Destroy negativity with this one useful trick
We face a barrage of negativity every single day.
In the morning, we might watch the news on TV and the headlining stories tell us about something graphic.
The stresses of the day come at us left and right — perhaps bosses or customers or coworkers (or even friends and family) complain to us.
We might open the mail and get a scary-looking letter from a debt collector or the taxman.
It can be SO easy to let this stuff get us down.
When that happens, we have three options.
Option 1: Succumb to the negativity
We can let ourselves be overcome by the negativity to the point where we get negative, too. We become complainers and gripers and pessimists.
Option 2: Try to overcome with positivity
For those who do not want to succumb to negativity, the most common reaction is to overcome with positivity. That is, to smile and find the good in the situation. That sounds like a good idea but it’s hard to do that. (At least, it’s hard for ME to do that!) It’s hard to be positive when others are negativity… and you can also come across as a jerk too!
Option 3 (the useful trick): Replace negativity with PRODUCTIVITY
Positivity is like a bandaid on negativity. But a better way to replace (and ultimately destroy) negativity is with productivity. When faced with negative situations or feelings, the very best thing you can do is roll up your sleeves and work. You might not be able to work on the situation itself — sometimes that is completely out of your control — but you should work on something. (And if you CAN work on that very thing, even better).
I’ve found that negativity creates a lot of nervous energy (anxiety) and it’s easy to let it fester inside while I get even more stressed. But if I can take that situation and point it like a laser at a project or task, I can actually get a lot done.
Bad news on the radio? Good! The toilet needs fixing. Angry letter from a taxman? Great! I need to change the oil in my car.
Obviously, replacing negativity with productivity isn’t going to make the problem go away. (But that’s also the case with the other to responses, above). However, it does help you get a bunch of stuff done and it also alleviates the mind-numbing, stomach-churning stress you can feel and it can clear your head.
Love is a choice
Today is Valentine’s Day. It’s a day that we celebrate love by taking some time to tell the people we love that we love them! 
Love is a funny thing. We have all been wired to love — to love someone and to be loved by someone. And the feeling you get when you love someone is amazing. But that feeling is actually misguiding us: It makes us believe that love happens to us. The feeling of love makes us think that we are somehow incapable of love without Cupid’s arrow. It tricks us into believing that we are passive bystanders in love.
In reality, it’s quite the opposite. Love is a verb. It’s an action. It’s something WE do. It’s something we choose. Yes, there are automatic physical responses we experience when we’re with someone we love, but for the most part, love is a choice. It’s a decision on our part to love the other person.
It’s easy to feel that you’re being helplessly swept away in a tidal wave of love when you’re with someone early in your relationship — you both take the time to look and smell good for the other person and you’re discovering new things about them. That initial discovery phase is so much fun. It’s easy to love someone during that phase of the relationship. It’s MUCH harder to choose to love someone as the relationship deepens…
It’s a decision to love someone when you’re holding their hair while they puke their guts out.
It’s a decision to love someone when you’re on a long trip and they have to go to the bathroom and you don’t want to pull over.
It’s a decision to love someone when they have bed-head and morning breath.
It’s a decision to love someone when they say something hurtful to you.
It’s a decision to love someone when you choose to spend time with them instead of doing something else you find enjoyable.
It’s a decision to love someone when their life is shattered and they are desperately needy and can’t return the attention.
It’s a decision to love someone when you learn things about them that you wish you didn’t know.
I could go on and on and on but you get the idea.
The initial giddy feelings of love at the beginning a relationship are wonderful and seem wildly out of control. We love that feeling. But love grows from there when we choose to love someone.
The more you spend time with someone, the more you’ll see them at their best and at their worst. It’s easy to love someone at their best. But true love is measured by how much you choose to love someone when they are at their worst.
5 steps to becoming truly happy
Happiness is an elusive thing. It can be hard to attain. When we do attain it, we know. And if we don’t cultivate it, we’ll lose it.
But what IS happiness?
Let’s forget the physiological/psychological answers for a moment. I’m less interested in knowing the mix of chemicals in my brain that make me happy.
If we want to be happy, we have to first define what makes us happy. Here’s a step-by-step process to do that.
1. List what makes you happy
Start by listing all of the things that you KNOW make you happy.
Spend some time on this step. List as many things from your experience that you know can make you happy. You might include people or places or things or experiences that make you happy. List as many as you can think of.
2. List the things you THINK will make you happy
Now list the things you have not yet experienced but you think would make you happy: Maybe you’re not a millionaire yet but you think it would make you happy, write it down. Maybe you’re not in love but you think it would make you happy, write it down.
Keep at it until you’ve exhausted this list.
3. Get specific
I think the first two steps are probably pretty straightforward and weren’t that hard, even if you created a big list. But now comes the part that most of us don’t get to. It’s time to get specific. Maybe something like “be rich” or “fall in love” sound great but aren’t very easy to measure. So you need to figure out what the threshold is to make you happy. Maybe being rich will make you happy. But if you get really specific, you have to admit that being debt free would be a good start. And maybe earning a six figure income would be good. You might define “rich” as having a million dollars in the bank, for example, but there are several steps between your current bank account and your future bank account and you need to figure out what level you switch from your current level of satisfaction (or dissatisaction) to happiness.
I’m not going to pull the wool over your eyes, here. This is a tough step. But it’s absolutely crucial.
Once you have this list of specific “happiness factors”, guess what you have: You have your vision of the future and a list of goals and objectives to get there. You have the exact list of things that will make you happy.
3. Put them in order
Put your list of happiness factors in order from “most immediately achievable” to “most distant in the future“. By doing this, you create a “to-do” list of steps to work toward that will make you happy.
(And in the future, if you suddenly discover some other thing that makes you happy, you can always add it in somewhere in the list, depending on its attainability).
This sounds good so far, doesn’t it!?! It’s like your own secret recipe for happiness. But we’re not done yet. Next comes the hardest step yet.
4. List all of the things that make you unhappy
I realize that you’re working on becoming happy but this list is important for one simple reason: You can achieve everything on your happiness list but if you are drowning in poisonous relationships and credit card debt and a job you hate, then you’ll never feel happy. So create a list of the things that make you unhappy. (Bonus tip: A good place to look is to look at the list of happiness factors and see if there are any circumstances in your life right now that are keeping you from achieving that particular happiness factor).
Now you’ve got a list of happiness factors and a list of unhappiness factors. One last step.. the hardest of them all!
5. Start working through the lists
Start working through your happiness list by working to attain or achieve the happiness factors you’ve outlined. Figure out how to get that thing in your life. Make sacrifices if necessary to achieve it. Cross each one off as you achieve it.
And, start working through your unhappiness list by working to eliminate the unhappiness factors you’ve outlined. This is going to be the hardest thing you do because it might mean confrontation with people who you need to stop associating with or it could mean breaking habits that are holding you back. But if you are serious about achieving happiness, you know that you need to do it. Cross each one off as you remove it from your life.
Celebrate every time you cross something off of either list.
A few additional notes
Here are a few things to remember while you’re doing this:
- After creating your happiness factor list, take a long look at it. If it’s filled with people and experiences, that’s great. If it’s filled with things (money, possessions, etc.), be careful! It’s okay to have things make you happy but don’t ever let them take the place of relationships, which are the most truly fulfilling of all.
- Not every happiness factor is going to be actionable. “Fall in love” isn’t something you can decide to do. However, you can take action to make the conditions optimal to fall in love. For example, you can learn to love yourself, you can rid yourself of baggage from previous relationships, you can invest in your health and your wardrobe, and you can get out into more social circles to meet people… just to name a few things.
- These lists aren’t fixed; they’re fluid. As your life changes, you may choose to add or subtract things from the list. That’s okay.
