#220 Coping With Negativity

The world is a crazy place right now. Everywhere we turn there seems to be some sort of negativity. How quickly can this drain our energy level? Is it impacting our bodies? Negativity can be a toxic element that can play a crucial and detrimental role in our happiness. In this episode, Leslie and Leslyn discuss the different types of negativity that may plague your life and how you can neutralize and cope with some of the negativity at play. Leslie and Leslyn also explore some of the positives that you can start implementing in your own life to reduce negativity!

In this episode, we discuss…

Show Intro [0:00]

Introductions—Coping with Negativity [0:11]

Start of the Podcast [0:39]

Avoiding the Problem [1:57]

Neutralize Negativity [2:58]

Confirmation Bias in Negativity [3:53]

The Stand- Good vs Evil [4:20]

Different Kinds of Negativity [7:46]

Individual Cynicism [8:36]

Hostility [12:56]

Filtering [16:53]

Polarized Thinking [19:15]

Assuming the Future [20:56]

Putting the Blame on Others [26:07]

Emotional Reasoning [29:02]

Fallacy of Change [30:59]

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy [33:00]

Adding in the Positives [35:50]

What Are You Grateful For? [37:27]

Try This at Home! [39:39]

Outro [40:32]

Negativity can have a major impact on our mental and physical health. It can be an extremely toxic element to our overall wellbeing. In today’s episode, Leslie and Leslyn discuss some of the types of negativity and how you can cope while neutralizing the negativity that comes your way. Leslyn shares that the most important thing that we can do with negativity is neutralize it. If you hear a negative voice, being able to inject a positive voice is good for your energy. If we do not neutralize the negativity then negativity quickly becomes the only energy in the space. Leslie compares it to playing confirmation bias with negativity.

In this time right now, Leslie explains it’s incredibly important to hear that there are good things happening. It’s important to really understand the ways that we experience and feed negativity to change. Self-mastery and self-awareness help us really focus on changing from an inside perspective.

Leslyn explains that most of the negativity that we are seeing right now is called individual cynicism. Individual cynicism can be described as a general mistrust of people and their motives. If this sounds familiar, thinking you have a reason to be mistrustful because people hurt or deceive us all the time you must sit back and ask yourself is there a reason why this person hurt me? The point Leslyn wants to make is that it’s important to ask yourself why and what’s going on behind the cynicism and know that you are the only one who can fix that.

Hostility is a negative that comes from lack of compassion and anger, that’s usually routed in some other emotion. The best way to address hostility is to surrender to it. The neutralizing effect for hostility is to be kind. Responding with kindness often is a surrender to the instinct of responding to the negativity. Showing kindness is not a weakness instead it shows the strength you have to not contribute to negativity.

The next kind of negativity Leslie and Leslyn discuss is filtering. This is when out of all the good things around you, you only notice the bad things. This is one that most people seem to struggle with the most. Which leads into polarized thinking when we believe because something is not perfect then it must not be good enough. It makes you adopt and ‘all or none’ mentality. Think of it like a spectrum, you are only focusing on the ends of that spectrum and not even considering the middle.

Another way that negativity can creep into your life is when you jump to conclusions, assuming a bad outcome is going to happen because of something bad that has happened in your past. The way to neutralize that energy is to remember that history does not always repeat itself. This leads into blaming others. Doing this can create a negative energy in your conversation that you can help neutralize by reframing your sentences. Instead of saying “You make me so mad” you could say, “When that happens, I feel mad.”

Emotional reasoning is something that Leslie and Leslyn covered in their episode on “What is a ‘Truth’?”. It’s the idea that because you feel a certain way it must be real when in fact it may not be a fact. Emotional reasoning can turn into negativity quick. To neutralize, remember that feeling that way does not make it true. Leslie adds that your feeling is real and valid but that doesn’t necessarily mean what you think about the feelings are true.

Leslie and Leslyn share some of the positives that you can implement into your own life to help combat negativity. When you are seeing so much negativity in the media for example, try turning on Youtube and looking for a positive TedTalk on things like gratitude, social change, and happiness. Listening to meditations and speeches can also add some positivity and help you practice gratitude. Leslyn shares that gratitude neutralizes negativity every single time! This week’s Try This at Home is to try to pay attention to what is negative in your life and try some of the neutralizing techniques mentioned today.

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Next Week’s Episode: Silliness & Joyful Living

One of our goals this year is to grow the podcast audience and you can help!

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Links to Look At:

Stephen King | The Stand

[https://stephenking.com/library/novel/stand_the.html]

Last Week’s Episode #219: What You Don’t Know

[https://www.trythisathomepodcast.com/podcasts-1/2020/6/3/219-what-you-dont-know]

Episode 218 - Finish by Jon Acuff

[https://www.trythisathomepodcast.com/podcasts-1/2020/6/2/book-review-finish-by-jon-acuff-a-guide-for-perfectionists]