As mentioned before, to find happiness, it is important to recognise and overcome negative thoughts. To help you recognise negative thoughts, I will describe common ones on this website. On this page, I will describe a negative thought that I call “magnifying the negative”. Unfortunately, the human mind tends to magnify negative events in one’s life while minimising positive ones. This is a common negative thought, and it’s important to challenge it, as it may otherwise lead to a low mood.
Let us understand this negative thought by using a brief example. Imagine that a person, unfortunately, lost their expensive mobile phone but, on the same day, also found out that their salary would be increased. Because the mind tends to magnify the negative, the person may focus excessively on the loss of their mobile phone while forgetting the positive event of a salary increase.
This type of negative thought, where one magnifies the negative while minimising the positive, can make one feel that things are worse than they actually are, as positive events that could counteract the negativity are overlooked.
A more “helpful” way to think would be to view both the positive and negative events in a 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”. It’s about treating events in one’s life in a balanced way, not just unnecessarily magnifying the negative.
Here is another short example where a person magnifies negative events:
Joe was supposed to take an early-morning flight, but he left his home very late for the airport because he forgot to set his alarm. At the airport, the ticketing staff informed Joe that he had missed his flight. This, of course, made Joe very sad.
However, a sympathetic senior manager at the airline felt sorry for Joe and issued a free ticket for a flight to his destination just a few hours later.
While waiting for the next flight, Joe focused solely on the negative of missing his flight rather than appreciating the positive of the free ticket for the next flight. He kept telling himself how unlucky he was to have forgotten to set his alarm clock, while downplaying the good fortune of having a sympathetic airline manager who helped him in a big way. The excessive focus on the negative event made him unnecessarily sad about his situation.
As you have seen, magnifying negative events can cause unnecessary unhappiness. It’s essential to recognise and deal with such thoughts when they happen to you. Later on this website, I will share the “mind tools” you can use to do this.