Being saddened by the death of a loved one or getting angry by injustice, for instance, are entirely normal and healthy reactions. What distinguishes people high and low on dispositional negativity is not whether or not they respond to such distressing situations with negative emotions, but rather the severity and duration of these responses. There are things we can do that would help us curb our mind’s negative habits.
Don’t Fight Negative Emotions
We may have a biological inheritance and a personal history that predispose us to feel negative emotions more frequently and more intensely than we want. Although it is completely understandable that we might at times beat ourselves up for this predisposition, it is essential not to blame ourselves.
Treating ourselves as an adversary is never helpful. In contrast, a large body of research documents the benefits of approaching our minds with acceptance, understanding, and compassion.
Train Your Mind to Support Emotional Regulation
To reduce our susceptibility to negative emotions, we need to work on our emotional regulation skills. This type of work is about changing our mental habits—habits such as what we habitually pay attention to and how we interpret what we see.
To change our attentional and interpretational habits, we first need to learn to become aware of them in the moment and then endeavor to replace them with more constructive responses.
Nourish Your Body
Neglecting our bodies’ needs such as sufficient sleep, a healthy diet, and exercise can significantly undermine our emotional regulation capacity and increase our negative emotions. Optimizing our bodily health to the best of our ability should be a priority for anybody who wants to inhabit a more pleasant emotional climate.
