Negativity

Negativity

The current pandemic has generated a lot of negativity. So much of our lives have been disrupted. So many families have suffered unemployment, hunger, and loss of loved ones. It hurts. It hurts now. It hurts a lot.

We isolate now so that when we gather again, no one is missing. Although it is a somber and some may even say painful measure to take, we take it for the positive outcome, the positive goal: No one is missing. No one.

“Negativity will distract you from your goals, so don’t entertain it.” – Carlos Wallace, Author, Motivational Speaker, and Youth Advocate.

It is easy, really easy, to fall into the trap of negativity. Negativity breeds more negativity. It compounds upon itself and it can spread like wildfire to others. Once in the trap, it can be difficult to get out without help.

The good news is that it can be done.

Negativity can be balanced out with Positivity. Notice that I did not say, removed, cancelled, deleted, expunged, or eliminated.

Just like good things do not overcome or replace bad things, just like easy things do not overcome or replace hard things, and just like joy does not overcome or replace pain, positivity does not overcome or replace negativity. It is still there. It is why we must understand the balancing forces and how to work with them.

Loss

Here is an example. Recently, I lost my father-in-law in November of 2019 and father in May of 2020. No question these were negative events in my life. If you have lost someone close to you, you understand the sorrow, the pain, and the grief that attends the loss. If you haven’t yet lost someone close to you, you will understand when it happens.

To balance out the negative impacts of the loss, consider the positive impacts. Positive impacts like collecting and sharpening the fond memories. Positive impacts like drawing friend and family relationships closer together. Positive impacts like reexamining and rededicated your life to a higher purpose.

When Bad Things Happen

When negativity is forced upon you, you have the option of choosing a positive response to mute the negativity, or of choosing a negative response to multiply the negativity.

It is okay to feel bad when something negative happens to you. Those bad feelings should be commensurate with the bad event, and not a moment longer. You can be surprised by a bad event, feel stunned by it, then hurt, shame and anger. Anger can give way to sadness, and over time thin out as the emotions evaporate away, while the memories remain.

Focusing on the positive can speed up this process – but it cannot eliminate those feelings. Denial is unhealthy. Working through them, each at our own pace, in our own time, perhaps a little faster with positive influences can reduce the impact of the negativity and restore a desired balance.

Responding to negativity with negativity lengthens and complicates the restoring of balance. Too much unbalanced negativity can create a hole too deep to climb out of without help of some sort.

When I talk about Positivity, I am not talking about a pollyannish, rose-colored glasses approach. I am talking about taking a sober, adult, mature effort to glean out and apply positive aspects to our thinking.

Sports

In sports, when we compete against a vastly superior opponent, even though we may lose, and consider that loss in a negative light, we can take measure of ourselves and have a realistic view of where we stand competitively. That is a positive, knowing where you are and where you stand. Now you can make positive, detailed plans to improve. You know what knowledge you need. You know which skills need to be improved. You know what kind of coaching you need. You know what kind of practice you need to do. You know what kind of desire you need to sustain to become more competitive. 

Business

In business, when we struggle with sales and lose a customer, we certainly take that loss in a negative light. Some of the positive things we may learn include a closer look at the market, at the product mix, at the Account Management and Customer Care functions to identify trends and learn where gaps in our service may have contributed to the loss. Once we have identified the problems, we can then take the positive steps to fix them. If we simply focus on the negative impacts and consider who to blame and punish, we lose out on the learning and the fixing.

Relationships

In relationships, we face a different approach. Relationships are not competitions. The questions, “Who is winning in your marriage?”, or “Who is winning in your family, your friendship?” are absurd. If everyone is not winning in a relationship, everyone is losing. Yet many treat a relationship as a competition, sparking enormous amounts of negativity. In my view, relationships are places of safety, support and security. Relationships are places to renew, find peace, build joy.

Sadly, not all relationships work out that way. Many of them could, but it takes two fully committed people to make it so. The negativity produced by a bad relationship can serve others as an example of how not to be. The negativity produced by a bad relationship can serve others as a warning of what might be if both are not working at it together. The negativity produced by a bad relationship can serve to inspire others to greater purpose, to not repeat the mistakes of others in their own lives.

Review

In this article we have seen how easy it is to fall into the negativity trap. We have seen how we can find positive elements to balance it out. We have reviewed loss; we have reviewed when bad things happen. We have reviewed examples in sports, business, and relationships. I am positive that this is enough to cover in one article.

Back to the opening quote.

“Negativity will distract you from your goals, so don’t entertain it.” – Carlos Wallace, Author, Motivational Speaker, and Youth Advocate.

We must learn from it, embrace it, savor it. But we must not let it control our lives. It opens the door to positivity, and once we step through it, we have begun to balance.