I mentioned a few days ago how we need to get happy. The pandemic has only accelerated a long standing challenge for many of us: anxiety, loneliness, and the inclination to be negative.
I made a case for sourcing better content: places that look for what’s good about the world. I cited a Jordan Peterson podcast with 10 global trends that show us how the quality of living and the world at large is improving in critical ways.
So, where does most of your negativity come from? There are common sources.
Here are a few to consider:
- News Media – This is a slam dunk. By now, you’ve realized that mainstream media has become the “Hatfield vs. McCoy” bare knuckle fight. Their goal? Prove that the other side are idiots. And how some news sources portray significant events is alarming. For example, the U.S. news coverage of COVID has been more negative than in other countries, researchers find.
https://fortune.com/2020/11/29/covid-19-news-coverage-us-negative-stories/ - Social Media – Man, what started out for me in 2010 as fun and rewarding has become a reckless and even brutal platform to exchange blows over highly charged issues. I say reckless because people are sourcing facts from biased sources and advancing them as universal truth. I’m ALL FOR giving people an opportunity to exercise their freedom of speech, but it really needs a format with some guard rails. Otherwise, it’s like clubbing a bunch of baby seals – just senseless. In a 2020 poll, 64% of Americans said social media had a mostly negative effect on the way things were going in the U.S.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/15/64-of-americans-say-social-media-have-a-mostly-negative-effect-on-the-way-things-are-going-in-the-u-s-today/ - People you interact with – A toxic environment is any place or any behavior that causes harm to your health, happiness, and wellbeing. If you’re around people who make you feel small, insecure, or bad about yourself, you might be in a toxic environment. If you feel a physical weight every time you walk into your place of work, you might be in a toxic environment. Perhaps you go to work and are verbally abused by your boss. Or maybe your partner has a way of manipulating you that lowers your self-esteem. You could even be creating a toxic environment for yourself at home by not keeping your space tidy, not making time to recycle and respect the planet, or not caring for yourself by sitting down to read a book with a cup of tea every now and then.
https://www.rtor.org/2019/10/07/ways-a-toxic-environment-can-be-detrimental-to-your-mental-health/
What you can do about Negativity:
- Laugh more – Identifying and removing negative self-talk traps is always a great starting point. But an often overlooked strategy is to find humor in your moment to moment day. Sir William Osler tells us that “laughter is the music of life.” Pandora has a comedy channel that I tap into when I’m stressed. I agree with Osler, laughter is a lot like music – it never gets old. Try it. And always affirm the good in you, others, and any part of the world that has earned it.
- Find better news sources – According to the data scientists, news outliers like AP, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal rank very high in the least amount of bias with the most amount of reliability in their reporting.
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-statistically-biased-is-our-news-f28f0fab3cb3 - Uplevel your conversations – Meaning, start looking for sources that point toward what is good, what is growing, and keep this info on the tip of your tongue. I’m not advocating be pollyanic – just training the mind away from a negative bias and toward better mental health and wellbeing. The alternative? Well, even the best of us can become negative if we are not paying attention to the cumulative effects on negative influences around us.
Bottom line? Laugh more, affirm the positive, share the good.