by Charles Barnard
To positively influence mindsets, I was taught that research indicated people would perform best if they heard three positive comments for every negative. A 2013 study mentioned in the Harvard Business Review puts that number at six to one.[1] Regardless, the point is we need to counteract negativity, which cannot be eliminated, with positivity. You can either rely on others giving that to you or you can take control and do it yourself. It matters. It has tremendous impact on your ability to experience the full range of positive emotions on a regular basis. It influences you mindset and your behavior. It has tremendous impact on your mental, physical, emotional or spiritual health.
As I have written previously regarding the cancer my wife developed, I can pin point the significant emotional experience that almost certainly triggered the onset of the cancer. Beyond the trigger, the other impact this event had was increasing the negativity that she was taking on without counter-balancing that negativity. The SEE she experienced took the wind out of her sails and many of the lifestyle components she used to have began to change.
Exercise is crucial for fighting depression or any negative emotion you are experiencing. In particular, getting your heart rate to 60 to 85% of its max produces biochemical changes that will counteract the chemical changes that come from negative emotions and thinking. Donna was an avid runner for years. When this SEE occurred in her life and the “wind was taken out of her sails” she began to feel tired more often and the running at first declined and eventually stopped. She walked. The walking finally stopped. She worked out. The working out stopped. The energy was draining away. Negativity of the world had broken down her defenses and laid siege on her life. Negativity was winning.
The other noticeable change was in what she consumed both in terms of food and entertainment. Donna had always loved salty snack foods and sweets. They were comfort food but enjoyed in moderation. In hindsight, that comfort food became a less healthy solution to the negative emotions she was holding onto. While she did not indulge to excess, it became a symptom of a greater problem as did what she watched.
Donna loved to laugh. She liked watching comedy and sitcoms. After the SEE occurred, sitcoms and comedies began to take a backseat to crime drama, reality television, and news. Laughter took a back seat to the negative drama of reality television, the drama around criminal behavior and the attempt to bring it to justice, and the negativity of the daily news no matter the source. Instead of getting relief from the negativity of the world through her running, laughing, and love of family, Donna and her huge heart and idealism, was being overcome by the negativity of the world.
Donna’s personality was such that as she became more connected to the darkness of the world and tragically had lost connection to many of the counter-balancing forces, she absorbed the negativity of the world and the love she had for family, including her Portland High School “family” wasn’t enough and in fact initiated more negative thinking as she began to experience the feeling of being a failure. In her mind, she was losing the energy and motivation to do what she felt was part of her identity. She couldn’t keep up with doing the household chores she had taken pride in doing, which then became a source of frustration. Doing the acts of kindness for the faculty at PHS begin to be chore instead of the act of love it had always been. She was losing her identity – a serious source of negativity.
The negativity of the world kept coming in waves trigger increasing anger, frustration, and disgust at the politics of the school department, school board, and city council in her beloved Portland. She couldn’t digest what was happening, which is the metaphor for the onset of the colon cancer that eventually took her life. If only I had recognized it all sooner, maybe I could have been more active in helping her escape that negativity with more time away, more laughter, more physical activity together, and even greater insistence on seeing a doctor about her declining energy. If only she and I had done the Time-Line Therapy after the first SEE had occurred, maybe she would have beaten the foe that became cancer. Yes, all this comes from the clarity of hindsight, but I can certainly help others learn to build into their life positives – and lots of them – to counter balance the negativity that dominates this fallen world.
What would the lifestyle components be? In creating these lifestyle components, there are five shifts that must be made first. The first shift is understanding that you need to take responsibility for wherever you are currently at in your life. The second is you need to recognize that you have to clean up your memories. Thirdly, you need to apply habit, emotion, attitude, training (HEAT) to your life. Next, you need to utilize the power of synergy by utilizing your family or friendship groups to accomplish this together. Finally, investing in a coach is highly desirable.
After those shifts have been made, you can create the lifestyle changes necessary and the foundation to those habits would be establishing a morning and evening ritual as well as exercise routine. The rituals would have components all designed to release negativity and connect to positive emotions while also planning in order to avoid the potentiality of overwhelm. Those would be the essential elements to establishing a lifestyle that supports superior mental, physical, emotional or spiritual health so you can live a life filled with love, joy, gratitude, contentment, and peace. In short, you will learn to live out the advice of the apostle Paul, “ Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
[1] Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2013, March 15). The ideal praise-to-criticism ratio.
Harvard Business Review. Retrieved October 16, 2022, from https://hbr.org/
2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism
