Over the last several months, I have been fighting against negativity. Living in such a stressful society where even basic things like harmony are not an easy thing to get. Fortunately, I successfully got rid of most unnecessary negativity from my life.
One thing I should point out is that I knew nobody would be able to remove negativity entirely from their life. The point is to get rid of unnecessary negative energy since we still have to face a bunch of it that can’t be avoided such as bad weather or stock prices.
The first thing I did was to stop being a negative person myself. I wrote a long guide to regularize my expression toward others. This strategy works extremely well. For example, I am only allowed to tweet no more than 3 times a day and the content cannot be negative. Instead of complaints, my timeline is filled with cuisines and positive words. Not only have I started to gain likes on my posts, but I also met many new friends.
Like I wrote before, I don’t argue with strangers about politics, which is THE most meaningless thing people can do. Now I don’t argue with anyone about any hot topics. I read news exclusively from legitimate sources such as the Nikkei Shimbun and the Wall Street Journal. Anything else, I would assume is rumor or worthless information.
My next strategy may sound a little controversial. I am trying my best to stay away from negative people. I only tolerate a small amount of people’s negativity. From my point of view, this is a kind of privilege that belongs to people close to me like friends and family. If someone is not from those groups, I will consider shutting him or her out of my private life. Most people who complain either don’t want to be helped or don’t want my help anyway.
People with an offensive attitude are out of question. Recently a lady I had actually met before but was not too familiar with interrupted my conversation between others and slightly offended me. Despite being angry, I didn’t answer her and removed her on my twitter account. In the past I would blame myself first and regard the issue as my fault, but now I realized that other people are not perfect.
