Massage under the mastoid process of the temporal bone. This will release pressure on your Limbic System in general, improving your emotional connection to the world, and in particular will let your Amygdala to settle reducing your sense of fear, in turn making you a more joyful and open person. Long term you want to find a way to strengthen and balance your Deep Neck Flexors and Deep Neck Extensors, however how to do that effectively is a very open question.
Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#92Negative is normal right now. We're all burnt out, we're all sick of working from home, Covid is fading but its been an extreme time. Plus some people have made loads of money while we watch front line workers basically dying doing their job. Meanwhile the summer heat was just too much and we're watching the planet die. All the while we've been restricted from seeing work colleagues, friends and family. How can you n…
Working from home is the only thing making working tolerable.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#93Massage under the mastoid process of the temporal bone. This will release pressure on your Limbic System in general, improving your emotional connection to the world, and in particular will let your Amygdala to settle reducing your sense of fear, in turn making you a more joyful and open person. Long term you want to find a way to strengthen and balance your Deep Neck Flexors and Deep Neck Extensors, however how to d…
Whoa, just fiddling up there with my thumbs has me feeling different. Are there any resources on self-massage you would recommend? You seem knowledgeable about it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#94I have this tendency, too. I don't necessarily think of myself as negative; I think of myself as a realist, and reality has some hard truths. I find that many other people don't want to talk about the bad things. I wouldn't describe myself as a stoic, but I do relate to the idea of focusing on the negative as a strategy for being able to tolerate my existential dread.
I should note that there is an opposite to this: toxic positivity. It's equally irritating when someone refuses to acknowledge the elephants in the room.
The biggest changes in how I have approached my tendency towards negativity are trying to practice acceptance, gratitude, and action.
I had to teach myself that there is so much to be gained by accepting reality, whether it was my preferred reality or not. Travel really helped me with this. When traveling, I find myself limited by missing context and language. And yet, it's so rewarding. Some of my best travel memories come from things that didn't go to plan. I also try to accept other people's perception. If someone thinks something is good, which I think is bad, I try to "steelman" why that may be before writing off their perception.
I'm not sure how I came to feel deeper levels of gratitude. I guess it's just that as I've gotten older, I've internalized a deeper awareness of how well I have it. I can still put myself in the headspace of a younger, more angsty me. If that person could see my life today, he would be dumbstruck. And I've also just learned the hard way that tomorrow is not promised. My luck can turn on a dime, so I need to enjoy what I've got, while I have it.
I've also tried to take more responsibility and initiative for the things I want to see changed. I try to live by a rule that if something is bugging me, I need to reflect on why that is, and decide if I'm going to devote my time and effort towards it. If not, I need to attenuate the level of attention I'm giving it. Action is as much about what I don't do as what I do. For the things that I am going to take on, I try to challenge myself to go the extra mile, whether or not I will be successful. I'm not a doggedly determined person, and so I don't always see the results I want. But every now and then, the payback is extremely worthwhile.
I believe that practicing acceptance, gratitude, and action has changed how I communicate. I still am very adept at pointing out problems. But that's not all I do. I think those other 3 things come out, as well, and I think that makes me a more balanced person to the people who have to communicate with me. I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I try to live with that.
Speaking of which, I try to be aware the extent to which the people around me can handle my unfiltered "realism". Some folks are right there with me. For the others, I try to prioritize how much realism they need to hear from me within an interval of time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can also stay realistic, while being neither too negative nor too positive. You can step back and identify the negatives and the positives of a circumstance or plan, weigh them (quite literally in a table for anything complex, it really helps), and set a course of action based on that. Then you price in the risks of negative consequences, while aiming for potential positive outcomes in the future. Otherwise, bein…
"Realistic" is not a middle point between "Negative" and "Positive". If you want to have a model of reality that is as close to truth, it would fall significantly closer to "Negative". ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism ) However there are strategies that both ways of thinking can adopt to improve their experience / performance in the real world. Optimistic people can try to see "both side of the coin…
I agree with your side notes, though I would add that depressive realism is a hypothesis in psychology that is challenged by other academics, rather than a settled fact.
From your link, "Depressive realism is the hypothesis [...] that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals [...] [Critics of depressive realism argue that] depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs."
The critics would say that depressed people have unrealistic world views, which causes depressive symptoms. This matches with my own personal experience (e.g. when I felt convinced I could never be happy for a while after I got dismissed at my job, which was convincing at the time but turned out to be totally wrong).
However, I do think you can be pessimistic without the emotional toll as you say; but that doesn't sound like a depressed person, if this person can still excel at motivation and doing hard things.
My bottom line is: I just don't believe in the depressive realism hypothesis just to focus on the first bit, but I agree with the take on pessimistic realism.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#96A few ways:
First, our society now is (IMHO) suffused with despair and its second order effects, such as anger, on an extraordinary level. I stopped reading/watching/listening to that stuff a couple years ago, unless I absolutely had to (99% reduction) and, it was a gradual process, but I not only left it behind but gained perspective on it - what once seemed overwhelming is now just a (dangerous) absurdity. Despite the presumption now that humanity is doomed to corruption and despair, there's generations of more positive stuff to read/view/etc from, you know, about 4-5 years ago - crazy things like optimism, belief in the possibilities, hope, justice, freedom, etc.
Second, just promise yourself no more rants, hyperbole, etc. Promise you will write constructive things. It will take some effort at first but you'll find there is far more to say (and that the rants have no value). Any time you find yourself in rant mode, stop, which leads to ...
Third, find healthy outlets for yourself, activities that, when you are finished, you feel better and healthier than when you started. (Otherwise, it's not much of an outlet, is it? But we all pickup unhealthy ones before we know better.) Exercise is a simple one.
Most importantly, by far: If you don't understand your emotions and have compassion for them, they will own you. If you find yourself with any unrelenting emotion, figure out what you are really feeling negative (or whatever) about - you probably are just redirecting that toward an easy outlet (someone on the Internet) rather than the real target that you don't want to face.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#97Massage under the mastoid process of the temporal bone. This will release pressure on your Limbic System in general, improving your emotional connection to the world, and in particular will let your Amygdala to settle reducing your sense of fear, in turn making you a more joyful and open person. Long term you want to find a way to strengthen and balance your Deep Neck Flexors and Deep Neck Extensors, however how to d…
How do you find the temporal bone? Would you have a reference video so that I could try it out? Temporal bone massage returned some vague results.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#98All decisions are based in love or fear. Find your purpose, make sure it's ambitious, make sure it's equitable and helps people. When you are ambitious about your purpose you will be conscious of how little time you have. When you're overwhelmed with progress it's easier to mitigate negativity, you'll be too focused to chime in on the little stuff, or you will empathize for what used to annoy you, and realize you're…
Any advice on the "find your purpose" part?
I’m not the person you are asking and to be honest I am finding this out myself. One piece of advice I heard recently that piqued my interest is..
“…pick a traumatic/wonderful experience you have had in life and work from there…”
In the end though I suspect a lot of it is just trial and error. Being open to new things and humble enough to learn them.
From observation sometimes the occupation/industry is just the medium. It’s inconsequential or the result of certain personal strengths, preferences or opportunities.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#99Negative is normal right now. We're all burnt out, we're all sick of working from home, Covid is fading but its been an extreme time. Plus some people have made loads of money while we watch front line workers basically dying doing their job. Meanwhile the summer heat was just too much and we're watching the planet die. All the while we've been restricted from seeing work colleagues, friends and family. How can you n…
Working from home is the only thing making working tolerable.
Not if you’re single with little means and motivation to socialize.
Re: Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
#100I'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 have a similar experience. A gf first told me that I was too negative, and then a friend when working on a side project. Both event made me think a lot about it. I’m still working on it but this really makes me think that feedback, as much as I hate receiving it, does improve people.