What to do when you find yourself so very negative?

Everyone feels negative now and then. But what to do when your negativity feels so heavy?

It's normal to be negative as our brain is pre-programmed with the negativity bias. Yet with persistant training, we could reverse that program. And as paradoxical as it may sound, the more negative you feel, the better opportunity you have to change the structure of your brain. How then?

I used to guide and still guide my children with one method. And this method is applicable to adults too. I tell them, "It's OK to feel sad, anger, frustrated..., to feel all kinds of negative emotions. But it's not OK to let them rule over you. We have to know when it is ruling and start to train our brain."

The next steps are to regulate those emotions and to change your thoughts together with your action. We could calm our nervous system through labelling the emotions, relaxing or reframing our thoughts. The first and second are easier and often work well, yet when it involves big emotions, naming them is not effective enough and trying to relax is really hard. The last is the most difficult as we are talking about new ways of perceiving a person, an incident, an event. Many a time, journalling or talking to others could help shift the mental frame that causes the negative thoughts and feelings.

There is another way that could lift us up from a sea of negativity and always work like wonders: putting yourself in an activity that brings you "flow".

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

A few days ago, my daughter came home feeling very upset, frustrated and lonely, as a result of having some conflicts over a basket ball game with her brother. As she had been trained for a few years since she was very little, she reached my desk and shared about what she was going through. Then she walked away.

After an hour or so, she came back and showed me a poem with illustration she made, inspired by a book she had read at the school library, her face wearing a beautiful smile. While I was awe struck with her work, it also seemed whatever so heavy and bad within her small heart all dissipated: she was in her flow where she was so absorbed in creating something worthwhile, something that required her to channel all of her thoughts, energy and actions into. With this, how could her brain keep on focusing on the negative?

The best part was her poem filled me and my family with so much joy and happiness when she read it out loud. And today, when we went out for a family meal, I said, "When you learn to transform your negativity into positivity like that, you not only make yourself happier but you also radiate it to the world around you. Well done, honey! From that place, you can find better ways to work with your brother."

So you see, just with some brain training in each situation, you can move from "Reactive" to "Creative". These two words have the same syllables but totally different meanings and the choice of which mode you want to be in is totally yours.

And here's the poem for you to enjoy as well. Hopefully, when you are so unhappy, reading it out loud could be another way to help you feel better, and then, in a more responsive mode, you could find creative solutions to any challenge at hand, and therefore, you will one more time enhance the positive wirings in your precious brain.

"One morning, two birds hatched on a nest

One bird sang, one bird roared

One bird looked up, one bird looked down

One said, "Thank you," one cried, "More!"

Soon the birds were beginning to fly in the sky

Soaring over the land and sea

Seeing things quite differently

One saw mud and trash, one saw stars and the moon

One saw the crowds anger and madness

One saw different shapes of happiness

One bird smiled, one bird frowned

The happy bird then taught her sister

How to enjoy this wonderful life

A few years later, these birds grew older

The sad one became happier

Now these birds live a long life."

[The author made added some few words in the above version.]