10 Things to Know About Negative Thinking

Does it seem strange that some people complain they

don't have enough time to be happy, yet they find enough

time to be sad?

Here are 10 things to be aware of about negative people 

and their thoughts.

1.  A negative attitude is self-defeating.  We won't find 

solutions to life's problems by looking for someone or 

something to blame.  Work at appreciating what you have

instead of moaning about what you lack.

2.  One characteristic of negative thinkers is their need to 

have the world behave according to their wishes.  Whenever

people and the world fail to act according to their selfish wishes,

they are unhappy.  Such a poisonous attitude prevents them 

from growing and learning to cope with life's challenges.

3.  Everything negative we say about ourselves and to others

is a suggestion.  We are unwittingly programming ourselves and

others for failure, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies.

4.  Negative people attract other complainers.  Because those

who live in a world of doom and gloom alienate others, they have

no choice but to look for other negative people to associate with.

They then feed off one another.

5.  The constant stress that flows from a negative attitude also saps 

one's energy, focus, and motivation.  It is hardly a formula for success.

6.  A rotten attitude, not only delays success, but also shortens life

by damaging the immune system (psychoneuroimmunology).  So,

besides the diseases directly caused by stress, such as heart disease 

and ulcers, we become susceptible to other diseases because of a

weakened immune system.

7.  Negative people want to get a reaction out of you.  And the 

only way they can is if they target something that causes intense

feelings for you.  Ask yourself why is it affecting you so much?

Sometimes, you can learn a lot about yourself by analyzing what 

feelings it's bringing up within you.

8.  Those who use mental filtering as their distorting of choice

tend to gloss over positive events and hold a magnifying glass

to the negative.  Ten things can go right, but a person operating 

under the influence of a mental filter may only notice the one thing

that goes wrong.  (Add a little overgeneralization and all-or-

nothing thinking to the equation, and you have a recipe for stress).

9.  Similar to mental filtering, those who disqualify the positive

tend to treat positive events like flukes, thereby clinging to a more

negative world view and set of low expectations for the future.

Have you ever tried to help a friend solve a problem, only to have

every solution you pose shot down with a "Yeah but..." response?

You've witnessed this cognitive distortion first hand.

10.  Rather than letting the evidence bring them to a logical 

conclusion, negative thinkers set their sights on a conclusion 

(often negative), and then look for evidence to back it up, ignoring 

evidence to the contrary.  Conclusion jumpers can often fall prey 

to mind reading (where they believe that they know the true 

intentions of others without talking to them) and fortune telling 

(predicting how things will turn out in the future and believing 

these predictions to be true).