fast times at ridgemont high. |
why focus on the bad? what is it about it that makes the negative stand out. with all the good news that happens each day, why can no news agency ever acknowledge it? we can thank our brains ‘negative bias’ and the fact that it used to keep us alive knowing the negative in life. so seeped in our brains, we tend to remember the negative over the positive in almost all instances of our daily routine. we also tend to prefer reading it even though we tell ourselves that we like to read good news. there is an argument that we like to read bad news as we tend to view our own lives a bit rosier then the world and this schadenfreude allows us to see our situation even in a better light.
when speaking to others I tend to push the bad rather then the good of what is going on with me. a bit of it due to an embarrassment of doing better then someone else, I tend to do things half-heartedly and still manage to make quite good progress (the truth to this secret is surrounding myself with people around me that help significantly in moving myself forward, and also simply never working on that final 20% that takes too much time and does not make that much of a difference in my mind). i mock myself if I can, can handle a fair bit of jokes at my expense and am happy to be in the background if praised and compliments are being handed out. I never strived for a need of praise from anyone else then maybe my spouse and son. i consider most of what i have achieved today luck, being born a white-male from a decent family already started me much further then others had to strive to get too.
we fight at times in the negative. in particular the family. it happens from time to time, and according to an article posted above, as long as you praise and love five times more then you fight, it is all good and things work out for the good. ohh the negative. you want the best for them, from yourself you also want to give them the best, but it fails as life is never that perfect. we tend to fight with the ones we love as we are most comfortable in that surrounding. immediately as the verbal war begins though, i want it to end. shame and regret rear their heads a bit later and i go back and patch it up. like drinking too much, i vow to never do it again in my mind. and then like drinking responsibly, i plan dates with the wife and take the son our to play in order to balance this thing we call life.
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to keep it light is important. we take things so serious all the time, it really does ruin everything.