The habit of thinking negatively not only predicts how likely someone is to become depressed, it also predicts how likely they are to suffer all kinds of illnesses and disorders over the course of their life. This doesn’t mean that negative thinking on its own causes illness, but it certainly helps it along.
Negative people are often proud to describe themselves as “realists”. Of course, anyone with a strong belief thinks they are being realistic, whether it’s about UFO encounters or perfectly truthful politicians. Sometimes we believe we are being realistic simply because our thinking is biased and we look for information that confirms our beliefs, which, as a rule, tend to be false and unfounded.
Claiming to “be realistic” is the cynic’s favourite line. And in a way they are right. But only because negative thinking stops us from trying certain things, and so it influences our results. Self-fulfilling prophecies like these really do happen. Some research has found that, in some cases, what we believe about our health may have more to do with how long we live than our actual health.
Negative thoughts can hold us back even when things seem to be going relatively well. For example, the typical thought “this is too good to last” quickly ruins a positive situation. Our negative way of thinking distorts our perception, which is why Marc Chernoff, of MarcandAngel.com, offers some advice for freeing ourselves from negativity.
See also: The power of positive thinking, beyond the cliché
1. Stop thinking in extremes
Life isn’t black or white, all or nothing. Thinking in extremes like this is a quick way to sink into misery, because negative thinking tends to see any situation that is less than perfect as extremely bad.
All-or-nothing thinking misses the subtle nuances of life. It makes us see the future in terms of dramatic disasters, disappointments and catastrophes. Obviously, disasters do happen from time to time, but contrary to what many people see on the news, most of life takes place in a grey area between the extremes of happiness and devastation.
The first step in overcoming negative thinking is not to suddenly become positive, but to look carefully at the shades of grey, the small nuances of life.
2. Stop overgeneralising the negative
Ask yourself: “If something negative happens unexpectedly, do I generalise?”
For example, if you fail an exam, you tell yourself: “Well, I didn’t manage to pass that exam; I’m not happy about it, but I’ll study harder next time.” Or does overgeneralising, telling yourself that “you’re not smart enough” or “you’re incapable of learning”, get you anywhere?
And that brings us to the next point…
3. Stop minimising the positive
Negative thinking stops us from seeing and experiencing positive outcomes, even when they happen often. It’s as if there were a mental screen filtering out everything positive and letting through only the information that confirms the “negative bias”. Magnifying setbacks and minimising successes leads to demotivation and misery in the long run.
Get into the habit of seeing setbacks as temporary, specific learning experiences rather than as permanent, all-encompassing misfortunes. We all tend to find what we look for in life, but we have to keep in mind that the positive is always there somewhere; we just have to look for it.
4. Stop looking for negative signs in others
All too often we jump to conclusions about other people, and all we achieve is to frustrate ourselves needlessly and hurt ourselves. If someone says one thing, we assume they meant something quite different. If they say nothing at all, we think the silence carries some hidden negative meaning.
Thinking negatively will inevitably lead you to interpret everything another person does as negative, especially when you aren’t sure what the other person is thinking. For example, “They haven’t called me, so it must be because they don’t want to talk to me”, when in fact there may be other reasons why they haven’t called.
Giving a situation meaning before you know the whole story makes you more likely to believe that the uncertainty you feel is a negative sign. When you think positively, or simply more clearly about the facts, you will be able to weigh up every possible reason you can imagine, not just the negative ones.
The next time you feel insecure and find yourself dwelling on a problem that doesn’t exist, take a deep breath. Then just tell yourself: “This problem I’m worried about exists only in my mind.” Being able to tell the difference between what you are imagining and what is really happening in your life is an important step towards living a positive life.
5. Stop setting unreasonable rules and expectations
Deal with the world as it is, not the way you expect it to be. Life is under no obligation to give you exactly what you expect. In fact, whatever you are looking for will rarely turn up in exactly the form you are looking for it, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful.
Inventing rules about how life should be, based on your own persistent expectations, is a way of keeping your mind stuck in a rut. This doesn’t mean you should never expect anything at all from yourself and others, but rather that the rules governing your expectations shouldn’t steer you towards unjustifiably negative conclusions.
If you feel dissatisfied or let down by an outcome, then you must have been expecting something different. Instead of getting angry, ask yourself: “Were my expectations too high?” and “What new things have I learned?”
The bottom line is that you have to see and accept things as they are, not as you expected or wished them to be. Just because something didn’t happen the way you had planned doesn’t mean it isn’t exactly what you need to get where you ultimately want to go.
See also: 2 experiments on how children and adults are conditioned for success or failure
Featured image: S nova, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
