Beat the Power of Bad

10 Tricks to Overpower a Negative Mindset

Do you know the rule of thumb for happy relationships?

Psychologists have found that couples need to more sex than fights. This seems like common sense, but there’s actually a golden ratio that predicts the long-term viability of marriage. If you exceed that ratio, you’ll likely be living in marital bliss.

I swear I’m not making this up. Psychologist John Gottman identified the ratio while studying couples and the happiness of their relationships.

“Some happy couples show very little affection but flourish because they hardly fight; other successful couples fight more often but make up for it with lots of warmth and kindness,” explain John Tierney and Roy Baumeister in “The Power of Bad” (the book is great). “Informally, some researchers refer to this ratio as the ‘five f*cks for every fight’ rule. That’s an oversimplification — there are many forms of affection besides sex — but it’s a quick way of addressing a fundamental issue.”

As humans, we are prone to “negativity bias.” Essentially, this means that we react and focus more strongly on negative things in our life. Negative experiences bother us more than good experiences of equal value feel good.

Clinical psychologist Robert Schwartz found that patients with “normal functioning” in terms of mood had a ratio of 2.5 positive feelings for every negative one, and patients achieved “optimal functioning” when they had four positive feelings for every negative one (known as the “Rule of Four”). In their study gambling, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman also determined that “losses loom larger than gains,” leading to what we now known as “loss aversion.”

As you may have guessed, there’s an evolutionary reason why negative things impact us more.

We weren’t always at the top of the food chain. Missing warning flags and indicators of danger had some dire consequences back in the day.

“The cost of missing a sign of predatory danger…can be catastrophic. Game over, end of the line for those genes,” explains Jonathan Haidt in “The Happiness Hypothesis.” “Over and over again, psychologists find that the human mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly and persistently than to equivalent good things. We can’t just will ourselves to see everything as good because our minds are wired to find and react to threats, violations and setbacks.”

So then, we’re pretty much hardwired to look out for things that are negative and different every second of every day. The challenge for us is that the old predatory threats don’t exist. Instead we have turn our sights on social media slights, snide remarks from colleagues and the hyperbolic nature of pandemic news coverage.

The Bad Is Overwhelming Our Screens

While the media are providing some useful information about the coronavirus pandemic, many outlets are also drowning that information in petty politics, disturbing images, death tolls, economic destruction and other sensationalized topics, which are dredging up fear, anger, depression and anxiety in us all.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the news we consume today isn’t so much reporting as it is a way of keeping people addicted to the news cycle,” explained licensed psychologist Logan Jones, PsyD., in a Verywell Mind article. “Consuming too much of this kind of news, whether actively or passively, can be very toxic, and what you hear has an impact on your mood.”

The article goes on to explain that it has a physiological impact upon our brains and bodies. In particular, it activates the sympathetic nervous system and thereby release stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Of note, we can also be triggered in this way through our social media feeds, which have been revealed to be spreading misinformation as well as political polarization and pandemic sensationalism.

The UN warned that the coronavirus pandemic “has the seeds of a major mental health crisis,” noting that there is currently an increased risk for anxiety, depression, domestic violence and abuse. Furthermore, facing the challenge of coping with all of the negative news coverage many have turned to the increased use of substances like alcohol to help manage their emotions.

Simply put. Social media and the news can be bad for our mental wellbeing. If you do decide you need updates, I would recommend also trying to counteract its impact by actively seeking out positive stories about all of the courageous acts of goodwill that random strangers are making every day.

“You can’t repeal the Rule of Four, because one bad event is going to have more visceral impact than a couple of good events, but you don’t have to make long-term judgments based on those gut feelings. If one thing goes wrong, don’t interpret it as a harbinger of inevitable doom, whether you’re dealing with a personal set back or contemplation of the state of the world,” write Tierney and Baumeister. “Whatever dismal event leads a newscast, on most days there are a lot more than four good things happening for every bad one….That’s why, when you lose perspective and over-read to the bad, you’re liable to make things worse.”

How I Overcame the Power of Bad

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I used to be known as Russ the curmudgeon. Russ the negative. Russ the cynic. Russ the pessimist.

Whenever I got criticized for my gloomy outlook on the world, I dug my heels in on all the reasons I felt the way I did. And then I’d call myself a “realist” in attempt to wash off some of the stigma from the descriptors thrown my way.

I may have had valid gripes to point to in my life and career, but I was thinking about them all wrong.

Bad things will always happen in this world. People will cheat, lie, get greedy and be abusive. Random senseless accidents will claim lives. Bad people will rise to power. Companies will take advantage of their employees.

There’s nothing we can do to stop that, but there’s one thing that I can assure you without a shadow of a doubt. If we focus intently on those negative things, they will only grow in size and weight until they completely consume our minds.

The focus and attention that we willingly give to negative stressors in our lives is what is in our control. If something bothers us, we don’t need to obsess over it and expect the worst to happen. This “future tripping” is only handing power over to whatever we dislike.

You might not want to admit it (I never did), but this obsessing is really us saying: “Here are the keys to my feelings and emotional stability. Why don’t you drive for a while?”

Or we can try to take the power back by seeing the silver lining.

When we are sitting in our negativity nook, we’re focusing on what’s right there in front of us, and we are inventing storylines for why things are the way they are.

“When you change what you look at — sometimes the things you look at change.”

I found this phrase to be true after having gone through cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and group sessions. I had become so used to managing negativity and constant stress in my career and in my personal life that it was all that I could see. I didn’t make an attempt to look at anything else.

There were two reasons for this. First of all, I’d grown used to it. It was a familiar world. While it was a miserable world, it was comfortable because I knew what to expect. Second, if the world was a miserable, depressing place that was constantly “doing bad things to me,” then I believed I had a free pass to abuse alcohol, not go to the gym, eat poorly, etc.

Both of those are maladaptive thought patterns that lead to a continued cycle of worsening thoughts, feelings and behavior. I know because I lived through the consequences.

Ultimately, me not being willing to change my environment, my career and how I lived my life was laziness. Plain and simple. It’s very convenient to believe that the world is a horrible place. This logic enables you to say “well, why should I even try.” This is also a myopic point of view. If we look for negative things around us, that is all we will see. But we can look for positives as well.

With regard to my second argument, others often aren’t really doing bad things “to me” at all. This assumes and expects that others “should” treat me one way or another. Expectations are just resentments waiting to happen.

Others act as they so choose, and then it’s my decison how I react. If I want to believe that they have done something “to” me, then it’s convenient because it allows me to sidestep any responsibility. Upon further reflection, most others were not intentionally mistreating me. It was just a narrative that I had created to fence myself in my negativity nook.

Once I finally gave myself an opportunity to take a break from the speed marathon of my career, I realized that I was allowing my career to drag me down and force me to try to hold down parts of myself that were deeply important to me, such as my empathy for others and the importance of social justice. I realized that I did actually have an opportunity to change and that going back to school at 38 was not evidence of failure.

On the contrary, it was evidence of my strength and courage to attempt to self-actualize. So, I applied to NYU, and I will begin pursuing my MSW this fall. I quit drinking, stopped eating junk, started hitting the gym hard, continued therapy and took up reading and writing like a champ.

It took hard work, the endurance of vulnerability, the confrontation of pain and much resilience to find the positives that existed in my life. But when I did, my whole world changed around me, and I’ve never been happier than I am today.

10 Actions You Can Take to Beat the Power of Bad

Here are ten tips that I’ve learned while doing CBT and group therapy. They’ve helped me manage my emotions and consciously improve my overall outlook as I’ve navigated this difficult period. I hope they can help you too:

1. Check in with Yourself: Ask yourself how you’re feeling a few times a day. It can be easy to get sucked up into a swirl of negative thinking. All it takes is one phone call, one glance at social media or five minutes watching the news.

2. Question the Source: When I’m feeling anxious or upset, I don’t just continue on with my day and try to block it out. I stop and try to find the source of the discomfort. If you can pinpoint the thought that caused the emotion to arise, you have the opportunity to inject some reason and logic.

3. Reduce Exposure to Negative News: It’s just that simple. Reducing the sources and volume of negative inputs will have a material impact upon your mood. When the pandemic first began, I was watching hours of news every day. By the time I’d go to bed, I was depressed, anxious and full of fear and panic. So, I stopped watching the news. I haven’t watched it in three weeks, and I couldn’t be happier. If you absolutely must watch to receive critical updates, set a time limit. Schedule a half hour a day with a hard stop.

4. Remind Yourself What You Can Control: If you’re like me, you like to be in control of situations. We like to think that if we just do X and Y, then everything will be okay. Well, I’ve got news for you. We have far less control over the outside world than we think we do, and everything will likely be okay regardless of how much hand sanitizer and toilet paper we buy. Focus on controlling yourself, be mindful of the media content you consume and try to short circuit negative thought patterns.

5. Call Yourself on Catastrophic Thinking: It can be easy to slip into the mindset that the current pandemic is the end of the world. It’s a bad situation, don’t get me wrong, but the world is not ending. The sun will rise tomorrow and expecting the worst will do nothing but darken your day. Do you really want to consciously make yourself unhappy?

6. Widen the Lens to Regain Perspective: Make a gratitude list of all the things you are thankful for today. Keep it handy to pull out when you feel down. Also take a step back and consider this question: Looking back, what will you think when you remember this experience ten years from now? Do you think you’ll be as scared or depressed then as you are right now? Probably not. You will have moved on with your life, and this experience will look like a fly on the ass of an elephant.

7. Make Human Contact: Reach out and touch someone (digitally). We are social creatures by nature. The phrase “social distancing” always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s “physical distancing.” We can still talk to whoever we want, whenever we want. If you’re feeling down, anxious, fearful or in a panic, call someone who you feel comfortable opening up to and being vulnerable with. Discussing your feelings takes away some of their power and the empathy they can give you will help to ease the burden on your shoulders.

8. Sublimate Your Emotions: Channel all the pent-up emotion, anxiety and energy into something creative. Paint, read, take pictures, build something, do a puzzle, play a video game, learn a language. I don’t know about you, but I’m cranking out at least one article a day right now, and it feels phenomenal. Pursuing a productive, goal-bound activity can help you regain some semblance of control during these uncertain times.

9. Take Care of Your Body: We often forget about this one, but it’s important. There are many reports of individuals trying to cope with the stress of this situation by overindulging in unhealthy food or alcohol. This will only leave you worse off. Believe me, I’ve tried. Alcohol dependency doesn’t end well. Try to eat well, get plenty of sleep (read this article by Ryan Fan) and try to get some sun and exercise safely if you can. All of these things put together can actually have a significant impact upon your mood.

10. Take It Easy on Yourself: Looking around Medium and on social media, I see tons of people writing about all the gigantic challenges they’ve taken on. That’s admirable, but it’s not a requirement of the pandemic. There will be no post-quarantine performance review. It’s a challenge for some of us just to get through the day. Pat yourself on the back when you do and cut yourself some slack.

###