Here is why negativity is the default setting and how to manually adjust it
“For most negativity is the default setting.
It’s because negativity is easy. It requires no effort.
You manually adjust the default setting with positive self-talk which builds positive self-image.
‘Repeat anything long enough & it will start to become you.’ -Tom Hopkins”
-Ray Zingler on X
Listen to the average person talk long enough and you’ll hear the negativity.
“I’m so fat.”
“I can’t do this.”
“I’ll never be able to do that.”
“He has this and she has that.. must be nice.”
And then if you get into it even deeper, you’ll start to hear negative people speak negatively about other people.
“Can you believe she wore that?”
“Can you believe he posted that? What a loser.”
“Yeah, he sucks!”
It’s negativity on top of negativity, on top of negativity.
According to the National Science Foundation, 80% of the average person’s thoughts are negative.
Guess how many thoughts the average person has per day?
Around 6,000.
This means around 4,800 of your thoughts are negative.
“There is no way I have 6,000 thoughts per day!”
You don’t have 6,000 different thoughts per day. Most of them are repetitive.
So, if most of your thoughts are negative, and you repetitively think these thoughts, guess what happens?
You become negative person.
A sap.
A detractor.
If you’re unaware of the trap that is negativity, you become a full-fledged loser.
The reason most people are negative is because it’s so easy.
Being negative requires no effort at all.
It’s so easy to speak negatively about yourself and degrade others.
It takes confidence and humility to speak positively about yourself and others.
Despite negativity being the default setting, the brain is so powerful that it allows you to manually adjust your default.
Is it possible to rid ALL of your negative thoughts? Probably not.
Can you reduce that 80% to 50% and then maybe even further down to 20%?
Imagine the type of person you’d be if the overwhelming majority of your thoughts were positive?
If you started to look at the glass half full instead of half empty?
It’s life changing.
As a former Negative Ned, I can promise you it’ll shift everything in your life.
But like anything else worthwhile in life, it takes time. It takes self-awareness. It takes discipline.
Which is why most won’t do it.
The cool thing though is that if you do want to improve, you can start right now.
Go say something nice to yourself, and hell, somebody else while you’re at it.
Language matters.
