How to be a less negative person in 7 steps

Do you consider yourself a person who only sees the bad side of everything that happens to you?

Negativity is an attitude that causes us to focus on the negative aspects more than the positive; So, all our attention is directed toward what “didn’t go well.” It also entails losing hope (hopelessness) or believing that things cannot change or that they do not depend on us (learned helplessness).

In this article we offer you some ideas so that you can start to move away from this negativity and be a less negative person. It is not about promoting a naive positivism, but rather about putting a little counterweight to the scale that judges everything, to prove that in everything bad we can also find something good.

7 keys to being a less negative person

How to be a less negative person? We offer you 7 guidelines to start working on it:

1. Value something good every day

A small exercise related to how to be a less negative person that can help you is the following: try to find something good every day and value it.

It doesn’t have to be a “big thing.” It could be the fact of having met someone on the street whom you haven’t seen in a while, chatting with your sister, seeing a beautiful landscape, feeling safer, reading an excerpt from an everyday book… It’s about valuing everyday acts to get away little by little of the negativity.

2. Write down what you like about yourself

You can do this exercise with yourself or with the environment. It’s about writing down what you like about yourself. What do you value about yourself? What are you good at?

This It is a way to train a slightly more positive language In your day to day. The point is to look not only for those things we like about ourselves, but also for the words we can use to describe them.

3. Apply yin and yang

Yin and yang is a symbol wrapped in two concepts of Taoism and that It is used to represent duality. This philosophy describes the two fundamental opposing and complementary forces found in all things (i.e., everything good and everything bad).

Try practicing this exercise: when you feel that negativity invades you, try to find the positive part of what has happened to you. Although sometimes it is difficult to find it, or sometimes it is minimal, it is always there! Often the negative is “simply” learning.

4. Stay away from victimhood

It is okay to practice self-compassion when we feel that we must accompany ourselves, embrace our pain, our emotions… What is not so beneficial is moving from self-pity to victimhood (and these attitudes are separated by a fine line).

And it is that, “Self-pity is not the same as feeling sorry for ourselves.“. That would be the fine line between self-pity (listening to yourself, understanding yourself and allowing yourself to be wrong) and victimhood (reveling in suffering while looking for blame). Therefore, another idea related to how to be a less negative person is to move away from victimhood.

5. Don’t be an extremist

Behind many negative thoughts, extremism often hides (being at the extremes when evaluating things). But why does everything have to be black or white?

Another attitude that can help you be a less negative person is Be less extreme in your thoughts and actions.

Try to relativize when you value what happens to you: Is it really that “bad”? Are you able to move away from the extremes and find yourself in the middle? Try it and you will notice the difference!

6. Use creativity

It may seem a bit shocking, right? Be creative to be more positive? Well, the truth is that creative ideas allow us to leave the comfort zone, open our minds, become more flexible… And these are qualities allied to positivism.

So, thinking creatively will allow you to open the doors to new perspectives. And with this, the possibility that these are not as negative as you initially thought.

7. Surround yourself with positive people

Our environment influences how we feel and what we think. Therefore, if you want to be a little more positive, you will have to surround yourself with people who are also positive (or who, at the very least, are not negative people, much less toxic).

Test it; Accompany yourself with people who give you good vibes and, above all, who are not set on complaining. You will see how little by little you feel that your energy is different.

The importance of relativizing

And you, do you think you are more positive or negative? With these tips on how to be a less negative person, it is not about seeing everything in rosy colors and nourishing yourself with a “false” optimism.

It is about changing the attitude, relativizing and seeing beyond the negativity, often derived from fear of change or distrust. Remember that, If you change the way you see things, the things you see change.

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