Four Friends: John, Jen, Molly & Trish

By John R. Nocero, Jennifer Rawley, Molly Downhour and Patricia Graham

This week's Topic: Negative Trash

John: Hating your work or your relationship doesn’t mean you suck. Everyone has positive and negative aspects to their day. This is normal. It just means that you have not found the right job or the right girlfriend (or boyfriend). It’s likely that you are the one holding yourself back. Sorry, yes, it’s true. When you change yourself, the right person will come into your life and those that are not meant to be there, will leave. When you want to change jobs, you focus on the jobs you want and the right job will be there when it is time. But don’t assume that all this is happening because you are an awful person. Yes, sometimes, we make poor choices, either getting into a relationship that is not good for us or making mistakes in our spending or working for the wrong employer, and it is painful, now we have to deal with the consequences. Emotions are very tricky like that. And what also makes it worse is that you don’t even know you have gotten in your own way. You are your own roadblock.

 Question for my three friends and this may sting a bit but someone may be wondering this, so here goes: What do you do when your head is full of negative trash?

Jen:  When my head is swimming with negativity, trash or otherwise, I first try to slow down or stop digging the hole of self-pity any deeper. Once I gather myself, I will allocate a reasonable amount of time to continue worrying (aka stressing, explaining, dissecting, figuring out why...et al.). Once the time has passed, I force myself to snap out of it. It's much easier said than done, but the alternative is to continue on in negative thoughts that are not going to improve my situation. I agree with John, for the most part we are a product of our own actions and living the consequences of our own decisions. In the professional world, this is very true in many aspects, especially in the US where we have freedom to move from or to any job as we please. We may think we lack this freedom, but that is our own minds working against us. For example, who doesn’t know someone that abhors their job? Yet they continue working at it with no obvious plans to make a change. They complain about their lot, but will cite any number of excuses to quit such as finances, location, schedules and more. It's much easier to find an excuse or way out of doing something difficult than it is to strategize around the barriers. Herein lies the roadblock John mentions- we literally do it to ourselves. 

For argument's sake, I'm not lumping everyone into this category. I understand fully there are people struggling to get by, choosing to pay power bills over buying food or in similar situations where changing a job could be detrimental due to a lapse in pay. Rather, I'm speaking of the types of professionals I work with every day, that incorrectly lump themselves into that category. They theoretically could make it a month or two without pay if they had to, if the sacrifice of doing so could give them a better opportunity. I'm also not advocating for knee-jerk decisions or pulling a movie-worthy walkout. It's okay to plan it out or strategize, in fact that's the smartest thing to do, but you must have plans in place to take eventual action. Like so many other things, this comes down to self-control- if you cannot control your own thoughts or actions then the world will control them for you.

Molly: Negative trash is an evil villain that requires a variety of superheroes to conquer. Picture the Justice League or the Avengers. My group of superheroes include my husband, family, work friends, girlfriends, and mom friends. These superheroes provide honest feedback, perspective, advice, time to vent, and/or solutions to attack the evil perils of negative mind trash. Having a variety of superheroes in your village is key in order to customize the counter attack. For example, after a terrible work meeting I informed a colleague of how bad the meeting went and it was even worse since I was missing my youngest's kindergarten holiday performance at school. My negative trash was telling me that not only was I bad at my job, but I was bad at my job and a bad mom. In true superhero fashion she simply asked what time was the performance. When I said in 15 minutes, she said you can make it. Just go. And I did. Not only did I get to watch my baby perform something resembling a festive tune (mostly adorably waving at me), I also got the needed distance from the stressful work meeting consuming way too much brain matter. The time traveling to and from the school was enough to give me the perspective on what I could have done differently and whether or not I owned the problem (which I did not). I came back to work with pictures/videos and a clear head to take on the next challenge. Negative mind trash is a worthy opponent looking to take and keep you down, but my superheroes have my back and I have theirs.

Trish:  What is negative trash? To me, negative trash is the many bad, evil, ugly, undesirable, harmful, destructive, and nasty things that we encounter on a daily basis. As I sift through the negative trash that I encounter each day, I recognize that there is some trash I choose to address and make better, and some I just leave in the trash bin and ignore. One important item on the daily negative trash list that seems to do the most damage is a negative thought that intrudes my thinking, planning and creative processes. Out of alllllllll the negative trash out there that we sift through in our daily lives, we can only control our own negative trash, right? So, what do I do to handle my negative thoughts? For one, I try to take a deep breath, consider the negative thought and quickly figure a way to minimize or narrow it down. I then move to looking at the possibilities of what can be done with the issue. How can I solve it quickly? What are my alternatives? I also take some time to reconsider the negativity. If I create a solution, was it as negative as I initially thought? I may even try to move toward putting a better spin on my issue or negativity. Maybe my issue would be solved if I worked with someone else to solve it. Maybe I would gain experience by working with someone that I haven’t worked with in the past. Sometimes, I even take a moment to consider what the people I most respect would think or how they would handle my negative trash issue. Ultimately, I ask myself am I holding myself to an insanely high standard and is that why I am allowing negative trash to intrude my thinking, planning and creative process? I am working to free myself of trying to achieve perfection by recognizing that my successes and positivity have come from my willingness to mess up, learn, and move on.