The Mind Has a Penchant for Negativity: A Guest Post by Lybi Ma
If you’ve ever found your mind wandering into negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios, this is the book for you. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Lybi Ma on writing How to Be Less Miserable.
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How to Be Less Miserable: End the Negative Mind Loops and Find Joy
How to Be Less Miserable: End the Negative Mind Loops and Find Joy
By Lybi Ma
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$14.99
$29.99
In How to Be Less Miserable, Lybi Ma, the executive editor of Psychology Today, provides strategies that challenge negative thinking and inspire a more positive mindset.
In How to Be Less Miserable, Lybi Ma, the executive editor of Psychology Today, provides strategies that challenge negative thinking and inspire a more positive mindset.
The Mind Has a Penchant for Negativity
How to break free from the distorted thinking we suffer.
It takes an open mind to manage the uncertainties and negatives we encounter in life. We like predictable and solid ground to stand on, but unsettling things like pandemics and political strife occur, proving that we often don’t know what will happen. There are unknowns of all kinds—job loss, natural disasters, catastrophic illnesses, and many other unprecedented events. Any number of things can render us without food, shelter, or security. No one escapes not knowing, especially now.
The rates of loneliness, depression, and anxiety have risen, pushing people inside their heads. Our negative mental loops cycle on replay. In daily interactions with family, friends, and colleagues, some people seem equipped to manage the negativity bias that the brain wants us to suffer. These people soldier on; meanwhile, others do not fare as well. Why? What does it take to bypass the brain’s tendency for negatives?
I have worked at Psychology Today magazine for more than twenty-five years. The publication, founded in 1967, focuses on behavioral science, and its mission is to bring psychology research and literature to the general public. The researchers and mental health practitioners we work with are in the trenches of new findings and clinical cases. I have learned from them and want to share what I have discovered. My collaboration with them has given me the foundation and knowledge to write this book.
On a personal level, I have also fought with negative loops inside my head and have managed to—mostly—win the war. When I was younger, I used to overgeneralize and draw bleak conclusions about things that happened or were about to happen. I often thought the worst about things and that the worst would be forever. I thought I knew when someone wanted to hate me until I died. I personalized everything and blamed myself for everything, even when it was not my fault. Here are some of the ways I promoted my negativity:
Catastrophizing: “I know the worst will happen to me even though the evidence points to the contrary.”
All-or-Nothing Thinking: “My error, however small, equals abject failure. There is no middle ground; everything is black and white.”
Overgeneralization: “I am an absolute loser.”
Filtering: “I focus on everything negative. I don’t see anything positive.”
Mind Reading: “I know that whatever you are thinking about me is bad and critical.”
Emotional Reasoning: “I feel like I’m a fraud, and therefore I am one. My feelings are reality.”
Many people can relate to these forms of thinking. I learned to disengage with negativity myself, but it took changing the way I thought and knowing that my thoughts are not reality. In this book, I’d like to show others how to master negativity through evidence-based research.
Lybi Ma is the executive editor of Psychology Today and the author of How to Be Less Miserable.