color and women for example. Before I adopted a positive mindset, I had a negative mindset, which I formed at an early age when I was sexually abused at 4 and then later at 12.

Those experiences shaped my mindset to believe only horrible things were going to happen to me. When I became an adult, I didn’t hope for anything good to happen in my life. I took whatever was given to me. Including relationships: I was in a violent domestic relationship for 5 years.

Not until I was 40 and a single mom to my child, who survived a difficult open heart surgery at 4 days old, did I think for the first time:

Good things CAN happen to me. Slowly, through daily positive affirmations, therapy, and meditation, I now have a positive mindset. Are there obstacles in my life as a single mother of color working in a male dominated field, software engineering?

Yes.

But I no longer have a dark cloud around me that influences me to not go for goals and to not strive to improve my life.

And I totally understand if you are reading this and thinking about how ridiculous it sounds? “Just be positive and things will get better!”

I thought it was ridiculous whenever I would read personal development books that said the same thing. How is being positive going to change how I am being discriminated against, the micro-aggressions I face daily as a Filipino American, being a broke single mom, or being the only woman on a software team?

Believe it or not: having a positive mindset made a difference for me because it inspired me to believe in myself. It prompted me to not only want more for myself but to believe I deserved more.

Maintaining this positive mindset takes a lot of work: meditation, morning and nightly journal, positive affirmations, gratitude practice, and reading personal development books daily. I have times where I’m feeling like whatever goals I’m reaching for are not working out, but I practice my daily habits, practically forcing myself to shift my mindset back to positivity.