Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?

I was a new employee doing on-the-job training for an even newer employee, while we were trying to meet a deadline. We were the only two people working on this project, in the middle of rural NM, out of cell range, and having to improvise. He kept making suggestions and I kept explaining why they wouldn't work. Suddenly he point-blank asked me why I said no to everything. I had a moment of clarity where I realized that I didn't even want him to be right, for no good reason except my ego. I apologized, horrified, and have been forever grateful for the wake-up.

After that I started to notice that pattern elsewhere. The best way I've found to interrupt it is to ask myself "what if they're right" and/or "in what way might this person be right that I may not have considered"?

Nowadays I try to tell myself that no one is perfect, especially me. Expecting oneself to be correct all time is actually egoistic even though the end result turns out to be being humble and having self-doubts. To fail or to be wrong is natural. My boss even encourages me to fail sometimes, to be comfortable with the possibility failure. I am not saying that I am doing these things by default now, but at least I make it a point to try.

And it's the same story – some colleagues that have been willing to speak honestly about how my attitude can affect them/the team.

Team diversity (and teammates bold enough to speak up) are great!

As of general negativity, I think you should ask more if it makes your life worse, like the one you did here. It’s usually hard to see what it does to you, and is structurally hard to change. Personally I’m working with CBT to tackle that, because my negativity brings some issues (general distrust, decision paralysis, etc), but for some of my rants even a doctor says it’s okay, cause I’m just straightforward and sincere, I just need to see BOTH negative and positive sides, the latter I tend to skip as “expected by default”. In my experience, this entire thing really is too structured for a specific advice to help, but this one is general: make positive things explicit, as you make it for negative ones. That will balance out the perception of you.

E.g. remember your last negative reaction to/meaning about X and list 3-5 things which were good in X. Not that it makes ir “actually good”, it doesn’t, just isolate its good sides and spell them out. I took the liberty to check few pages of your comments here, and Meta VR seems to be a good start :). As much as I don’t believe a word they say, I can see positive things about this situation.

I try to keep a balance and not go too far into the happy happy sunshine all the time mindset either because "toxic positivity" can also come with it's own set of problems, but overall I think just being more likable and charismatic and having genuine connections with people in life helped my mindset a ton.

This has made my marriage difficult at times, and I've realized that I need to change this. What I need is not a how-to book. I need a really really compelling why book. I unfortunately have yet to find one and envy people who naturally care about that stuff.

I also would prefer not to get judgment from people who don't understand why I can't humble myself, as that happens sometimes. I've tried forcing myself to be humble and continue to try every day (I'm married!), but it would be so much nicer if people could convince me about things rationally instead of expecting me to respect their opinions for no reason other than the relationship can become negative otherwise. Of course, we live in reality, not what we wish was reality. So I suppose I will just continue with struggling to figure this out until I hopefully get the answer, knowing full well that it would actually be pretty useful if I could be a more positive and likeable person. I'm actually going for counselling this week for the first time, maybe the professionals can figure it out for me!

Either you value collaboration and the opinions of others, or you don't; there's not much that you can do to reason yourself into or out of it, since it's not really a rational position.

I find dialetheism[0] to be a fulfilling model of mental gymnastics for this 'humbling' you refer to.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/

It's also important to remember that we are animals of habit and change. Valuing collaboration is a habit; sports are a great way to build and exercise it. I'm personally very fond of rowing. There's little else that matches it for enforcing collaboration.

Last, have you ever had an interest in psychedelics? LSD lit a fuse of empathy in my skull, and a lot of this has developed naturally (but not easily nor simply) from my relationship with the absurd.

Because you do. The only thing you will ever really have is the reality you can impact around you. So take charge!

Your job isn't just your day job. It is to run and push the planet along a good direction as much as you can, because it is literally your planet. These are all your people.

So learn to "use" people to your best advantage by learning what makes them tick, how to communicate and motivate, how to encourage and help even the people you only see once.

Be a great world leader from the perspective that you are objectively at the center of your world and you really do have the ability to move needles. So move every one you can.

When you do consciously act to move needles forward it's very motivating and self-affirming.

Get the most good out of others and yourself for this planet you own.

First, our society now is (IMHO) suffused with despair and its second order effects, such as anger, on an extraordinary level. I stopped reading/watching/listening to that stuff a couple years ago, unless I absolutely had to (99% reduction) and, it was a gradual process, but I not only left it behind but gained perspective on it - what once seemed overwhelming is now just a (dangerous) absurdity. Despite the presumption now that humanity is doomed to corruption and despair, there's generations of more positive stuff to read/view/etc from, you know, about 4-5 years ago - crazy things like optimism, belief in the possibilities, hope, justice, freedom, etc.

Second, just promise yourself no more rants, hyperbole, etc. Promise you will write constructive things. It will take some effort at first but you'll find there is far more to say (and that the rants have no value). Any time you find yourself in rant mode, stop, which leads to ...

Third, find healthy outlets for yourself, activities that, when you are finished, you feel better and healthier than when you started. (Otherwise, it's not much of an outlet, is it? But we all pickup unhealthy ones before we know better.) Exercise is a simple one.

Most importantly, by far: If you don't understand your emotions and have compassion for them, they will own you. If you find yourself with any unrelenting emotion, figure out what you are really feeling negative (or whatever) about - you probably are just redirecting that toward an easy outlet (someone on the Internet) rather than the real target that you don't want to face.

I'm known to be a very cynical person. Have been since I was a kid.

It's never really ever been an issue because I've known how to balance my interactions. However I noticed when I became a lead, that some of my team members were emulating me.

However they were emulating the incredibly cynical side of my communication, and glossing over the constructive criticism and thought I'd put in to my communications.

Suddenly, everything started spiraling into negativity. Code reviews, feedback on work, repsonse s to cool new tech...

Off hand one day, one of my team mates mentioned how they were trying to emulate my critical approach but were getting resistance, where I was not.

I started analyzing it with them and realized that I'd inadvertently fostered a negative environment. My own communication wasn't negative, but people often cling to the cynical because it makes them feel stronger.

You see this everywhere. From hot takes dismissing new things, to people tearing media to shreds like CinemaSins etc ... It's easy to be negative and cynical.

Anyway since then I've tried to try and be more positive in my posting to outweigh the cynicism. I'll still provide the critical feedback, but I try and push more positive words in, and I see it having a good impact on how people around me also compose themselves.

Anyway point being...I think it took seeing a reflection of the worst of me, to have me try and work to put forward the me I thought I was putting forward.

>"Plus some people have made loads of money while we watch front line workers basically dying doing their job."

Yes, that is terrible. But to be really honest, I haven't really thought about it much because none of this directly affects me. I don't follow the news as much, and I'm not close to any front line workers. It's abstractly terrible, but I haven't turned negative because of it.

>"Meanwhile the summer heat was just too much and we're watching the planet die."

I vote in favour of parties who support climate measures, but besides that, I'm not in a position where I can do meaningful activism to enact policy changes to materially curb climate change. In the meantime, I don't believe my personal behaviours make too big of an impact on the environment, in comparison to emissions and waste from major companies, countries, and militaries, so I don't feel guilt about my actions. The rest is not up to me.

>"All the while we've been restricted from seeing work colleagues, friends and family."

I don't miss my old work colleagues, and have actually gotten along really well with a couple new people who I've only seen once in-person (rest via text and video chat). I only really have one or two friends. I'm not too close with my family.

So in short, I don't really think about most of these world issues. The biggest issues directly affect me, via working from home and restriction from seeing others. For the former, life is returning to normal at work. For the second, I learned to be happy by myself, and I'm a lot calmer because of it.

Imagine knowing how the world ends and thinking it’s awful when you’ll be alive to see it. Will the oceans drown everything or will it become an oven / steam room. What a mystery and the answers will be revealed to you and only you.

Firstly, make a habit of seeing the full picture of something you’re evaluating or judging. This might be the ‘other side’ of the story (someone else’s perspective), the benefits of something you’re criticising that you’re otherwise missing, or an understanding of the worth of something you might be defending.

Secondly is to recognise the benefit of positive thoughts (like goodwill towards others) on yourself and the people around you. You may like to add some intentional practices here such as what’s referred to in Buddhism as loving kindness (‘metta’) meditation or performing generous acts. The uplifting in mind state you get here will incline you away from a lot of criticising and judging.

Principally though the goal would be to get to a point where a build up of negativity is not occurring for you and there’s no need to vent, but getting there is practice. It is great that you are reflecting on this and looking for another way so best of luck to you!

That's a habit, and it's a pretty annoying one if you're living with someone who does that, and I have lived with a few who did. After dealing it with for a long time I finally came up with that response to clearly point it out but I added to it by telling them "Anyone can walk into a room and find something to bitch about but Shit flows both ways and I can do that to you, so you need to stop doing it to me or expect I'll return the favor."

They always deny they do it and that anyone can do it to them. So then I'd wait a few days and when it was far from their thoughts I'd walk in and find something to bitch about them with. And after I did that I tell them "Now you see how easy that is."

The immediate goal is to get them to see they're a chronic bitcher and it works at least to the point where they stop looking for shit to bitch at me about because they know I'll return the favor.

The larger goal though is to get them to see that they have a choice in how they view the world around them. One can also walk into a room and look for what is good to be found there, and if you make a point to do that you're negativity will diminish pretty quickly.

But you have to give yourself a kick in the ass when you find you're being negative and purposely look for something positive. And you'll almost always find something positive if you do that. After awhile that is what you start looking for first.

I sincerely hope this helps.

An HN example might be bug reports. Bug reports are not being negative, they're being positive, trying to help fix an issue by pointing out it. The same is true for feature requests. You might not like the request but it's arguably a positive thing to get the info and possibly be presented a new idea.

I'm recently semi-addicted to the "Not Just Bikes" youtube channel and it is arguably all "bitching about stuff". But the goal is clearly to raise awareness of the what most in the USA take for granted.

I often try to look for the positive, but it often feels like learning to accept shoddy quality. Hey, this food tastes nothing like the real dishes but at least I was able to afford to go out..... Doesn't help the fact that the food was bad. Hey, this item I got from amazon is bad quality, but at least I'm privileged enough to have been able to order??!? It's hard to see how not being negative here is a net positive.

They'll readily recognize how rude you're being while simultaneously not recognizing you're doing to them once what they've done to you dozens or hundreds of times.

If someone has this mindset then in my opinion there really is no way to enlighten them. It's a character trait that runs deep. I think best to accept that you don't want this kind of interaction in your life and minimise contact as much as possible. It's certainly better than stooping to the same level.

Like many others here on HN, I lean more towards the “intellectual” and “analytical” side of thinking. I was not very mindful of my emotions and how they influenced my thinking.

The thing about thinking is that our analytical minds rationalise our thoughts and hence our conclusions _feel_ rational. But what we don’t see easily is that our emotions define the axioms on which our rationalisations are based. That’s why negative thinking feels so “rational” and hard to get out of. If you don’t see this, you won’t see a point of coming out of it.

I went for a 10 day vipassana retreat and I have been practicising the meditation every day since February 2021. Through the meditation, I was able to finally perceive how much anxiety my mind was filled with in every moment. The anxiety produced all manner of irrational negative thoughts, which I used to believe in. With the meditation practice, I finally could “experience” the anxiety by “intercepting” it. Instead of letting it loose and producing all manner of thoughts, I “uncover” the anxiety and spend time with it. It rises up and tries to cause a mess while I let my breathing take its natural course, and slowly it fades away into oblivion. What is left behind is clear skies in my mind, and an insight that anxiety is just something that comes and goes. If not observed, it subtly creates a mess. If observed, it speaks its truth and goes away.

My negative thinking has not gone away completely, but this was a game changing insight for me. The fact that my thoughts are the equivalent of a madman’s rambling, and don’t need to be taken seriously, is very freeing.

While the disciple hesitated, the master immediately offered to help.

The disciple was in disbelief as he saw his master break his vows by carrying the woman on his shoulders. He couldn't contain himself and a few hours removed from the incident he began to voice his resentment to condemn what had just transpired.

His master replied, "I set her down by the river. You are the one still carrying her."

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097504, Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life (2020)

I find that getting enough sleep, eating healthy (including breakfast), limiting caffeine, stretching, avoiding social sites, and just doing "healthy" things makes it easier to respond positively.

A bit of self promotion now. I made an app called Positivelys to help make positive thinking a healthy habit. It's simple, you make a note of positive moments no matter how big of small throughout the day. Then go back and scroll through your own feed of positive moments to give yourself a pick-me-up. I made this for myself and do think it helps. It was also a fun experiment using Rust to make apps.

iOS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positivelys/id1498984121

Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cultivated...

If want to be as frequently correct as possible, then your "negativity" is strength. The issue with this strategy is that it will prevent you from engaging with the real world the way that positively thinking people do. You will take less chances, since you realize the probabilities of failure are so big.

Positively thinking people are kind of delusional. They try to ignore the ugliness of reality and focus on the positive side of things. However they are the risk takers. They might fail a lot but at the end of the day they are the ones that succeed in changing reality for the better.

Both ways of thinking have their advantages and their drawbacks. As far as I can tell, it really depends on the type of person that you are.

You can step back and identify the negatives and the positives of a circumstance or plan, weigh them (quite literally in a table for anything complex, it really helps), and set a course of action based on that. Then you price in the risks of negative consequences, while aiming for potential positive outcomes in the future.

Otherwise, being super negative and not trying to change one's situation sounds like distress, and seeing only the positives to a potential course of action sounds like folly and risky planning.

I also think that this can be trained. There were times when I was really negative about everything, but I developed a habit to notice when I was experiencing this negativity, and try to identify positives too, to balance things out. It did give me a lot more agency.

However there are strategies that both ways of thinking can adopt to improve their experience / performance in the real world.

Optimistic people can try to see "both side of the coins" and not miss underwater rocks.

Pessimistic people can adopt a defensive strategy where they minimize risk to the point that they are willing to take it.

Two side notes: You can be smart about it in both situations. Also in both cases you should take out the emotional toll.

From your link, "Depressive realism is the hypothesis [...] that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals [...] [Critics of depressive realism argue that] depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs."

The critics would say that depressed people have unrealistic world views, which causes depressive symptoms. This matches with my own personal experience (e.g. when I felt convinced I could never be happy for a while after I got dismissed at my job, which was convincing at the time but turned out to be totally wrong).

However, I do think you can be pessimistic without the emotional toll as you say; but that doesn't sound like a depressed person, if this person can still excel at motivation and doing hard things.

My bottom line is: I just don't believe in the depressive realism hypothesis just to focus on the first bit, but I agree with the take on pessimistic realism.

Most things to be negative about are not actionable. Maybe in the old days, you could be stressed out about a tiger in the area or an upcoming war and it'll literally save lives. But today, you can be stressed out about Trump or COVID-19 and it'll probably change nothing. In fact, COVID-19 impact has been worst where people are most panicked about it.

There's also where it becomes grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression. This is not realistic nor useful.

Optimism is a filter. You don't purposely blind yourself; you focus on what you can have a lot of impact on. You can turn the filter on and off (provided it wasn't installed stupidly in the first place).

I decided to study my own mind using mindfulness meditation and self reflection.

What I found was the following:

- If I am focusing on negative things my subconscious mind will feed me negative thoughts and emotions.

- My subconscious mind runs wild but it will often give me what I ask of it if I clearly express what I want in a definitive, firm and polite manner.

- Negativity is a viewpoint and all viewpoints can be changed and challenged even if they are the default.

- Often I am negative to give myself a way out and protect my ego from being damaged.

- What I consider objective truth is a lot of the time just opinion.

- When I am trying to persuade others of something often it is an expression of a desire for control.

- When I find myself using the word "should" it is often the ego expressing its desires.

- If I feel negative it's often the result of some underlying feeling or internal struggle that I haven't addressed.

- I like being around people and most people (who are fun to be around) don't like hanging out with a negative person no matter how smart that person is.

- Ignoring negative feelings doesn't make me a positive person. Acknowledging the negative thoughts/feelings but choosing to focus on positive feelings instead makes me a positive person. Doing this places negative thinking in its proper function I think. As a sort of alarm/warning system of potential negative outcomes that may occur or have occured.

Ultimately if you find yourself being overly negative then just ask yourself why. What is the motivation? Is it context specific? If I just stayed quiet what would happen?

Also whenever you find yourself saying a statement like "that wouldn't work" or "I can't do that" challenge it with questions. Doing this will surely result in surprises.

I learned that I shouldn’t suppress. I analyzed and unentangled the feelings that I had to get out.

I learned to be more generous towards myself and other but at the same time be more critical of ideas. They where too entangled in my mind before therapy.

Now I am much better critiquing and idea while at the same time being warm, kind, encouraging and funny towards myself and others.

Negativeness and anger are perfectly reasonable reactions to the wrongness of this world. It's not all bad, of course. There's plenty of good that we can enjoy. However, we must never forget the bad.

Anger is especially destructive in the short term. Negativity can absolutely drown a relationship in the longer term.

In both cases it seems useful to feel it and then let it go. It’s very real and relevant, I agree. Just not useful once it has been acknowledged.

Find your purpose, make sure it's ambitious, make sure it's equitable and helps people. When you are ambitious about your purpose you will be conscious of how little time you have. When you're overwhelmed with progress it's easier to mitigate negativity, you'll be too focused to chime in on the little stuff, or you will empathize for what used to annoy you, and realize you're ahead of the pack.

When men don't have enough ambition, negativity, hatred, jealousy may take hold because your subconscious self knows you can do so much more. Find your purpose and become laser focused on it, and everything else will fall into place.

“…pick a traumatic/wonderful experience you have had in life and work from there…”

In the end though I suspect a lot of it is just trial and error. Being open to new things and humble enough to learn them.

From observation sometimes the occupation/industry is just the medium. It’s inconsequential or the result of certain personal strengths, preferences or opportunities.

When I was a much more negative person, most people told me I was wrong. As I got older, had more experiences, I became less negative and more empathetic, I try to put myself in other people's shoes, and guess what; most people still say I'm wrong for that. I kid you not. If I try to find the good in something or someone, people act like I'm using some sort of tactic on them by doing so. It's crazy. All the time, if I disagree with someone but I decide to not damn them but that they will change their mind, others will jump in and say that I'm just "pretending to be nice". It's not enough that I think someone is wrong; I have to hate them for it, for some reason.

To handle negativity, you have to stay sane, and to stay sane you basically have to start ignoring how people perceive how you act out your morality. You can be the kindest, gentlest person in the world, and hordes will be ready to make you out to be wicked. If you can stay sane, you won't be too negative, and you won't be too positive.

But I'm also simultaneously a jolly, upbeat, joky person who don't take myself or my rants too seriously. Humans are complex :P

There have been periods of my life when I recognized negativity was taking over to the point there wasn't much positivity or joy at all. During such times it takes pretty deliberate effort to cut out sources of negativity (for me it was hyperconsumption of news and social media - I cut most of it out) and introducing sources of positivity and joy. (for me it was trying to learn to dance at age 30, switching from a cave gym to exercising outdoors in the sun, and spending more time with friends instead of in front of the computer - I think those last two are huge, especially for the hackernews crowd who probably spend more time than others by themselves and indoors in front of a computer)

When I still get frustrated with things at work and elsewhere, a trick I use is to ask myself whether whatever I'm fussing over is that important in my life - overwhelmingly, the answer is no, I won't even remember it five years from now, and I can just acknowledge I disagree with it, it annoys me etc but just move along.

A lyric I love: "it's so so sad to be happy all the time." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vth-n34LK8E)

Overview of Psychological Distancing : https://positivepsychology.com/psychological-distancing/

Self-distancing as a Mechanism for Processing Negative Emotional Experiences by Lena Etzel (Warning: PDF) : https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/a/12...

Self-Distancing as a Strategy to Regulate Affect and Aggressive Behavior in Athletes : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5720...

Just complaining when you feel negative about something isn't the appropriate response though. It's the easy reponse but it's not productive and won't remove negativity in the long term even if it feels good to get a good rant out.

Listen to what negative emotions you have and form actions to remove the negative stimuli.

Yes, but... it might not be the thing you're currently being negative about. If you're finding yourself negative about many things, or often, then it's probably a more persistent circumstance. (Maybe you hate your job, or your apartment, or....)

> Listen to what negative emotions you have and form actions to remove the negative stimuli.

Yes, absolutely. Two more tips for doing this: you don't have to finish (you don't even have to be able to finish); and you can find the smallest step and do that one (maybe just the once, maybe more than once).

IMHO, throughout it all, it's sliiiightly more important to cultivate emotional self-awareness than it is to actually resolve anything. Resolving things is linear growth; cultivating emotional self-awareness is compounding growth. Resolve things as much as you can while maintaining the self-awareness, and over time, I would expect to see substantial changes.

+1 on embrace it.

Reality is boring: the bad parts of whatever are usually there for a reason, be it historical or goalposts that moved over time or lack of information/time/resources in general available at the critical point in time. But going through the gritty details of how the bad came to be is tedious work. You can sound just as smart for pointing out what's wrong and you can sound brilliant by signaling that imperfections make you angry.

It's just a bad habit for thought workers that you can overcome with attention and deliberate practice.

In terms of general negativity... I try to avoid social media (Hacker News is no exception) and instead I make a conscious effort to face-to-face talk to people and try new things. Trying new things especially. I find that I basically get a shot of euphoria whenever I do. Day to day life is like grinding in a video game, and trying something new is proving that I am the master of my life, not some architect.

Just my 2c.

Just don't let your discomfort turn into anger or sadness. Do some research on things that are actual chemical downers and get them out of your life. Heck, having certain color photos on your desk will help some people. Environment is often a big contributor to our mood. I'm not talking some dumb crap fool yourself. I honestly mean find things that contribute to a good mood. I gotta admit being in the badlands for some reason puts me in an amazingly positive mindset for a long time. No idea why.

Chronic negativity comes from somewhere, it has a cause; and then it becomes a habit. It's also a form of self defense, because it makes you less vulnerable.

Consider cutting down on mainstream media and entertainment, everything you consume goes somewhere.

Meditation works, but takes serious effort to get anywhere, because you will have to confront whatever is eating you from the inside.

Turn off all gadgets and sit or lie completely still with your eyes closed while observing the background track in your head for a while. Don't judge or identify, just observe.

Take or leave, and good luck!

There are times when you come across absolute perfection (limit of my cognition) and can't find any faults or negative aspects. I get obsessed by whoever built this thing, and often send them an email how inspiring their creation is.

Striving for perfection is one thing, as long as you realize it's not real.

Sounds like gratitude to me, which is always a good thing.

Have you tried writing a diary? I did that for decades. Yes, it's great to get the stuff out, but do you need other people to see it also?

Maybe try the idea of morning pages from the Artist's Way books - write 3 pages every morning on paper, quickly as you can, just stream of consciousness, don't judge or edit it, don't plan to read it again.

My counter has been to keep a reminder and a google form where I jot down 3 things I am grateful for. Just repeating this over and over made a switch flip: I catch myself noticing positive aspects of what I would otherwise consider 'objectively' negative things.

Bonus: I check this log every now and then and tell people I'm grateful for X or Y they did for me or if consistent enough I tell them I appreciate they are a source of X in my life. It's true, I'm not sweet talking them - I literally wrote down when it happened. This is the best material for birthday messages too - spreads the love.

If you wake up feeling unrested, look tired, struggle with energy or sleepiness during the day, or otherwise feel like something might be 'off', then it might be worth exploring whether or not you have a sleep disorder.

That could take the form of insomnia, OSA, or even something more subtle like UARS.

Not many sleep labs are good at evaluating patients, so I would recommend going to the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center if you want proper diagnostics.

Could it be that these comments/blog posts are a bit of a release valve, helping you maintain healthier relationships in real-life? If so, I say great!

One thing I'd like to mention is that, perhaps you're a person with strong opinions. There's nothing particularly wrong with that. I also have pretty strong opinions, and I enjoy debating people (always with good humour). What you need to be mindful of is being overly rigid, making you unable to compromise with others. Do you find you have "rules" around interacting with people? It could be something like refusing to eat at certain restaurants for political reasons. This rigidity can have a negative impact on your relationships. It can be hard to self-assess these things, so once again it's worth asking family/friends.

I'd also just mention, a lot of these things - negative thinking, catastrophising, or rigidity - stem in part from anxiety. This is best addressed through some form of therapy.

There is no easy shortcut or royal road. You'll have to do the work to develop the required metacognitve skills.

Writing itself is aggressive, and I'd posit that any sample of good comments is going to skew negative in perceived tone - or use implied negativity as a ground to the positive comments figure.

I'd even say the agreeableness that makes for sustainable modern office relationships is not a quality that makes for insightful writing. It can coexist, but it's a different skill, so I don't interpret good comments as negative. Predictable talking points, that's most of what one needs to know about someone, but original writing whether I agree with it or not is usually worth considering.

And if you truly are negative or pessimistic about something, sit with that for a minute and try to figure out why you’re negative. And then work on those areas to make it more likely to succeed.

Why did you comment? What got your attention? Did your comment improve the situation? There's likely a pattern so look for it and decide if its worth keeping. Is it really you being you?

Why were you seeking out this negativity? Is this the best way to live? All the time you spend in negativity is time you are not spending positively. There's a significant opprtunity cost here.

Procrastination also often involves distraction. Negativity tends to come along for the ride as well.

In your case, try to nurture positivity instead of suppressing negativity. Perhaps write a blog post on something you are excited about. Or write more comments of the “Yes, and…” variety.

When a negative thought occurs, ask yourself these two questions:

1> Is the thought useful?

2> How does it behave?

I got this from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM&t=60s

I've found that negativity seems to be a required step in some self expression. Say you have an immediate strong emotional reaction to something you encountered, but to express your emotional reaction you start by phrasing it as a big long negative-sounding complaint or diatribe. Maybe you even have a good point in there, the point you're aiming at comes from a genuine place of wanting to make things better, but it just comes out negative and unhelpful.

Once the expression is articulated and externalized you can take a second editing step, cutting away all the useless bits -- accusations, overgeneralizations, unsympathetic or unconsidered viewpoints, annoyances that resolve outside the scope of the topic, etc. -- to extract out just the core of your idea expressed in a way that is at least neutral. The point is to rewrite it and shorten it until you and your imagined audience can no longer find a reasonable objection to it. That often means a gradual voluntary weakening of your statement or splitting it into separate statements, and maybe even talking yourself out of it completely. You can tell if you're doing it right by holding the original emotion in mind while you restate your neutral, edited version -- if it feels 'satisfied' then you've captured its intent; if it gets annoyed then you missed something and you're not done.

The key is that this whole laborious process doesn't need to happen out in the open right in the face of the person whose behavior you want to change.

Think of the initial negative reaction as the inedible husk that surrounds a delicious fruit, something that's a pain to remove like a coconut. The fruit can't grow without the husk protecting it so don't begrudge the husk its necessity. But you wouldn't want to hand your friend an ugly unpeeled fruit that they've never seen and that they have to really work at to get to the fruit in the center. Heck, if it looks like too much work they may even throw it out without even trying. Instead, peel as much as you can yourself first and only present it to them afterwards.

An initial negative / emotional reaction isn't bad per se, just that it isn't yet stated in a way that is useful to everyone else... so re-express it until it is.

I'm sure it's fair to say I get more downvotes than I give and give way more upvotes than downvotes.

One way I like to think about it is: Will my comment make the project/thread better or worst? If it's negative and could make it worst then it feels easier to just keep it for myself, even if I know I'm right (or other good reasons for negativity)

I went through your recent comments and to me they appear neutral.

I should note that there is an opposite to this: toxic positivity. It's equally irritating when someone refuses to acknowledge the elephants in the room.

The biggest changes in how I have approached my tendency towards negativity are trying to practice acceptance, gratitude, and action.

I had to teach myself that there is so much to be gained by accepting reality, whether it was my preferred reality or not. Travel really helped me with this. When traveling, I find myself limited by missing context and language. And yet, it's so rewarding. Some of my best travel memories come from things that didn't go to plan. I also try to accept other people's perception. If someone thinks something is good, which I think is bad, I try to "steelman" why that may be before writing off their perception.

I'm not sure how I came to feel deeper levels of gratitude. I guess it's just that as I've gotten older, I've internalized a deeper awareness of how well I have it. I can still put myself in the headspace of a younger, more angsty me. If that person could see my life today, he would be dumbstruck. And I've also just learned the hard way that tomorrow is not promised. My luck can turn on a dime, so I need to enjoy what I've got, while I have it.

I've also tried to take more responsibility and initiative for the things I want to see changed. I try to live by a rule that if something is bugging me, I need to reflect on why that is, and decide if I'm going to devote my time and effort towards it. If not, I need to attenuate the level of attention I'm giving it. Action is as much about what I don't do as what I do. For the things that I am going to take on, I try to challenge myself to go the extra mile, whether or not I will be successful. I'm not a doggedly determined person, and so I don't always see the results I want. But every now and then, the payback is extremely worthwhile.

I believe that practicing acceptance, gratitude, and action has changed how I communicate. I still am very adept at pointing out problems. But that's not all I do. I think those other 3 things come out, as well, and I think that makes me a more balanced person to the people who have to communicate with me. I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I try to live with that.

Speaking of which, I try to be aware the extent to which the people around me can handle my unfiltered "realism". Some folks are right there with me. For the others, I try to prioritize how much realism they need to hear from me within an interval of time.

It was really interesting to put my own life through this perspective, because it made me realize I'm decidedly a hippy when it comes to all this. If you ask a nerd to dockerize their homelab, they'll probably write a Medium article titled "5 Things You're Going to Love About Docker!". If you forced me to dockerize my homelab, I'd probably write a long-winded blog post on a website that no longer exists because I unplugged the computer hosting it. Joking aside though, I think that negativity vs positivity is what drives constructive criticism in this field. Again, together these people can accomplish great things: the only way for them to be unsuccessful is by working alone or trying to play both sides when they can't.

Speaking of, the final 'subspecies' he describes is the lumpenprogrammer, a person so smart and technologically transcendent that no normal person could match them. These are your John Carmack's and Dennis Richie's of the world, people who understand both the fundamentals and implementation of technology so well that they can bridge the divide between the hippies and the nerds. Their opinions are more moderate, more tempered, and try to see things from an optimistic and pessimistic perspective.

Now, I'll never be such a programmer. I've made peace with the fact that I'm a hippie, but I still aspire to have a more tempered, glass-half-full viewpoint. In any case though, you should meet the harshest of criticism with the greatest of optimism, because that's the balance that keeps things going.

[0] https://betanews.com/2013/02/15/accidental-empires-part-8-th...

Or find a venue where your negativity is appreciated and make it funny, George Carlin and most comedians have made a living out of complaining. People pay big money to hear their complaints.

If you’re not funny go into activism or politics. It’s constant complaining. Media too.

Product reviews, art / media critics, law. I’d guess half the GDP of the world is based on negativity.

Reframe your negativity as superiority. And don’t give your complaints away for free to ingrates on HN who are getting your complaints for free and not appreciating it.