Feeling Negative is healthy…

Feeling negative is healthy: The brighter side of darker emotions

So you switch on the television and you encounter a peppy, bouncing guide/host blinding you with their dazzling smile and a glowing face, promising you 365 days of “Happiness and Positivity”!

These emotions or feelings have turned into a lucrative brand and has acquired cult following. So much so, the feelings at the other end of the spectrum such as negativity, sadness, grief, sorrow are deemed bad and are considered the villains of life’s happy journey.

But are they really vampires sucking up the goodness from our life?

According to the ace author Todd Kashdan – “Feeling negative is healthy! The trend of be positive 24*7 may actually be leading us astray”.

According to Kashdan, the tendency to chase the chimera of ‘perfect happiness’ along with our habit of avoiding unpleasantness and discomfort is making us psychologically weak.

The saying goes… even when life is a bed of roses, there are hidden thorns within. Trouble arises when we choose to ignore the thorny parts and focus only on the soft and the velvety petals. We stop seeing the complete picture; this myopic ‘ostrich’ choice leads to reduced productivity, increased stress in life.

The solution to an emotionally rich life is not avoidance rather it is embracing the whole gamut of emotions – both negative and positive as a useful feature of everyday life. A way to a satisfying emotional life lies in developing “emotional switch” – a way of harnessing and utilising appropriate emotions to suit the situations.

The 4 ‘main’ negative emotions that play a crucial role in our lives

The human mind is wired for negativity. Around 65% of our energy is focussed towards the life negativity. It is an evolutionary programming. Related read… Are we hardwired to be negative?

1/4: Guilt

Guilt is the fiber of our emotional life. It toughens us, makes us more sensitive to social norms and responsibilities. For instance, a man is less likely to steal when shopping or try to cheat a helpless person.

2/4: Self-doubt

People consider self-doubt as a form of weakness. But doubt can be a valuable asset. Doubt enables us to do a mental self-evaluation of our strengths and weaknesses. Doubts nudge us towards reflections, goads us into strengthening our weaknesses and prepares the person to accept the upcoming change.

3/4: Anxiety

When feeling threatened or when pushed to a corner, anxiety can be a strong counter-weapon. In an uncomfortable situation where a ‘wholesale positivity’ may entangle us in deeper trouble, anxiety will make us doubly sensitive to cues & clues, it will sensitise us to the atmosphere helping us to resolve the problem quickly.

A team or a group has a high rate of success if it includes an individual who has an anxious-type personality.

4/4: The Eureka moment 

Most would have read about Archimedes and how he discovered the ‘Archimedes principle’.’ For those who are unaware, here goes – Archimedes a famous physicist, mathematician, and an engineer was pondering about a problem. Exhausted and feeling grimy, he decided to take a bath. He descended into his bath and noticed that the water rose and overflowed to accommodate his body weight. He ran out naked shouting ‘Eureka’.

So what does it prove? It proves that an unfocused mind can provide the solution when logic fails. An unfocused and chaotic mind need not be a bad thing.

Welcome the negative emotions. Accept feeling negative is healthy and use them effectively for a happy and productive life.

A writers note: The pseudo projection of eternal happiness and euphoria, on social media, is the biggest culprit. Everyone feels everyone else is happy and living a charmed life, whereas truth is far far away from it.

I, being a wellness consultant, meet few of these social media double personality bubbles (yes! I call them bubbles… ready to burst, any moment), on a daily basis. Their life is far removed from what they project. All they do is make life difficult for normals, who live the right mix of happiness-sadness… …

I can go on and on but I will stop here 🙂 People please accept negativity… Feeling negative is healthy. It is part of day to day living. Yes! It is a part, not the whole of your existence. Be conscious… crib, vent, be negative… whenever you feel like BUT not always 🙂 Don’t trust all the positivity you see on the social media.