Ever wonder what that is weighing heavily on your shoulders, keeping you from a good night’s sleep and making you want to punch people passing by for making eye contact? It’s man’s great enemy, negativity, and it has you filled
with rage and/or wandering the streets crying until the sun comes up. Heart attacks and strokes aside, negativity has the power to ultimately control and ruin your life. But there’s another way to deal with it, and it all starts with a little more perspective and a little less punching.
What is Negativity?
Negativity is a routine of constant resistance, a denial or refusal to the things around us, lacking in positivity with a general disdain for certain realities. When you’re filled with negativity, nothing is ever good enough and when you’re down, your focus on how bad everything is keeps any good from coming of it. Most negativity is due to unfavorable life situations, things we can change but choose not to through apathy or ignorance to possibility. We see others who hate their jobs and spend time with people they can’t stand, yet there we are right next to them every morning, waiting impatiently for coffee before stomping our feet to the office and spending our weekend with people who make us want to lay down in a busy intersection.
Negative Surroundings
By knowingly living in negative situations, you create your own negative world and deny yourself of wonderful experiences, and a lot of it has to do with your surroundings. Do you do what you do for the wrong reasons, because you lack confidence to find something better or you’re addicted to the idea of money and fame? Do you think if you make enough money, you can pay negativity to quit knocking at your door? Money certainly might help for a brief moment – there’s nothing like throwing a stack of singles at a stripper trying to make her way through law school – but those good feelings will subside and dissipate completely in a short time.
To remove negativity, you should be doing what you want to do, where you want to do it and genuinely have a positive outlook on it. Otherwise, the more you invest in things you despise, the harder your shell is to crack and then you’re 45 having your first heart attack.
Do you work a job thinking if you can just tolerate things for a little longer, you’ll get to a point where everything is smooth sailing? Well maybe it’ll just bring more stress and you don’t realize it yet. You tell yourself if you can just get there, then everything will be okay. But you’re not there; you’re here. And if you hate being here, you’ll probably hate being there, too. So why not enjoy where you are right here, right now?
Furthermore, maybe your house is not a home. Do you ever look at your place and feel like it’s not yours at all, not what you would want for yourself if given the choice to start from scratch? Clutter has a way of piling on unnoticeable negative tension that builds and builds until it’s removed. Clean out the place, donate stuff and give things to people who can better use them; you can’t sail smoothly when you’re anchored down with negativity.
Self-Inflicted Negativity
Most negativity people have is self-inflicted, meaning they find something bad in every situation. If nothing is even going on, they bring up a past negative event in their heads, where irritation and hasty decisions are monsters making them feel agitated for no reason at all. Time is an excellent conductor of negativity. Stick a person alone in a room with a clock and watch them worry about how long they’ve been in there, when they’ll get out, how little they’ve accomplished and how quickly time flies by, all based on the numbers on the clock. Procrastination is an unfortunate bi-product of time, something we all know too well, whether it’s business or personal, where we use it as an excuse not to do something. Most people faced with a life-or-death situation will snap out of negativity, focus on how good they’ve got it and get their shit together to get things done.
Time is a trick we play on ourselves, building negativity that drains us and leaves us unproductive and miserable with ourselves. Remove the clocks you don’t need from your life, only using ones that keep you on task. You don’t need a
clock in the bathroom reminding you how long you’ve been in there. Just get your shit done and move on.
Change Your Perspective
It has been well documented that nobody has the perfect life, but have you ever noticed people with the same jobs, family and social situations seem much happier than you? Maybe they just have a different outlook on life. Maybe they don’t earn a large income, but they love what they do. Maybe they don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones they have are pretty special. Maybe their girlfriend isn’t exactly a supermodel, but she’s the kind of girl who can drink your friends under the table and still make sweet love afterwards.
Beating negativity isn’t necessarily about avoiding it; it’s about changing it. There will no doubt be flat tires and shitty weather in the future, but maybe you take the opportunity to appreciate the scenery while you wait for the tow truck, use the bad weather as an excuse to build a nice fire and lay nude in front of it until the sun rises again. Sometimes negativity is a good challenge to have around, to see if you can truly appreciate how good you’ve got it.
Work It Off
Aside from accepting situations with a sense of peace or changing them altogether, there is a way to distance yourself from negativity by staying in motion. Stagnant living – that is, to work in a chair or lay in bed all day – is a quick way to build negativity in your life. Boredom can create irritable feelings, so break up routine and get moving.
If you work in an office, go for a walk. If you spend your weekend indoors, get outside. Nature has the continuous ability to bring clarity into view. Swap your chair for an exercise ball, your nap for a hot tea break and your break time for stretching. Meditation and breathing exercises help deeply embed positivity inside you. Breath in the bad shit, make peace with it and exhale the good stuff out, transforming negativity into positive energy and putting it back out into the world. Nobody is going to change your negativity for you, but if the next time you park your car in the garage you consider staying inside and leaving it running, maybe it’s time for a change. And since negativity clouds the good stuff from coming though, you’ll be damn glad you made that change.
