How do you let go of negativity?
When the world around us is dark, our eyes will eventually adjust to the darkness.
As part of my somewhat floundering quest to become a Better Me in 2020, I recently decided to start journaling again. It was something I did a lot as a child and throughout my teen years, but since adulthood hit (and the joys that accompany it), the habit has become sporadic at best—even with New Year’s resolutions and government mandates keeping us at home.
While wasting time on Instagram (one thing the Better Me is supposed to be doing less of), I stumbled upon a 14-day wellness writing challenge and decided to give it a go. Ten minutes a day to scribble in a journal is totally doable, right? Plus, wellness! We all need some of that right now. Bottom line, I’ll be making progress toward a Better Me.
So, today, on my second day of scribbling (though it should have been my fourth, if I had any discipline at all), the prompt was this:
Write about a person, an attitude, a thing, a job…anything you want to leave behind.
Per the rules of journaling, you’re not supposed to overthink it. Just go with your gut and write what comes to mind. And for me, the answer came quickly. What do I want to let go of?
Negativity.
Deciding what needs to be cut out of your life — that part’s easy. But figuring out how to rid yourself of it — or at least minimize its presence? That’s something else entirely.
The birth and evolution of negativity
We don’t start off as negative beings. As children, we invent games to play and use our imaginations and joyfully run everywhere not because of the chocolate cake we ate last night but purely because it’s fun.
Negativity is learned through experience. Through life.
I’m no stranger to adversity. Depression, suicide, and unattainably high expectations run in my family. A child of divorce and domestic violence, I was all but disowned by father when I called the police on him to protect my mother. Because I was forcibly estranged from his side of the family, I found out about my grandparents’ death while researching my family tree on Ancestry. Et cetera, you get the point.
Negativity was planted in my life much too early, back when I had little control, and now its roots are deep. I sometimes wonder if, because of my history, I unconsciously allow or even choose to bring negativity into my life as an adult.
The negativity net
When you are young, your figurative negativity net is in perfect condition. The rope is strong and tight. The holes are just the right size to keep out what you don’t want and capture what you do.
But as you age, your net becomes weaker. The fibers begin to fray and break, causing the mesh to merge into large holes. Junk starts to filter in and quickly piles up, burying old tires and dead fish underneath newer old tires and less-dead fish. Or whatever.
Could you repair the net? Of course. But that costs you a lot—time, energy, money. Isn’t it just easier to ignore it?
Only you can prevent forest fires
We’ve all heard the psychological mantras about how it’s all up to us as individuals: We can only control what we do, how we react to stimuli, whether or not we are happy. And how much negativity we let into our lives. It’s all our own responsibility, and no one else’s.
Therefore, when it comes to letting go of anything, the best — and arguably, the only — place to start is with yourself. It’s that simple.
Simple, yes, but not easy.
If you consult the Googles about how to let shit go, you’re likely to get advice akin to:
Let it go.
Well, thanks. I hadn’t thought of that.
If it were at all easy to do—to stop beating yourself up, to stop letting things bother you, to forget about the past, to push negative thoughts aside and focus on the positive—no one would be Googling it.
Sure, I guess some people have a natural tendency toward optimism. Some people wake up on the right side of the bed every day. Some people are calm, go-with-the-flow types. Some people aren’t bothered by external stimuli.
For most of us, however, that is simply not the case. In fact, I daresay many of us are annoyed by or even downright hostile toward such people. They are too everything—too happy, too easygoing, too likable.
But in reality, it has nothing to do with them. We don’t like them because, deep down, we’re jealous. We don’t like them, because they have what we want, and we don’t know how to get it.
No one wants to admit they can simply choose
Is there so much negativity in your life because there is so much negativity in the world, and it just has to go somewhere? Or does it exist because you allow it to, or even invite it in?
Case in point, and the reason I started this post in the first place: Before we got married, my husband and I lived together for a good two years. That’s plenty of time to get to know what someone is really like and to find out how compatible you are. It’s the best way to see that person for who he or she really is.
I found out long before we were married that my husband has a dark side. That he angers easily. That he yells and curses constantly. That he judges and belittles people.
In other words: That he’s negative.
I’ve also known for a very long time that I’m something of an empath. I don’t know if there’s any scientific evidence behind such things, but I do know how I react to this kind of negativity—the kind that’s loud and pissed off, the kind where every other word is an f-bomb, the kind where everyone else is wrong.
I absorb it, like a frigging Bounty paper towel. I can feel it penetrate my mind, my attitude, my chest. My stomach tightens. My jaw clenches. My breathing gets shorter and quicker, sometimes even stops. My shoulders tense. My tongue sharpens. It exacerbates my anxiety, another thing I struggle to let go of.
If we can simply choose to eliminate negativity, what is the choice here? To change my DNA, or to change my husband’s? To change my physiological response to certain stimuli, or to change his? I can’t do any of those impossible things.
But maybe there’s another option.
“Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around.” —Roy T. Bennett
Simple? Maybe. But definitely not easy.
