I think of it in terms you express. If someone checks my comment history will I seem like a negative, critical, jerk - or thoughtful, positive, and encouraging. If I catch myself thinking that a comment I'm writing will likely paint me more as the former, then I just navigate away without posting.
Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
31–40 of 213 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#32I pondered this exact thing recently. Here are my thoughts re-expressed in a couple different phases which I kept instead of editing out to reveal the kinds of editing steps that I might go through.
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I've found that negativity seems to be a required step in some self expression. Say you have an immediate strong emotional reaction to something you encountered, but to express your emotional reaction you start by phrasing it as a big long negative-sounding complaint or diatribe. Maybe you even have a good point in there, the point you're aiming at comes from a genuine place of wanting to make things better, but it just comes out negative and unhelpful.
Once the expression is articulated and externalized you can take a second editing step, cutting away all the useless bits -- accusations, overgeneralizations, unsympathetic or unconsidered viewpoints, annoyances that resolve outside the scope of the topic, etc. -- to extract out just the core of your idea expressed in a way that is at least neutral. The point is to rewrite it and shorten it until you and your imagined audience can no longer find a reasonable objection to it. That often means a gradual voluntary weakening of your statement or splitting it into separate statements, and maybe even talking yourself out of it completely. You can tell if you're doing it right by holding the original emotion in mind while you restate your neutral, edited version -- if it feels 'satisfied' then you've captured its intent; if it gets annoyed then you missed something and you're not done.
The key is that this whole laborious process doesn't need to happen out in the open right in the face of the person whose behavior you want to change.
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Think of the initial negative reaction as the inedible husk that surrounds a delicious fruit, something that's a pain to remove like a coconut. The fruit can't grow without the husk protecting it so don't begrudge the husk its necessity. But you wouldn't want to hand your friend an ugly unpeeled fruit that they've never seen and that they have to really work at to get to the fruit in the center. Heck, if it looks like too much work they may even throw it out without even trying. Instead, peel as much as you can yourself first and only present it to them afterwards.
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An initial negative / emotional reaction isn't bad per se, just that it isn't yet stated in a way that is useful to everyone else... so re-express it until it is.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#33[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#34I don't. I embrace it. Negativity is your mind telling you something is wrong. Just complaining when you feel negative about something isn't the appropriate response though. It's the easy reponse but it's not productive and won't remove negativity in the long term even if it feels good to get a good rant out. Listen to what negative emotions you have and form actions to remove the negative stimuli.
I think the societal pressure to have to always be outwardly upbeat and optimistic is mentally draining and should be questioned. I could never work retail, for example, where you have to smile and have this sweet saccharine mask on all day. But a lot of every day situations are starting to demand the same performance. I remember when angst, cynicism and mockery were genuinely cool, but those days are long gone. Norms have shifted to the point where you're expected to just keep criticism and negativity to yourself, no matter how you feel. "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything" is the rule now. It's all phony. Performative positivity if you ask me!
+1 on embrace it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#35I have an ai that checks my text for bile. Makes a digital fart noise.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#36A master and his disciple were travelling together. They happened to come to a river with a strong current. As they were preparing to cross, a lone young woman asked if they could help her to the other side.
While the disciple hesitated, the master immediately offered to help.
The disciple was in disbelief as he saw his master break his vows by carrying the woman on his shoulders. He couldn't contain himself and a few hours removed from the incident he began to voice his resentment to condemn what had just transpired.
His master replied, "I set her down by the river. You are the one still carrying her."
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097504, Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life (2020)
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#37Embracing your neuronal nature helps. Your neurons direct your attention to things they think will get them rewarded. Latching onto something negative can give a dopamine kick (for a lot of reasons) but it's almost always because your neurons don't have anything better to get a kick from. Good, important things are missing more generally (a lot of things it could be). If you're engrossed in some satisfying activity/ work/ thought, or you're just kicking ass in life and you know it, your neurons will have a much more bountiful source of dopamine to latch onto so they aren't going to direct your attention to petty shit.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#38The other day I read a Robert Cringely[0] article that put things into a new perspective for me. At one point he describes three different subspecies of "techie types" as he puts it, the hippies, the nerds, and the lumpenprogrammer. The main dichotomy is between the architecture-minded hippies and the code-focused nerds. Apart, he theorizes, they are useless. Together though, they can compliment each other's work perfectly. As he puts it, "hippies tend to do the right thing poorly; nerds tend to do the wrong things well".
It was really interesting to put my own life through this perspective, because it made me realize I'm decidedly a hippy when it comes to all this. If you ask a nerd to dockerize their homelab, they'll probably write a Medium article titled "5 Things You're Going to Love About Docker!". If you forced me to dockerize my homelab, I'd probably write a long-winded blog post on a website that no longer exists because I unplugged the computer hosting it. Joking aside though, I think that negativity vs positivity is what drives constructive criticism in this field. Again, together these people can accomplish great things: the only way for them to be unsuccessful is by working alone or trying to play both sides when they can't.
Speaking of, the final 'subspecies' he describes is the lumpenprogrammer, a person so smart and technologically transcendent that no normal person could match them. These are your John Carmack's and Dennis Richie's of the world, people who understand both the fundamentals and implementation of technology so well that they can bridge the divide between the hippies and the nerds. Their opinions are more moderate, more tempered, and try to see things from an optimistic and pessimistic perspective.
Now, I'll never be such a programmer. I've made peace with the fact that I'm a hippie, but I still aspire to have a more tempered, glass-half-full viewpoint. In any case though, you should meet the harshest of criticism with the greatest of optimism, because that's the balance that keeps things going.
[0] https://betanews.com/2013/02/15/accidental-empires-part-8-th...
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#39Psilocybin.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#40I'm not perfect about this but one experience in particular helped me.
I was a new employee doing on-the-job training for an even newer employee, while we were trying to meet a deadline. We were the only two people working on this project, in the middle of rural NM, out of cell range, and having to improvise. He kept making suggestions and I kept explaining why they wouldn't work. Suddenly he point-blank asked me why I said no to everything. I had a moment of clarity where I realized that I didn't even want him to be right, for no good reason except my ego. I apologized, horrified, and have been forever grateful for the wake-up.
After that I started to notice that pattern elsewhere. The best way I've found to interrupt it is to ask myself "what if they're right" and/or "in what way might this person be right that I may not have considered"?