Team Advisory Committee: Negative Thinkers Can Steal the Show!

Dr. Dennis O'Grady

We all are addicted to negative thoughts when we allow them to run over our best-laid plans and take root in our brains. When you are being a negative person, silently to yourself or vocally to someone else, these close-minded traits are activated, and they run your life show and run away with your communication skills: Believing it's easier to be negative. Yes, it is easier to be negative, but it's more productive to feel alive and able to be surprised and curious about yourself and your valued relationships. Being lazy. It is true that every human can be lazy and do what they've always done…and that isn't any fun. Negative people salute their laziness and do not attempt to change it. Negataker. Negative people talk tons of verbal trash inside their own skulls, while complaining vociferously to everyone with whom they come into contact. The Complain Game is a safe haven…and prison. Psychocritiquer. A negative person is critical of everything and everyone. Negative people don't meet anyone they can't dislike or find fault with. They'll pick the lint off the suit or dress of successful thinkers. Too smart for your own good. Mental horsepower ramps up the negative talk. Unfortunately, negative people are often brainy, which adds enormous horsepower under the hood. Negative thinkers can get in trouble quickly on the relationship highway. Don't care. "I don't care, and no one is going to break my heart!" is the neurotically defensive battle cry of beleaguered contrarians. They play it safe and will eventually feel sorry some day for all the heartbreaks that life has laid in their paths. Why not be amiable, instead, reveling in the wonders that life has provided? Change resisters. When you are punch drunk with negative thinking, you will use the #1 change resistance mechanism: criticizing self and others for a failure to be perfect. That's why I say the Blame Game and Shame Game are totally lame. Un-Stupid. My definition of stupid is "being brave enough to care," and of stupid behavior as "daring to care." Pessimists are too busy picking and analyzing the lint in their belly buttons to learn something new by truly enjoying their ignorance. Oddly, negative people are often saluted for being pragmatists, logical types, fearless predictors of problems, disaster relief specialists, unafraid to break from the crowd mentality, and other crowning glories. Frankly, negative people are over-rated and ought to be told to "zip your lip for five minutes." Are you giving yourself a hard way to go by being negative? Who doesn't, now and then? However, a negative person is filled to overflowing with life regrets. Negative thinkers spend their energy on, "Oh, how I wish I would have done or said...!" Don't be fooled, though. If a negatalker has what they say they lack, they will still be moaning about something else that's lacking. So, are you addicted to negative thinking and ineffective communication patterns that ditch speedy travel on the two-way communicator highway in your relationships? Of course not, not lovable you!