As mentioned before, our minds do various types of thinking, some being “helpful” for our well-being and others being “unhelpful” for our well-being. A key goal of Happy Thinking is to recognise and change unhelpful thinking. To help you recognise unhelpful thinking, I will at various points on this website describe to you common types of such thinking that people do.
We can start with a type of unhelpful thinking that is very common, which psychologists call the “negativity effect”. It is an important one to understand, as it may lead to the lowering of one’s mood.
In one’s day-to-day life, one faces various events. Some of these events may be “negative” (e.g. one has lost one’s expensive mobile phone) and others may be“positive” (e.g. one has been told that there will be a salary increase at work). Unfortunately, the human mind can tend to exaggerate negative events while minimising positive events.
In the example I gave, the person may excessively focus on the negative event of losing the mobile phone, while mostly ignoring the “happy” event of having a salary increase. This type of unhelpful thinking can make one feel that things are worse than they actually are, as positive events that could have countered the negativity are ignored. Psychologists call this kind of unhelpful thinking “the negativity effect”.
A more “helpful” way to think would be to see both the positive and negative events in a more balanced way. Perhaps thinking, “Yes, it’s upsetting that I lost my expensive mobile phone, but on the brighter side, I got a nice salary raise at work”.
Here is another short example of the “negativity effect” type of unhelpful thinking.
Joe was to take an early morning flight, but unfortunately, because he forgot to set his alarm, he left very late for the airport. At the airport, the ticketing personnel conveyed the bad news to Joe that he had missed his flight. But luckily for Joe, a sympathetic senior manager of the airline felt sorry and issued a free ticket to him for a flight leaving for his destination just a few hours later.
While waiting for this next flight, Joe only focused on the negative event of missing his flight, rather than also taking in the positivity that the free ticket for the next flight gave him. He kept telling himself how unlucky he was to have forgotten to set his alarm clock while downplaying the good fortune he had of having a sympathetic airport worker who was able to help him in a big way. The excessive focus on the negative event made him unnecessarily feel very sad about his situation.
As you have seen, the negativity effect can cause unnecessary unhappiness. It’s therefore important to recognise and change such thinking when it happens to you. As we go along on this website, I will explain other types of unhelpful thinking that people commonly do, and I will also give you various mental tools you can use to change such thinking.