Let go the negativity in you !!

Just as an entire sea of water can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship, the negativity of the world can’t put you down unless you allow it inside you.

People get influenced so easily by what others say. Negativity is the kind of emotion that destroys a person completely.

If you are going to be that negative in life, you should understand right now that it will not take you anywhere. It will only wear you down. The people around you will slowly step back. People notice everything happening around them these days. Nobody wants that weight nearby, and when they sense someone carrying a lot of it, they quietly stop calling. Negativity is a strong emotion.

It never announces itself

People react, lose their temper, fight, cry, scream and break down. They don’t recognise it for what it is. They think they are fine, that this emotion does not exist in their life.

What they miss is that it starts from the small ones. Jealousy. Anger. Resentment that never got said out loud.

All of these slowly contribute towards NEGATIVITY. Nobody wakes up one morning as a negative person. It arrives in fragments - a comparison here, a grudge there, a habit of assuming the worst about people’s intentions - and each fragment is small enough to justify on its own.

Then one day you notice you have not had an ungrudging thought about anyone in a while, and you cannot point to the moment it started, because there wasn’t one.

One should try to handle themselves by understanding that what they are doing is not right. Negativity is a very small word but a very painful emotion.

What it actually costs you

Here is what I did not understand when I first wrote this. I thought the cost of negativity was mainly social - that people leave, and they do.

The larger cost is what it does to your perception.

A mind in that state does not experience the world neutrally. It filters. It notices every slight and discards every kindness, because the kindness does not fit the story. Ten people are decent to you and one is rude, and by evening you have only retained the one. You are not lying about your day. You genuinely only kept that part.

Live in that filter long enough and the world really does look exactly the way you fear it does - not because it is, but because you stopped collecting the evidence that would say otherwise.

That is why it is so hard to argue anyone out of it, including yourself. The proof has already been thrown away.

What to do instead

One should fill their life with positive emotions - happiness, love, care.

And I mean actively, not as a mood you wait to arrive. Say the good thing out loud instead of only thinking it. Notice one thing that went right before you catalogue the six that went wrong. Assume the better reason for someone’s behaviour first, and make them prove you wrong rather than the other way round.

None of this is naive. It is just refusing to let the filter run unchecked.

NEGATIVITY destroys people and takes everything from them. So instead of repenting and regretting later, now is the time to let go of all the negative emotions through some self-control.

Remember, it is never too late for anything!!

Start with the small ones

If any of this sounds familiar, don’t start with the whole outlook. Start with one habit.

Pick the single thing you complain about most often - the commute, a colleague, the weather - and stop saying it out loud for a fortnight. Just that one.

It sounds trivial and it isn’t. Saying a complaint aloud rehearses it and makes it more available next time. Stop rehearsing it and it starts to fade, and the space it occupied gets filled by something else without you having to arrange it.

One habit. Two weeks. It is a much better first step than deciding to become a positive person.

-Kashish