How do you tackle your own negativity?

I'm not perfect about this but one experience in particular helped me.

I was a new employee doing on-the-job training for an even newer employee, while we were trying to meet a deadline. We were the only two people working on this project, in the middle of rural NM, out of cell range, and having to improvise. He kept making suggestions and I kept explaining why they wouldn't work. Suddenly he point-blank asked me why I said no to everything. I had a moment of clarity where I realized that I didn't even want him to be right, for no good reason except my ego. I apologized, horrified, and have been forever grateful for the wake-up.

After that I started to notice that pattern elsewhere. The best way I've found to interrupt it is to ask myself "what if they're right" and/or "in what way might this person be right that I may not have considered"?

Have you ever read the book "How to win Friends and Influence People?" It really helped me become a more positive, likable person. Something about viewing the world through everyone else's eyes and appreciating the good points in everyone. It's weird because it's common sense stuff, but it was a game changer for me. Now I'm friends with the grocery store clerk, the home depot guy, my neighbors, coworkers etc.

I try to keep a balance and not go too far into the happy happy sunshine all the time mindset either because "toxic positivity" can also come with it's own set of problems, but overall I think just being more likable and charismatic and having genuine connections with people in life helped my mindset a ton.

A few ways:

First, our society now is (IMHO) suffused with despair and its second order effects, such as anger, on an extraordinary level. I stopped reading/watching/listening to that stuff a couple years ago, unless I absolutely had to (99% reduction) and, it was a gradual process, but I not only left it behind but gained perspective on it - what once seemed overwhelming is now just a (dangerous) absurdity. Despite the presumption now that humanity is doomed to corruption and despair, there's generations of more positive stuff to read/view/etc from, you know, about 4-5 years ago - crazy things like optimism, belief in the possibilities, hope, justice, freedom, etc.

Second, just promise yourself no more rants, hyperbole, etc. Promise you will write constructive things. It will take some effort at first but you'll find there is far more to say (and that the rants have no value). Any time you find yourself in rant mode, stop, which leads to ...

Third, find healthy outlets for yourself, activities that, when you are finished, you feel better and healthier than when you started. (Otherwise, it's not much of an outlet, is it? But we all pickup unhealthy ones before we know better.) Exercise is a simple one.

Most importantly, by far: If you don't understand your emotions and have compassion for them, they will own you. If you find yourself with any unrelenting emotion, figure out what you are really feeling negative (or whatever) about - you probably are just redirecting that toward an easy outlet (someone on the Internet) rather than the real target that you don't want to face.

I've pointed out to close friends and family "there are people who walk into a room and look for something to complain about, and they will always find something because nothing is too small for them to complain about".

That's a habit, and it's a pretty annoying one if you're living with someone who does that, and I have lived with a few who did. After dealing it with for a long time I finally came up with that response to clearly point it out but I added to it by telling them "Anyone can walk into a room and find something to bitch about but Shit flows both ways and I can do that to you, so you need to stop doing it to me or expect I'll return the favor."

They always deny they do it and that anyone can do it to them. So then I'd wait a few days and when it was far from their thoughts I'd walk in and find something to bitch about them with. And after I did that I tell them "Now you see how easy that is."

The immediate goal is to get them to see they're a chronic bitcher and it works at least to the point where they stop looking for shit to bitch at me about because they know I'll return the favor.

The larger goal though is to get them to see that they have a choice in how they view the world around them. One can also walk into a room and look for what is good to be found there, and if you make a point to do that you're negativity will diminish pretty quickly.

But you have to give yourself a kick in the ass when you find you're being negative and purposely look for something positive. And you'll almost always find something positive if you do that. After awhile that is what you start looking for first.

I sincerely hope this helps.

Several aspects to this in my experience, which is heavily influenced by early buddhist teachings.

Firstly, make a habit of seeing the full picture of something you’re evaluating or judging. This might be the ‘other side’ of the story (someone else’s perspective), the benefits of something you’re criticising that you’re otherwise missing, or an understanding of the worth of something you might be defending.

Secondly is to recognise the benefit of positive thoughts (like goodwill towards others) on yourself and the people around you. You may like to add some intentional practices here such as what’s referred to in Buddhism as loving kindness (‘metta’) meditation or performing generous acts. The uplifting in mind state you get here will incline you away from a lot of criticising and judging.

Principally though the goal would be to get to a point where a build up of negativity is not occurring for you and there’s no need to vent, but getting there is practice. It is great that you are reflecting on this and looking for another way so best of luck to you!

You are either optimizing for the wrong thing, or don't know what you want.

If want to be as frequently correct as possible, then your "negativity" is strength. The issue with this strategy is that it will prevent you from engaging with the real world the way that positively thinking people do. You will take less chances, since you realize the probabilities of failure are so big.

Positively thinking people are kind of delusional. They try to ignore the ugliness of reality and focus on the positive side of things. However they are the risk takers. They might fail a lot but at the end of the day they are the ones that succeed in changing reality for the better.

Both ways of thinking have their advantages and their drawbacks. As far as I can tell, it really depends on the type of person that you are.

Someone else in the thread used the term "chronic bitcher", and that's exactly what I used to be. At any given time I would (subconsciously) look for things to complain about, and I always found them.

I was traveling with some friends, doing my usual complaining every day, when one of them finally asked me to please shut up. At first I was offended, but shortly after realized what I had been doing. Committed to stop doing it there and then.

Because I've been there, I'm now conscious about others having this trait. For many people I think it's an attempt at socializing. Commiserating is an easy way to bond, but if you can't temper it, you just come across as an annoying complainer.

I wrote about this on my blog, and even made a flowchart for what to do when I feel the urge to complain. That particular post is not in English, so I won't share it here.

A master and his disciple were travelling together. They happened to come to a river with a strong current. As they were preparing to cross, a lone young woman asked if they could help her to the other side.

While the disciple hesitated, the master immediately offered to help.

The disciple was in disbelief as he saw his master break his vows by carrying the woman on his shoulders. He couldn't contain himself and a few hours removed from the incident he began to voice his resentment to condemn what had just transpired.

His master replied, "I set her down by the river. You are the one still carrying her."

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097504, Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life (2020)

Negative is normal right now. We're all burnt out, we're all sick of working from home, Covid is fading but its been an extreme time. Plus some people have made loads of money while we watch front line workers basically dying doing their job. Meanwhile the summer heat was just too much and we're watching the planet die. All the while we've been restricted from seeing work colleagues, friends and family. How can you not be negative?

Yes, I get stuck in that sort of negative thinking too.

I find that getting enough sleep, eating healthy (including breakfast), limiting caffeine, stretching, avoiding social sites, and just doing "healthy" things makes it easier to respond positively.

A bit of self promotion now. I made an app called Positivelys to help make positive thinking a healthy habit. It's simple, you make a note of positive moments no matter how big of small throughout the day. Then go back and scroll through your own feed of positive moments to give yourself a pick-me-up. I made this for myself and do think it helps. It was also a fun experiment using Rust to make apps.

iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positivelys/id1498984121

Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cultivated...

I realized that what I thought was 'reality' was just an internal render i.e an artifact of a bunch of sensory input being processed.

I decided to study my own mind using mindfulness meditation and self reflection.

What I found was the following:

- If I am focusing on negative things my subconscious mind will feed me negative thoughts and emotions.

- My subconscious mind runs wild but it will often give me what I ask of it if I clearly express what I want in a definitive, firm and polite manner.

- Negativity is a viewpoint and all viewpoints can be changed and challenged even if they are the default.

- Often I am negative to give myself a way out and protect my ego from being damaged.

- What I consider objective truth is a lot of the time just opinion.

- When I am trying to persuade others of something often it is an expression of a desire for control.

- When I find myself using the word "should" it is often the ego expressing its desires.

- If I feel negative it's often the result of some underlying feeling or internal struggle that I haven't addressed.

- I like being around people and most people (who are fun to be around) don't like hanging out with a negative person no matter how smart that person is.

- Ignoring negative feelings doesn't make me a positive person. Acknowledging the negative thoughts/feelings but choosing to focus on positive feelings instead makes me a positive person. Doing this places negative thinking in its proper function I think. As a sort of alarm/warning system of potential negative outcomes that may occur or have occured.

Ultimately if you find yourself being overly negative then just ask yourself why. What is the motivation? Is it context specific? If I just stayed quiet what would happen?

Also whenever you find yourself saying a statement like "that wouldn't work" or "I can't do that" challenge it with questions. Doing this will surely result in surprises.

Massage under the mastoid process of the temporal bone. This will release pressure on your Limbic System in general, improving your emotional connection to the world, and in particular will let your Amygdala to settle reducing your sense of fear, in turn making you a more joyful and open person. Long term you want to find a way to strengthen and balance your Deep Neck Flexors and Deep Neck Extensors, however how to do that effectively is a very open question.

As much as I hate it, it's undeniably in my nature to whine and rant quite a bit. (even that sentence was me whining, lol)

But I'm also simultaneously a jolly, upbeat, joky person who don't take myself or my rants too seriously. Humans are complex :P

There have been periods of my life when I recognized negativity was taking over to the point there wasn't much positivity or joy at all. During such times it takes pretty deliberate effort to cut out sources of negativity (for me it was hyperconsumption of news and social media - I cut most of it out) and introducing sources of positivity and joy. (for me it was trying to learn to dance at age 30, switching from a cave gym to exercising outdoors in the sun, and spending more time with friends instead of in front of the computer - I think those last two are huge, especially for the hackernews crowd who probably spend more time than others by themselves and indoors in front of a computer)

When I still get frustrated with things at work and elsewhere, a trick I use is to ask myself whether whatever I'm fussing over is that important in my life - overwhelmingly, the answer is no, I won't even remember it five years from now, and I can just acknowledge I disagree with it, it annoys me etc but just move along.

Here’s how I got over my negativity:

Like many others here on HN, I lean more towards the “intellectual” and “analytical” side of thinking. I was not very mindful of my emotions and how they influenced my thinking.

The thing about thinking is that our analytical minds rationalise our thoughts and hence our conclusions _feel_ rational. But what we don’t see easily is that our emotions define the axioms on which our rationalisations are based. That’s why negative thinking feels so “rational” and hard to get out of. If you don’t see this, you won’t see a point of coming out of it.

I went for a 10 day vipassana retreat and I have been practicising the meditation every day since February 2021. Through the meditation, I was able to finally perceive how much anxiety my mind was filled with in every moment. The anxiety produced all manner of irrational negative thoughts, which I used to believe in. With the meditation practice, I finally could “experience” the anxiety by “intercepting” it. Instead of letting it loose and producing all manner of thoughts, I “uncover” the anxiety and spend time with it. It rises up and tries to cause a mess while I let my breathing take its natural course, and slowly it fades away into oblivion. What is left behind is clear skies in my mind, and an insight that anxiety is just something that comes and goes. If not observed, it subtly creates a mess. If observed, it speaks its truth and goes away.

My negative thinking has not gone away completely, but this was a game changing insight for me. The fact that my thoughts are the equivalent of a madman’s rambling, and don’t need to be taken seriously, is very freeing.

All decisions are based in love or fear.

Find your purpose, make sure it's ambitious, make sure it's equitable and helps people. When you are ambitious about your purpose you will be conscious of how little time you have. When you're overwhelmed with progress it's easier to mitigate negativity, you'll be too focused to chime in on the little stuff, or you will empathize for what used to annoy you, and realize you're ahead of the pack.

When men don't have enough ambition, negativity, hatred, jealousy may take hold because your subconscious self knows you can do so much more. Find your purpose and become laser focused on it, and everything else will fall into place.

I get it out through prayer and thinking on Bible verses. Occasionally I let it out to a trusted friend or family member, but that is a precious resource that I try to use sparingly, because it's taxing on the other person to endure a rant. In the past I have also gone to a therapist to work through some deepseated childhood pain.

Realize that negative thinking is a part of the human experience and, in a lot of ways, being negative in the moment is a pressure valve for not being negative throughout one's entire life. That being negative is considered bad is just societal conditioning.

A lyric I love: "it's so so sad to be happy all the time." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vth-n34LK8E)

There's a lot of good advice in this thread already, but one thing I've been working on lately is watching what I consume. When I consume lots of negative content (full of outrage, anger, etc.) I become more negative. Sustained outrage drags me down, but is also addictive. Pulling myself away from anger helps me refocus on what I actually feel positive about.

Write it down and don't share it. Come back to it a day later and see if it still makes sense. This is a very common trick in cognitive behavioral therapy for teaching people basic metacognition. The fundamental goal is to allow for reflection on your own intentions and actions by delaying actions and then leveraging those skills to close the gap between intentions and actions without getting lost in negative emotions.

There is no easy shortcut or royal road. You'll have to do the work to develop the required metacognitve skills.

I used to have a problem with bottling up emotions (that is, suppressing them), and one of the many side-effects was a pessimistic or negative outlook.

To that extent, what worked for me was to look within. What was I not expressing, and what was I covering up with the negativity and sarcasm? Ten years later and I still have my many moments, but I know how to deal and I know what works for me. My ego doesn't get in the way of my awareness although I still tend to be too hard on myself. I guess what I'm saying is I found more of 'me' through that, rather than just 'positive me' or 'negative me'.

Before looking into how to deal with it, it might be worth talking to a counsellor or a therapist to see what the 'why' might be, and then you have something more specific to work with. A good coach would also do the job, especially if this is more about habit and not stuff from the past. All of these people are professionals who will be able to hold the space for a useful conversation about those things.

That way, you can also avoid the trap of finding new and novel ways to repress the negativity, which can very well guide you towards a mindset of toxic--or forced--positivity.

It's also important to remember that negativity in and of itself isn't inherently bad. Anger, sadness, frustration, and so on are seen to be 'negative', but the solution isn't to banish them or fix them, it's to acknowledge them and deal with them in a healthy way. The feelings are there for a reason.

You can't completely tackle negativity because some things justify a negative outlook, but I think the key to handling negativity is to accept that people are going to act like you're wrong no matter if you are pessimistic or optimistic.

When I was a much more negative person, most people told me I was wrong. As I got older, had more experiences, I became less negative and more empathetic, I try to put myself in other people's shoes, and guess what; most people still say I'm wrong for that. I kid you not. If I try to find the good in something or someone, people act like I'm using some sort of tactic on them by doing so. It's crazy. All the time, if I disagree with someone but I decide to not damn them but that they will change their mind, others will jump in and say that I'm just "pretending to be nice". It's not enough that I think someone is wrong; I have to hate them for it, for some reason.

To handle negativity, you have to stay sane, and to stay sane you basically have to start ignoring how people perceive how you act out your morality. You can be the kindest, gentlest person in the world, and hordes will be ready to make you out to be wicked. If you can stay sane, you won't be too negative, and you won't be too positive.

One thing that really helped me was to see my team mates be shaped by my output.

I'm known to be a very cynical person. Have been since I was a kid.

It's never really ever been an issue because I've known how to balance my interactions. However I noticed when I became a lead, that some of my team members were emulating me.

However they were emulating the incredibly cynical side of my communication, and glossing over the constructive criticism and thought I'd put in to my communications.

Suddenly, everything started spiraling into negativity. Code reviews, feedback on work, repsonse s to cool new tech...

Off hand one day, one of my team mates mentioned how they were trying to emulate my critical approach but were getting resistance, where I was not.

I started analyzing it with them and realized that I'd inadvertently fostered a negative environment. My own communication wasn't negative, but people often cling to the cynical because it makes them feel stronger.

You see this everywhere. From hot takes dismissing new things, to people tearing media to shreds like CinemaSins etc ... It's easy to be negative and cynical.

Anyway since then I've tried to try and be more positive in my posting to outweigh the cynicism. I'll still provide the critical feedback, but I try and push more positive words in, and I see it having a good impact on how people around me also compose themselves.

Anyway point being...I think it took seeing a reflection of the worst of me, to have me try and work to put forward the me I thought I was putting forward.

I don't. I embrace it. Negativity is your mind telling you something is wrong.

Just complaining when you feel negative about something isn't the appropriate response though. It's the easy reponse but it's not productive and won't remove negativity in the long term even if it feels good to get a good rant out.

Listen to what negative emotions you have and form actions to remove the negative stimuli.

I think there are two angles to this: emotional wellbeing and how you come across.

For the former, if i feel like ranting, I ask myself: "so what are you going to do about it?"

If you are annoyed about (whatever issue), the healthy thing to is to take some minimal action - feed the homeless/go vegan/call you representative/go protest. Take some action in the physical world that gets you out of your house. That's much healthier emotionally - our bodies are not meant to handle getting angry and being idle about it -thats emotionally damaging. Also it's a bit hypocritical.

If you are not prepared (or can't) do anything at all, then you should not let the issue bother you.

For the latter, I think some people have a 'debating persona', they might argue passionatly and negatively, but day to day they feel fine and positive.

Safe to say that when you try to 'debate' a person that does not enjoy it, they will get annoyed.

It might be worth going to an actual debate club to scratch this itch, you will typically find you have to eat some humble pie, and that's healthy too.

You may find the psychological technique of "Self-Distancing" pretty useful in regulating negative thoughts/emotions.

Overview of Psychological Distancing : https://positivepsychology.com/psychological-distancing/

Self-distancing as a Mechanism for Processing Negative Emotional Experiences by Lena Etzel (Warning: PDF) : https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/a/12...

Self-Distancing as a Strategy to Regulate Affect and Aggressive Behavior in Athletes : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5720...

The fact that you recognize this is a great first step.

It’s not abnormal to have a negative mindset. This goes back to our caveman days of having to think about the worst case scenario for everything since it was literally life or death.

I suffer from a negative mindset as well, and have found that therapy has been useful. Some things that worked for me:

As soon as you wake up, think or write down three things you’re grateful for. I found this very difficult at first, but it can be something simple: the sun is shining today

Think/write down 2-3 things that you will work on today to see the positive in - there’s usually a silver lining there, but you have to look at it hard, and honestly

Don’t watch the news. There’s never anything good there.

Cut back on social media. I went into a deep depression in 2016 and it was fueled by Twitter. I deleted every social media account I had, even LinkedIn. In fact, this HN account is the only thing o have now, and I mostly lurk.

Remind yourself that you can’t control other people - only yourself. Everyone suffers. Everyone can make bad mistakes and bad choices that may impact you. That’s a reflection on them, not you, so don’t let their choices and consequences live rent free in your head. You control you - that’s the best you can do.

Get adequate rest and exercise. It’s cliche, but those two things are the BIGGEST contributor to a healthier mindset.

Journal - writing stuff down helps me process negative thoughts and emotions. It can be cathartic. You may go through phases of wanting to write everything, and then nothing, and that’s ok.

Talk to a therapist. There’s no shame in this and it can help you understand where your negativity comes from and how you can change it.

Hope this helps. From another sufferer who’s still working on it himself.

It's usually a matter of framing to me. Criticizing and finger-pointing is always easier than a nuanced and tradeoff-minded view. It is also easier to engage people with negative feelings, so much of the media/Internet follows the same path.

Reality is boring: the bad parts of whatever are usually there for a reason, be it historical or goalposts that moved over time or lack of information/time/resources in general available at the critical point in time. But going through the gritty details of how the bad came to be is tedious work. You can sound just as smart for pointing out what's wrong and you can sound brilliant by signaling that imperfections make you angry.

It's just a bad habit for thought workers that you can overcome with attention and deliberate practice.

I don't think I'm so negative as that, but it is natural to write critical comments on here. Half the time I don't click add comment after I write a comment. Or I rewrite. Then I ask "Is HN better for this comment?" or "Would Alan Kay write a comment like this?" hehe. Or I post then delete. I have delay set to 2 minutes so I have a short while to reconsider/edit after posting.

Have you tried writing a diary? I did that for decades. Yes, it's great to get the stuff out, but do you need other people to see it also?

Maybe try the idea of morning pages from the Artist's Way books - write 3 pages every morning on paper, quickly as you can, just stream of consciousness, don't judge or edit it, don't plan to read it again.

I used to be a negative and cynical person, but lowering my stress gave me a more positive attitude. I accomplished this by getting a lower stress job, recalibrating what I wanted out of life (time and relaxation instead of money and promotions) and also at times taking an SSRI.

Thinking negative thoughts and noticing negative aspects of things/situations is a habit you can break.

My counter has been to keep a reminder and a google form where I jot down 3 things I am grateful for. Just repeating this over and over made a switch flip: I catch myself noticing positive aspects of what I would otherwise consider 'objectively' negative things.

Bonus: I check this log every now and then and tell people I'm grateful for X or Y they did for me or if consistent enough I tell them I appreciate they are a source of X in my life. It's true, I'm not sweet talking them - I literally wrote down when it happened. This is the best material for birthday messages too - spreads the love.

Embracing your neuronal nature helps. Your neurons direct your attention to things they think will get them rewarded. Latching onto something negative can give a dopamine kick (for a lot of reasons) but it's almost always because your neurons don't have anything better to get a kick from. Good, important things are missing more generally (a lot of things it could be). If you're engrossed in some satisfying activity/ work/ thought, or you're just kicking ass in life and you know it, your neurons will have a much more bountiful source of dopamine to latch onto so they aren't going to direct your attention to petty shit.

I think pessimism is a professional deformation of programmers. We have to be pessimists in order to build good software. We have to think of the edge cases and everything that might go wrong with the implementation. And this pessimism spills over to personal life.

I'm not sure of the best way to fix this, as I'm working on it myself, but one of the things that helped is realizing that negative thinking comes from a voice in my head that interprets everything in a negative way. Just noticing and registering that negative voice has helped me be more positive.

Find people you agree with. Or just change the stuff you’re complaining about.

Or find a venue where your negativity is appreciated and make it funny, George Carlin and most comedians have made a living out of complaining. People pay big money to hear their complaints.

If you’re not funny go into activism or politics. It’s constant complaining. Media too.

Product reviews, art / media critics, law. I’d guess half the GDP of the world is based on negativity.

Reframe your negativity as superiority. And don’t give your complaints away for free to ingrates on HN who are getting your complaints for free and not appreciating it.

Sometimes negativity is the right response.

Chronic negativity comes from somewhere, it has a cause; and then it becomes a habit. It's also a form of self defense, because it makes you less vulnerable.

Consider cutting down on mainstream media and entertainment, everything you consume goes somewhere.

Meditation works, but takes serious effort to get anywhere, because you will have to confront whatever is eating you from the inside.

Turn off all gadgets and sit or lie completely still with your eyes closed while observing the background track in your head for a while. Don't judge or identify, just observe.

Take or leave, and good luck!

Very surprised I didn't see this mentioned already: make sure you don't have any kind of sleep problem.

If you wake up feeling unrested, look tired, struggle with energy or sleepiness during the day, or otherwise feel like something might be 'off', then it might be worth exploring whether or not you have a sleep disorder.

That could take the form of insomnia, OSA, or even something more subtle like UARS.

Not many sleep labs are good at evaluating patients, so I would recommend going to the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center if you want proper diagnostics.

The other day I read a Robert Cringely[0] article that put things into a new perspective for me. At one point he describes three different subspecies of "techie types" as he puts it, the hippies, the nerds, and the lumpenprogrammer. The main dichotomy is between the architecture-minded hippies and the code-focused nerds. Apart, he theorizes, they are useless. Together though, they can compliment each other's work perfectly. As he puts it, "hippies tend to do the right thing poorly; nerds tend to do the wrong things well".

It was really interesting to put my own life through this perspective, because it made me realize I'm decidedly a hippy when it comes to all this. If you ask a nerd to dockerize their homelab, they'll probably write a Medium article titled "5 Things You're Going to Love About Docker!". If you forced me to dockerize my homelab, I'd probably write a long-winded blog post on a website that no longer exists because I unplugged the computer hosting it. Joking aside though, I think that negativity vs positivity is what drives constructive criticism in this field. Again, together these people can accomplish great things: the only way for them to be unsuccessful is by working alone or trying to play both sides when they can't.

Speaking of, the final 'subspecies' he describes is the lumpenprogrammer, a person so smart and technologically transcendent that no normal person could match them. These are your John Carmack's and Dennis Richie's of the world, people who understand both the fundamentals and implementation of technology so well that they can bridge the divide between the hippies and the nerds. Their opinions are more moderate, more tempered, and try to see things from an optimistic and pessimistic perspective.

Now, I'll never be such a programmer. I've made peace with the fact that I'm a hippie, but I still aspire to have a more tempered, glass-half-full viewpoint. In any case though, you should meet the harshest of criticism with the greatest of optimism, because that's the balance that keeps things going.

[0] https://betanews.com/2013/02/15/accidental-empires-part-8-th...

I see two parts to handling this tendency, which I have much less of today compared to a few years ago.

1. Finding an outlet and 'healing the wound'. Negativity is there for a reason. Things happened during life that made it necessary or even a viable strategy to solve some situations. If suppressed, or even managed (see #2), it will resurface either as anger/rage or physical illness. To really heal it I went to therapy and to group sessions with the firm goal of expressing my daily as well as lifelong anger and frustrations. One book which I like and can help start the healing process is "Letting Go" by David Hawkins.

2. How I express myself with others. Sometimes I really don't want to express this negativity, so I can use tools from the coaching world. I'll give a few examples: - assume good intentions. Be it with people you know or complete strangers, if you notice yourself being negative, first STOP. Then imagine the party you are negative about having the best intentions possible, and then re-write the mental story. For example, if you get cut off by another driver and notice you are angry at them, STOP (mentally) and consider that they are having a really shitty day and weren't paying attention. They made a mistake, a really honest one.

- ask questions to find out the other person's intentions. If you notice negativity in you about a person you know, consider asking them clarifying questions about the situation that brought about the negativity. For example, if a friend ghosts you, yoi might call a few days later and say, 'hey, did you see my text a few days ago? I was kinda bummed you didn't answer. Is everything ok between us?'

I hope this helps.

I would just say, the online world is one thing. More importantly, how is it impacting your real relationships, ie with family/friends? Do they notice this negativity? It's worth speaking candidly with them about it.

Could it be that these comments/blog posts are a bit of a release valve, helping you maintain healthier relationships in real-life? If so, I say great!

One thing I'd like to mention is that, perhaps you're a person with strong opinions. There's nothing particularly wrong with that. I also have pretty strong opinions, and I enjoy debating people (always with good humour). What you need to be mindful of is being overly rigid, making you unable to compromise with others. Do you find you have "rules" around interacting with people? It could be something like refusing to eat at certain restaurants for political reasons. This rigidity can have a negative impact on your relationships. It can be hard to self-assess these things, so once again it's worth asking family/friends.

I'd also just mention, a lot of these things - negative thinking, catastrophising, or rigidity - stem in part from anxiety. This is best addressed through some form of therapy.

There is always a ton of advice out there, and i could give you some of my own but anything too specific probably won’t help, because I don’t know you.

So my only advice is to seriously take on the task of answering this question yourself. Get curious about yourself. Not intellectually, i mean observe yourself - thoughts flying by, sensations in your body. Maybe try doing it just before or after you post/say something negative. Maybe try writing to yourself or talking to yourself. Take it seriously and dig in to the question as if its worth answering - use all the abilities you might at your job too - planning, project management, writing, etc. I have found this approach to be more helpful than “consuming” information when trying to make any change because i can actually discover problems and formulate solutions that might work rather than sort of blindly cycling through advice. Sort of like building software - nontechnical people will sometimes just try or suggest buzzword tech or software, but any good engineer will work to deeply understand the actual problem they are trying to solve - the solution is often simple and obvious once you understand the problem.

I just copy others’ styles and phrasing here and hope they will stick. Negativity goes in two main forms (at least for me): categorization and subjectivity. Categorization is the worst one. E.g. instead of saying that X is ~bullshit and I hate to use it, you may say that you had some issues with it and enumerate these in a context, which is much more objective and constructive. Subjectivity is, well, subjective. When something is negative “for me”, I try to not skip that subscript. As I understand it, negativity doesn’t really seem bad if you share your experience with others, even if it’s a little colorful. And realistic people (which I pretend to be one of them) actually like when someone cuts to the shit without softening the meaning.

As of general negativity, I think you should ask more if it makes your life worse, like the one you did here. It’s usually hard to see what it does to you, and is structurally hard to change. Personally I’m working with CBT to tackle that, because my negativity brings some issues (general distrust, decision paralysis, etc), but for some of my rants even a doctor says it’s okay, cause I’m just straightforward and sincere, I just need to see BOTH negative and positive sides, the latter I tend to skip as “expected by default”. In my experience, this entire thing really is too structured for a specific advice to help, but this one is general: make positive things explicit, as you make it for negative ones. That will balance out the perception of you.

E.g. remember your last negative reaction to/meaning about X and list 3-5 things which were good in X. Not that it makes ir “actually good”, it doesn’t, just isolate its good sides and spell them out. I took the liberty to check few pages of your comments here, and Meta VR seems to be a good start :). As much as I don’t believe a word they say, I can see positive things about this situation.

It depends what you really mean with negative. I used to be negative in a way that I looked at things critically (including myself). I've fixed this by sort of adjusting the way I rate things. What I previously thought was good I now consider excellent. It's easy to look at good engineering, art, jokes etc. and consider that normal and the minimum of what is good, but in fact all of that is really hard to accomplish. So if something is nothing special, that's actually still pretty ok! One way to do this is to try to accomplish something you have a vague idea of how to do, but you've never done (I don't know, design a poster) and realize it's actually maybe not that easy. This gives you an appreciation for things that maybe look like "anybody can do it", but that it's not only about having an idea, that there's also a lot of skill involved. With time, I've just started to concentrate more on the things that are good in something, that inspire me maybe in a certain way.

I have a long car ride to work and back. I tend to talk it out in the car. For the most part, my negativity comes from discomfort with some aspect of the world. You cannot always get comfortable, but you generally can talk yourself around the problem so it doesn't cause you to stay in a negative state. Heck, sometimes a rant is a welcome experience. These days, people think your talking to someone on the phone. Blow out all the bad and get your head back to neutral or positive.

Just don't let your discomfort turn into anger or sadness. Do some research on things that are actual chemical downers and get them out of your life. Heck, having certain color photos on your desk will help some people. Environment is often a big contributor to our mood. I'm not talking some dumb crap fool yourself. I honestly mean find things that contribute to a good mood. I gotta admit being in the badlands for some reason puts me in an amazingly positive mindset for a long time. No idea why.

I can only talk about my own way of handling it.

I became a more neutral person over years...I accept things as they are and don't complain about things were complaining won't have an impact (yes, stoicism played a role here).

I will be honest and say that I live in a well functioning country with a good job and a decent salary... that being said, so do some of my friends but they like to be negative and do negative spins on things.

There is an overall shift in people to be negative and to search for gotch ya moments. I accept it but I refuse to take a part of it, which means active self reflection as it is very easy to "go there".

Probably unpopular option, inspired by NNT, is to straight go to the "go f... yourself" when someone obviously is taking the most negative aspect of an opinion and is try to hook you for his own "gotchya moment". This cuts through the charade and illusion of respect when in fact the other person is not giving any.

In my opinion such negativity is to some extent caused by working with computers. Just like some lawyers tend to concentrate on looking for crimes everywhere, psychologists see childhood traumas and character traits, and linguists spelling and grammar mistakes, people working with computers, especially programming, look for why certain things will not work and are not worth even trying.

Think about a typical way of solving a problem with a computer. Something doesn't work and you have a dozen of ideas why it doesn't work. The course of action is to inspect each idea, reject the ones that will not get you there immediately, and look at the acceptable ones with suspicion. Until one proves itself to be the right approach.

The problem is that this trickles down to everyday life. You get into this pattern of looking at things as problems to be solved. And if you know something the other person doesn't know - you want to correct them, because correcting them means that the task is completed and that you get some credit for the solution. So shooting down ideas and looking for a negative side of everything is the natural course of action. After all, when solving a concrete problem, rejecting a clearly wrong idea is just as good for moving closer towards the goal as coming up with a new idea that might be viable.

For me, personally, what helped is listening to people who speak very positively. One good example I found is a channel on youtube named Lux Pixul [1]. Adam (the guy that runs the channel) frequently does videos about motivation, procrastination, inspiration, and similar topics. But his approach is always very positive and warm. I reflect on how I feel when listening to people speaking that way, and it makes me want to imitate it myself, so that I can transfer the same feeling to others. For me - that helps.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJlJC6yjLpw

In life and running a team, negativity is a limiter. If you don’t believe in or are positive about what you’re working on, why should anyone else be?

And if you truly are negative or pessimistic about something, sit with that for a minute and try to figure out why you’re negative. And then work on those areas to make it more likely to succeed.

If you write, tension and conflict and resolving it are the ingredients to good writing. I delete a lot because sometimes there isn't value in risking the necessary negativity to illustrate an illuminating contrast.

Writing itself is aggressive, and I'd posit that any sample of good comments is going to skew negative in perceived tone - or use implied negativity as a ground to the positive comments figure.

I'd even say the agreeableness that makes for sustainable modern office relationships is not a quality that makes for insightful writing. It can coexist, but it's a different skill, so I don't interpret good comments as negative. Predictable talking points, that's most of what one needs to know about someone, but original writing whether I agree with it or not is usually worth considering.

Write it down or express it in some way. Completely, even the worst, and I mean the worst, of those thoughts. Then, going back over my own material, I find it weird that I wrote such negative thoughts, and it motivates me to bounce back up from the bottom of the barrel.

There is a form of therapy you can do by yourself called Internal Family Systems therapy. There are many books about doing self therapy but the one I was suggested was Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS.

I read this from time to time https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2021/03/your-attitude-dete...

Of course, this is the majority of the interwebz nowadays. Two things help me:

1. Understanding that negative voices are always louder and you read/hear them more frequently --> there's lot of positivity out there that you simply don't see by default. The world is not a bad place, but our experience is skewed.

2. Looking at negative posts with an understanding of biases and basic human nature. Often we argue just to get the feeling of being right. I've written a post about this: https://leadership.garden/how-to-stop-winning-arguments/

Try to catch your negative thoughts and question them.

For example, if you have a thought "X is not going to work" then you can ask yourself: "What is the evidence that X has absolutely no chance of working?" and "What is some evidence supporting that X will work?". Then you can go back to the original thought and see that this statement might be more realistic: "X has a chance to work if Y and Z happens"

And try not to label things in absolute ways, as either black or white, but more as a shade of grey. Things are not either a success or a disaster. There is a lot inbetween.

I recently read "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman and while I can't say that it has turned me into a beacon of hope and positivity, it has given me some useful tools and insights.

Basically the book helps you dissect some of your thought patterns (mostly focused on the explanations you come up with for things that happen to you), and to steer them into a more positive direction where appropriate.

From what I understand (not an expert) there is some overlap with these techniques and what's used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) when treating things like depression.

When there is something in my life that is rotting me from within I talk to people I am close to e.g. my parents and let it out because I know they can take it.

In terms of general negativity... I try to avoid social media (Hacker News is no exception) and instead I make a conscious effort to face-to-face talk to people and try new things. Trying new things especially. I find that I basically get a shot of euphoria whenever I do. Day to day life is like grinding in a video game, and trying something new is proving that I am the master of my life, not some architect.

Just my 2c.

Going through some of your comments, I didn't see anything overly negative. There are a lot of things that'll make you more negative or nihilistic, I do my best to avoid those. I also jetison myself from conversations that are what I call "negative entertainment". I read a thread on here a year or so ago about managing stress and the like that seems worth sharing. The gist of it is the poster put themselves in the position of a 14,000 year old man. What would he care about, what would he respond to?

I don't think this is something that should be suppressed in the first place. Must people always strive to be positive at all times? Always smiling? Always in a good mood? That's extremely tiresome. Like we're constantly trying to pretend everything's alright in order to keep up appearances for the sake of others.

Negativeness and anger are perfectly reasonable reactions to the wrongness of this world. It's not all bad, of course. There's plenty of good that we can enjoy. However, we must never forget the bad.

Rather than trying to suppress the thing you don’t want, try to nurture the thing you do want. I suspect (but don’t know) that suppressing will have weird side-effects and not actually provide much growth, but if you nurture the thing you do want then the unwanted characteristics will naturally atrophy.

In your case, try to nurture positivity instead of suppressing negativity. Perhaps write a blog post on something you are excited about. Or write more comments of the “Yes, and…” variety.

Sure. The bigger questions are:

Why did you comment? What got your attention? Did your comment improve the situation? There's likely a pattern so look for it and decide if its worth keeping. Is it really you being you?

Why were you seeking out this negativity? Is this the best way to live? All the time you spend in negativity is time you are not spending positively. There's a significant opprtunity cost here.

Procrastination also often involves distraction. Negativity tends to come along for the ride as well.

It’s just the way hackernews works. You aren’t allowed to post vacuous comments like “this is great!”, or “I think op is spot on!” Because they are devoid of content. So criticism, rightly or wrongly, tends to dominate. But the fact that you can’t downvote, only upvote, means even if your comments aren’t “positive” your impact on site content is. (I realize some people can downvote, but most of those aren’t real people.)

Music and work you enjoy. I put on some russian rock from me being 16 years old and do some enjoyable coding.

And I can't stress it enough c̶o̶c̶a̶i̶n̶e̶ Lagavulin 16.

Why do you feel like you "need to get [your negativity] out?" What's the connection between thinking these thoughts, like evaluating worst case scenarios, and blogging them or saying them to your spouse?

Does it bother you that other people may be content with things that you see flaws or risks in? Are they wrong? Do you need to make sure they are informed of the same problems for you to be at peace?

By seeing a therapist and working through the emotions and it’s causes.

I learned that I shouldn’t suppress. I analyzed and unentangled the feelings that I had to get out.

I learned to be more generous towards myself and other but at the same time be more critical of ideas. They where too entangled in my mind before therapy.

Now I am much better critiquing and idea while at the same time being warm, kind, encouraging and funny towards myself and others.

Well you're already doing it. We're all flowing emotions, and stepping outside of ourselves at times helps redirect our brain off negativity.

Also, personally, accepting the blurry averages, and focusing on shared joy. Things might not be ideal but as long as people around are ok, then it's fine.

Other than that you can have some brain time off (deep zen craft, biking, hiking, swimming) these all helps reset your mood.

People will Surely shit on my suggestion, but I found the book “Ego is the Enemy” very illuminating of my own flaws. And recently I read/watched Postive intelligence https://youtu.be/ta5IkSsc8qk which also helped me see some of my deeply ingrained defective thinking patterns. One of those might help.

c7DJTLrn - unfortunately this is totally normal for us human animals. Negative thinking is hardwired to be the dominant thought process. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0560-0 https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-bias-4589618

Luckily it is well studied and there are many old and new techniques that work for many of us with the most recommended seeming to be Mindfulness.

For me Visualization is also an amazing technique because if done right the brain remembers what we visualize so we can rewire our default thinking.

Try checking out Mel Robins her YouTube channel has a lot of great free stuff and her books are great as well. But if you don't gel with her style there are a ton of alternative people trying to explain more or less the same concept.

Stunning survey gives grim view of flourishing anti-democratic opinions

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579160-stunning-sur...

Sometimes you need to vent. Is there a reason to worry about your online behavior? I find it nice to be straight forward and blunt on the internet with how I feel. Maybe it comes off as being an asshole, but idk if it's a big deal. I think it's one of the great things about being mostly anonymous online.

Times when I've been most negative it's because I'm seeking personal satisfaction from work projects, and don't have time to do my own projects. I'm doing better now by leaving work at work, working fewer hours (remote without a commute), and seeking satisfaction from my own side projects.

I think of it in terms you express. If someone checks my comment history will I seem like a negative, critical, jerk - or thoughtful, positive, and encouraging. If I catch myself thinking that a comment I'm writing will likely paint me more as the former, then I just navigate away without posting.

Well hold on man - why tackle it? So many things genuinely suck that negativity is quite understandable. If what you really mean to ask is "how do I prevent my negativity from hurting my ability to gain power in society?", then we can talk about that. But that is a bit of a different matter.

> and feel like I need to get it out.

One way I like to think about it is: Will my comment make the project/thread better or worst? If it's negative and could make it worst then it feels easier to just keep it for myself, even if I know I'm right (or other good reasons for negativity)

The more you supress something - the stronger it becomes.

I suggest you tackle the source of the issue, not the surface manifestations.

May be you have some limiting beliefs so deep that you don’t even realize them, maybe you have some level of narcissistic personality etc.

Good therapist and some degree of deep self inquiry might help.

It’s okay to critique and diagnose problems, but if you stop there it does become negative. To turn it positive, follow it up by proposing a solution or at least adding something constructive. That can be a very difficult thing to do, especially in a graceful manner.

I inherited contrarianism from my dad, and it took a long time to realize what I was doing -- I thought I was just "being smart". Next time your brain spits out a reason why something will fail, then make it also spit out two why the thing will succeed.

Two questions to ask yourself:

When a negative thought occurs, ask yourself these two questions:

1> Is the thought useful?

2> How does it behave?

I got this from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM&t=60s

After my divorce I gave myself a quota. I could say one negative thing a day. Not only was it a limit but also a challenge. If I could only say one negative thing a day you I didn't want to waste it on something trivial. So I'd put some effort into it.

I pondered this exact thing recently. Here are my thoughts re-expressed in a couple different phases which I kept instead of editing out to reveal the kinds of editing steps that I might go through.

---

I've found that negativity seems to be a required step in some self expression. Say you have an immediate strong emotional reaction to something you encountered, but to express your emotional reaction you start by phrasing it as a big long negative-sounding complaint or diatribe. Maybe you even have a good point in there, the point you're aiming at comes from a genuine place of wanting to make things better, but it just comes out negative and unhelpful.

Once the expression is articulated and externalized you can take a second editing step, cutting away all the useless bits -- accusations, overgeneralizations, unsympathetic or unconsidered viewpoints, annoyances that resolve outside the scope of the topic, etc. -- to extract out just the core of your idea expressed in a way that is at least neutral. The point is to rewrite it and shorten it until you and your imagined audience can no longer find a reasonable objection to it. That often means a gradual voluntary weakening of your statement or splitting it into separate statements, and maybe even talking yourself out of it completely. You can tell if you're doing it right by holding the original emotion in mind while you restate your neutral, edited version -- if it feels 'satisfied' then you've captured its intent; if it gets annoyed then you missed something and you're not done.

The key is that this whole laborious process doesn't need to happen out in the open right in the face of the person whose behavior you want to change.

---

Think of the initial negative reaction as the inedible husk that surrounds a delicious fruit, something that's a pain to remove like a coconut. The fruit can't grow without the husk protecting it so don't begrudge the husk its necessity. But you wouldn't want to hand your friend an ugly unpeeled fruit that they've never seen and that they have to really work at to get to the fruit in the center. Heck, if it looks like too much work they may even throw it out without even trying. Instead, peel as much as you can yourself first and only present it to them afterwards.

---

An initial negative / emotional reaction isn't bad per se, just that it isn't yet stated in a way that is useful to everyone else... so re-express it until it is.

As with so many things, awareness is often the hardest part. I don't have any advice that isn't already covered here, but kudos to you for recognizing this dynamic in yourself; that awareness will almost inevitably lead to improvement.

Practice trying to find the positive in something. If you have been doing negative comments for a long time, the brain has sort of hard wired to respond that way.

Deliberate practice at saying something positive will help to rewire the connections.

Don't stop ranting. A good rant is good. I value HN for its critical slant, a much needed remedy to the effusive cheerleading of technology social media discourse/sales-puffery.

Worried about looking obnoxious? Post under a pseudonym.

to back up what others have said, it's habitual; that means you can change it, because it's simply a pattern of thinking/behaviour, not something innate to you. Changing habits is a kind of hacking that Atomic Habits (book) is a great introduction to, but as a first tip I'd say that when you notice yourself being overly negative, try to consciously counteract it with a positive or grateful observation. In any situation you can find something negative (as you already know), but also something positive, so try to rewrite your default behaviour to look for the good rather than the bad.

This is gonna come out really childish, but here goes:

You know those games where you select the phrases you want your character to say, and certain phrases lead you to different scenarios ?

Games like Detroit become human.

All those choices form a tree where each choice is a branching point. What I've found in RL is that negative actions generally lead to smaller paths in the "choice tree", which is generally no fun and you don't learn and enrich your brain with new information. As in video games, I want to explore all the branches, but you usually can't repeat a choice in real life, so I end up exploring the biggest path that coincides with my preferences, which is the the one with the most content that I like and, coincidentally, most of the times, this is a path that has a good balance of negativity, positivity and neutrality.

So yeah, tldr is: I see some actions in my life as actions in a story branching video game, and I actively look out for actions that give me the longest path in the "action tree" of stuff that I like to do, that indirectly makes me a "balanced" but active person.

You don't have to suppress anything that appears on your mind because it's transitory. Let it come, let it be, and let it go. By trying to get rid of it you just make it more real than it is. Just observe.

Don't judge things. Things are just as is, it's your opinion that makes them good or bad. Remember this and whenever you make a judgement then just remove that opinion of yours.

Unless you're directing that negativity inward I wouldn't worry. There's really no reason to write a blog or comment that points out how great everything is.

It helped me to read the book “loving what is”.

Especially the part about writing down my thoughts about things and questioning / challenging my own thinking

Try to be constructive, and expect the sewage of bad faith to overwhelm it. Communication for you to build things, not to impress people.

If it's any consolation the default level of negativity is largely cultural.

I went through your recent comments and to me they appear neutral.

You can spin off negativity into positivity if you frame it as opportunities and potential for improvement.

Choose not to suffer and be positive. One way to do this is mindfulness and live in the present.

If you are aware of your own negativity you may be already halfway or more to a solution...

Revisit your writing fresh, and read it as if you were reading someone else's writing

Go for running daily and never hold a belief that can't be reviewed periodically.

Psilocybin.

Good exercise and sleep

I have an ai that checks my text for bile. Makes a digital fart noise.

I have this tendency, too. I don't necessarily think of myself as negative; I think of myself as a realist, and reality has some hard truths. I find that many other people don't want to talk about the bad things. I wouldn't describe myself as a stoic, but I do relate to the idea of focusing on the negative as a strategy for being able to tolerate my existential dread.

I should note that there is an opposite to this: toxic positivity. It's equally irritating when someone refuses to acknowledge the elephants in the room.

The biggest changes in how I have approached my tendency towards negativity are trying to practice acceptance, gratitude, and action.

I had to teach myself that there is so much to be gained by accepting reality, whether it was my preferred reality or not. Travel really helped me with this. When traveling, I find myself limited by missing context and language. And yet, it's so rewarding. Some of my best travel memories come from things that didn't go to plan. I also try to accept other people's perception. If someone thinks something is good, which I think is bad, I try to "steelman" why that may be before writing off their perception.

I'm not sure how I came to feel deeper levels of gratitude. I guess it's just that as I've gotten older, I've internalized a deeper awareness of how well I have it. I can still put myself in the headspace of a younger, more angsty me. If that person could see my life today, he would be dumbstruck. And I've also just learned the hard way that tomorrow is not promised. My luck can turn on a dime, so I need to enjoy what I've got, while I have it.

I've also tried to take more responsibility and initiative for the things I want to see changed. I try to live by a rule that if something is bugging me, I need to reflect on why that is, and decide if I'm going to devote my time and effort towards it. If not, I need to attenuate the level of attention I'm giving it. Action is as much about what I don't do as what I do. For the things that I am going to take on, I try to challenge myself to go the extra mile, whether or not I will be successful. I'm not a doggedly determined person, and so I don't always see the results I want. But every now and then, the payback is extremely worthwhile.

I believe that practicing acceptance, gratitude, and action has changed how I communicate. I still am very adept at pointing out problems. But that's not all I do. I think those other 3 things come out, as well, and I think that makes me a more balanced person to the people who have to communicate with me. I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I try to live with that.

Speaking of which, I try to be aware the extent to which the people around me can handle my unfiltered "realism". Some folks are right there with me. For the others, I try to prioritize how much realism they need to hear from me within an interval of time.

Negativity has been trained into you. I would venture a guess that you have never tried gizzards, liver, chicken feet, etc. The thought of eating them disgusts you, but you really don't know. You were trained to be this way, and there's only 1 way to fix this. Repetition, just like how you learn anything else. Repeat to yourself anything and it will become so.

Another point, you have 3 large luggage. You can only carry 1, they are that heavy. You need to learn to only try to carry 1. What is that luggage called? Past, Present, Future. You can only carry the present. If you try to carry the past, you will constantly remind yourself of negatives in the past. You will get caught up in the past and not live the present. The future is even worse because you literally dont know what's coming, if you try to lift the future luggage you will break your back. Live only in the present, dont concern yourself with the past negativity. You just need to be positive from now on.

Mindfulness helps for identifying and stopping these patterns. You can then just observe the will toward negativity and instead let it pass. Over time the habit becomes more permanent.