Be Less Negative than More Positive

An interesting interpretation by Dr. Price Prichett, on how positive and negative thinking affects us

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Which is more important? Where do you get the most mileage? More positive thinking or
less negative thinking?

And the studies are unequivocal. It's less negative thinking.

Now the thing that gets us tangled up is that I guess pretty much all of us think of it
is, okay, you've got this linear scale here, you know, and we'll say at the high end, the
good end is optimism and the low end is pessimism.

Negative thinking. Well studies show thatthey're actually two different scales. And this is just fascinating to me. You should positive thinking is important. Keep it up. Keep it high. But if you want to get your real knowledge, just cut down on the negative thinking.

Cut it down, cut it down, cut it down.
That's the villain voice. That's the critic in your head. That's the demotivator.
That's the discounter. That's the one that raises the doubts.

And you can shut it up.It takes practice. It takes some discipline.

But people say, well, I think I'm aware of my negative thinking, but they're not. About 70% of our negative thinking goes unperceived bias. It is so embedded in our day to day behavior. We're not even aware of it. About 70%. It is so much just ingrained in the way we go about living.

Yes. And so let me show you how it shows up.
I'll talk about the five C's. The sneak attack of the five C's.

Okay, the first one is "complaining". Graping, graping, graping. You know, it's too hot in Dallas.
It is. But that's not going to change if I grab about it.
Okay. So the first one is complaining.

The next one's "criticizing". Well, the grid went down today in Texas. We had brownouts,
my air conditioners. Yeah. And there's always someone to criticize. So we've got complaining.
We've got criticizing.

The next one is "concern". And I'm not talking about being empathic here and having concern for some other person. I'm talking about garden variety worry. I'm concerned about this.
Well, I'm concerned about inflation. Well, I'm concerned about, you know, the news.
All right.

The next one is "commiserating". We come in and I sat down with this person. And they start their C's, their C talk.

And I say, I get it, man. Yeah, I understand. I'm not doing anybody any good. When I start commiserating, I'm not doing anyone any good. It's destructive to both of us.

And then the last one is catastrophizing, which is just, when you're really down, you just blow things all out of proportion. But those things sneak in. If you start watching people, watching ourselves, how much we do this, and of course, we're surrounded by so much negativity, you know, you go, you listen to the news, you get on social media in, on and on.