For every stressful situation you find yourself in, such as a tough client meeting or talking with an unhappy team member, your well-being and stress levels affect how well you handle it. By becoming more mentally resilient, you can show up better professionally and personally.
The average person has tens of thousands of thoughts a day, and many skew to negative emotions, such as shame, blame, self-doubt, stress and anger. They are mental saboteurs.
Turning into a negative personality
When you keep having these negative thoughts week after week, it becomes your personality. That limits your potential in both your practice and your relationships. Sometimes we’re not even aware that this is the way we are showing up though.
Of course, negative emotions play a necessary role in our lives. They can alert us if something is not OK. You just don’t want to stay stuck in them. The longer you stay in negative emotions, the more tunnel vision you have, and the less you can see other possibilities.
Moving past negativity
To break through your own negativity, reflect on your life and question yourself. For example, think, How long was I mad that time when this person did something to me? Were you stuck in that negative emotion for a long time? Did it serve anybody? No. Did it help you? Absolutely not. Negative emotions are not good for more than just a second, and then you let go.
To help change your mindset, ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I judging? Could I show empathy instead?
- Am I operating from my positive fire or negative fire? If it’s negative, what is the fear underlining it? Is the fear stopping me from being what I want to be?
Identify when you’re stuck in a cycle of negativity, and understand what damage you can cause yourself if you keep going that way. Then reflect and ask yourself questions to bring awareness and understanding to what’s keeping you stuck, so you can move on and move up.
Dorice Horenstein is a speaker, author and positive intelligence expert. This was excerpted from her 2024 MDRT Global Conference presentation, “Train your brain to improve your mental fitness.” (MDRT member-exclusive content)
For more about changing your mindset, visit this MDRT member-exclusive content
I’ve found that by writing out a ‘Statement of Life Context,’ I forced myself in the mist of a very negative situation in my life to really focus on both my purpose in the world and the positive/negative balance of my life. There was a section titled: “Integrity & Resilience”. In it I paraphrased the words I’d heard from the Main Platform years ago from Les Brown that, “A setback is a setup for a comeback.” A daily reading of that Life Context statement, including the words of Les Brown have been proscriptive in lifting me up and at the same time keeping negativity at bay. 🙂