Redefining Bad: How Changing Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

I feel a soapbox coming on. I hope you'll bear with me because the lesson here has the potential to make a real and noticeable impact on your life experience.?

While I spent part of my morning diving into studies examining the?neural circuitry of the amygdala,?chemical switches?in the brain, and how?cognitive appraisal?(i.e., how we think about a situation) impacts emotions on a brain level, I'll spare you the details.?

What you need to know, in a nutshell, is that how we think about things affects how we feel and, ultimately, what we do.?

That's why it's so important to get a handle on how and what you think.?And that's why today, we're digging into the concept of "bad" and how over-played and unhelpful (notice I didn't say "bad") it really is.?

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What Is Bad?

I love our brains. Those 3 pound (or 1360 grams for everyone else who uses the much more logical metric system) biological computing powerhouses that shape our entire life experience. I am routinely awed and amused by them.

Awed because of the sheer amount of information processing they are capable of and the complexity in their design.

Amused because they are all kinds of glitchy.?

If you've been with us for a while, you know we like to pull back the curtain on how our minds work, revealing the?biases and distortions?that are rampant in our thinking. If you're new here, suffice it to say that?our brains have developed short cuts to help them do their jobs more efficiently.

One of those short cuts is relevant for today: judgments.?

Our minds categorize things in an effort to be faster at processing information and directing us on how to respond. The simplest way to categorize is "good" and "bad."?

There is a rustling sound in the forest. A bear begins to emerge. It is large - many times bigger than I am. It has sharp teeth and long claws. It's moving quickly. It's hairs are standing up. That means it's not calm and friendly. It's growling. Oh no. It looks angry...or hungry. Bears can eat people. I'm people. Oh no. I am in mortal danger! What do I do? I should run. No, that one article on Google said to make yourself bigger and louder to scare it away. I'm so scared! I don't want to die!

OR

Bear = Bad! Initiate survival sequence.

See how efficient it is for our brains to bypass all of the processing and thinking and jump straight to bad??

And when our brains code something as bad, we automatically react to it in a base survival way - fight, flight, freeze, which translates to feeling anxious or angry and a strong desire to avoid or escape.?

That works fine when we're dealing with bears, but what happens when other things get coded as bad??

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Feelings Aren't Bad

And here's the soapbox...How often do you say,?"I feel bad"? If your answer is more than zero, buckle up.?Bad is not a feeling. It's a judgment, a short cut categorization, that, as we've already established, initiates the avoid or escape sequence.

When we experience a natural feeling, albeit perhaps an unpleasant or difficult one like anxiety or sadness, then code it as bad, what happens? Emotionally, we?pile on more ick.?All of a sudden we have extra anxiety or anger or guilt or shame on top of the original feeling.?

It plays out like this:?I feel sad. Sad is BAD. Men?shouldn't feel sad?(insert eye roll at horrifically unhelpful societal messaging).?Now I'm angry!

Or this one:?I'm angry at my kids! What kind of mom gets angry over something like that? That's BAD. I shouldn't feel that way. Enter in guilt and sadness.

When we label our feelings as bad, we're going to amplify our internal distress - pile on - or do things to avoid or escape feeling them.?

This point alone is worth the price of admission from a mental health and well-being standpoint, but let's dive into some more nuanced issues with our bad short cut coding.

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Difficult Is Not Bad

Our minds often default to difficult = bad. In part, it's because they were designed to keep us alive while expending the least amount of energy possible. Difficult takes energy, therefore bad.

But is it??

When middle school kids are taught that their struggle to learn new math concepts is actually a sign that their brains are making new connections and getting smarter (which it is, by the way), they persist. Their math scores go up, as does their confidence and cognitive computing power. They embody a growth mindset, which encompasses the belief that difficult is not bad. It is necessary for growth and mastery.?

Helpful.

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Different Is Not Bad

We often feel uncomfortable, insecure, or anxious when we realize that what we want or how we are is different from others. Think about your own journey of self-acceptance. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones who was always comfortable marching to the beat of your own drum, but the rest of us have had to work, whether we realized it or not, on breaking the association of being different being bad.

Different is just different. It's not better or worse until we add a value judgment to it.

We'd do well to remember that when it comes to other people, too, especially as the world gets smaller and we are continually encountering people with?different belief systems. If we can just remember that different does not mean bad, we might be more open to being?curious and compassionate, cutting down on unnecessary hostility and miscommunication.

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Discomfort Is Not Bad

And my personal favorite:?discomfort is not bad. It's simply uncomfortable or unpleasant, and there just might be a lot of value in being temporarily uncomfortable.?

Growth of any kind?requires?discomfort.

Anxiety is uncomfortable (not bad), but the only way to overcome fear is to face it - to?get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Learning a new skill can be uncomfortable - it can move you into unfamiliar territory where you don't feel competent - but how can you grow if you're not willing to be uncomfortable??

Change is uncomfortable, but does that mean bad? It's inevitable, so I certainly hope not. Take, for example, the discomfort that comes along with starting a new job, at least until we get up to speed and adjust to the new role. How many of us are still working at our first jobs? How happy would you be if you were? I don't know about you, but I don't think being a hostess at El Chico's forever maps onto my values or life goals.

When we label discomfort as bad and therefore something to be avoided, we become increasingly fragile...and fragile things are easy to break.?Resilience?and strength and confidence all require us to be uncomfortable at some point.?Discomfort is the path to so much of what makes life worthwhile. Might as well view discomfort as a good thing.?

I think difficult, different, and discomfort often overlap...and still do not need to be coded as bad.

For example, Emily, my trainer, made me do pull ups this week. FIVE SETS. She knows I don't like them. They are difficult (I absolutely can not do even one without some assistance...yet). They are different than anything I do in my day-to-day life. And they are hands down uncomfortable. I have to strain and struggle and push past the point of wanting to quit. I have to work HARD...and I see the value in it. How else am I going to build muscle mass and get stronger? I can't...unless I'm willing to endure - no, embrace - "bad" things.

Or how about this one? Having a difficult, uncomfortable conversation with your partner might be different, especially if you or they tend to avoid hard convos, but on the other side lies more understanding and connection. The only way to get there, though, is to go through the difficult discomfort.

But think about it. What would happen to the quality of our relationships if we could communicate authentically and vulnerably without initiating the "this is bad" survival sequence (fight-flight-freeze...avoid or escape)?

Continuing in that same vein, therapy and psychedelic experiences can both be difficult. They have the potential to unearth painful emotions, memories, patterns, and realizations. Does that mean these things are bad, to be avoided? Absolutely not. They have the power to be incredibly healing, if not downright transformative.

If we label certain experiences or circumstances as bad when we really mean difficult or uncomfortable, unpleasant or different, then we run the risk of doing ourselves harm on both individual and systemic levels.?

Is Anything Bad?

I would argue that?nothing?is inherently good or bad. It completely depends on the context.

Consider pain, for a moment. Is pain good or bad? BAD! Right??

Wait, what about when you're sore after working out. Isn't that a good kind of pain because it means you're getting stronger??

Even the pain of grief can be coded as good if you consider that the only way not to feel grief when you lose someone is to not have cared about them at all. Moreover, that pain can be a connection to a lost loved one, a way to still feel their presence.?

So pain may be difficult or uncomfortable or unpleasant, but it isn't necessarily bad.

Let's take another admittedly dramatic example to further prove the point. Is murder good or bad??

Knee-jerk reaction is bad, right??

But can you think of a circumstance - a context - in which intentionally taking someone's life might actually be for the greater good??

I can. Several, in fact.

Extreme yes, but it makes the point. Nothing is?objectively good or bad. It depends on the context. If you've got an exception to that rule, by all means, please share it! But until then, I'm sticking with it.

Therefore, I find it much more helpful to replace "good" and "bad" with more precise words or questions.?For example, I routinely talk with my patients about thoughts being?helpful?or?unhelpful, not good or bad. Is this relationship?healthy?or?unhealthy?for me? Is this goal?aligned with my values?or not? Is this habit?adding to?or?detracting from?my health??

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Your Psych Strength Challenge

As you move forward this week,?consider "bad" a red flag.?Pay attention to your language, both internal (thoughts) and external (spoken). When you?spot that red flag?waving at you - and it will - dig in a bit.?Be more precise with your language. Describe your experience in more specific detail: this is hard. This is uncomfortable. This is painful.?

Then, and here's the real challenge, see if you can recode it as a good thing.?I want this different, difficult, discomfort, displeasure because...

See what happens when you adjust your mind's default coding.

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"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

- William Shakespear,?Hamlet