How Does Internal Negativity Start?

There are many rea­sons that can cause inter­nal neg­a­tiv­ity, but they are share a gen­eral theme. Basi­cally, inter­nal neg­a­tively stems from the way we react to any given sit­u­a­tion, here are few exam­ples to fur­ther explain it.

Fear of Mak­ing a Mis­take

The way you react to mak­ing a mis­take can either strength your belief in your problem-solving skills or increase your neg­a­tive views about your­selves. The dif­fer­ence comes from how you react to those mistakes.

Let’s say, if you make a mis­take, do you admit to it or do you run from it? Do you view it as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence or a rea­son to feel worth­less? Do you see it as a part of every­day life or an inevitable hap­pen­ing based on your lack of skills?

Most of the time, how you han­dle mis­takes is based on your past expe­ri­ences. Did the peo­ple with the most influ­ence in your life sup­port you through your mis­takes and see them as a nec­es­sary part of the learn­ing process? Or, did they berate you and see the mis­takes as an exam­ple of your lack of ability?

If your prior expe­ri­ence with mis­takes resulted in shame, then you will nat­u­rally har­bor a fear of mak­ing mis­takes. While you may use this fear as a way to pro­tect your­self, but it is actu­ally a really form of neg­a­tive self-talk that keep you from advance­ment and achieve­ment. Think about that for a minute. If you are afraid to make a mis­take, you will never try any­thing new, and you will keep your­self from dis­cov­er­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties and act­ing on great new ideas.

Fear of Rejection

Almost every­one, to some degree, har­bors a need to feel be accepted. This is a nat­ural feel­ing because when you feel accepted, you feel val­ued. How­ever, this need for accep­tance can become a source of neg­a­tive inter­nal belief when you feel this need so greatly that you fear of doing any­thing that may jeop­ar­dize your accep­tance. If you reacted badly to a rejec­tion in the past, this feel­ing can made things worse.

For exam­ple, a fear of rejec­tion can force you to make bad deci­sions, espe­cially in busi­ness. If you are afraid to lose the accep­tance of a part­ner, client or cus­tomer, you may be too will­ing to go along with a bad idea. Instead of risk­ing their rejec­tion and stir­ring up neg­a­tive feel­ings from the past, you will be more apt to stay quiet even though you see the error of their approach or plan.

Fear of Not being Good Enough

This source of neg­a­tive think­ing usu­ally stems from your own mis­con­cep­tions of how “good” oth­ers expect you to be. This mis­con­cep­tion usu­ally starts with a well-meaning par­ent or teacher who pushed you too hard when you were young, in many cases, they were only try to moti­vate you to let you do your best. And some­time you may have been doing your best but came away from the expe­ri­ence feel­ing “not good enough”, if you believe that oth­ers expect you to be the per­fect one at all times, then even the most sub­tle fail­ure could result in feel­ings of worth­less­ness, depres­sion and anxiety.

By har­bor­ing this mis­con­cep­tion, you force your­self to per­form in a con­stant state of over-achievement. The desire to over-achieve can be great at times, how­ever, due to per­fec­tion takes time, it can also take away from your success.

If you find your­self spend­ing too much time on each and every deci­sion or project, you could be rob­bing your­self of the chance to under­take or dis­cover big­ger and bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties. Since there no one can be per­fect all the time, thus per­fec­tion­ists are inad­ver­tently set­ting them­selves up for a fall. If you con­stantly hold your­self to this level of per­for­mance, you will even­tu­ally be dis­ap­pointed. And, unfor­tu­nately, this dis­ap­point­ment can lead to an increase in neg­a­tive thinking.

Fear of Not Being Able to Change

A few lucky peo­ple do real­ize the rea­sons behind their neg­a­tive think­ing. How­ever, many of them failed to rec­og­nize that these rea­sons can be changed.

* “I have never been any good at this kind of thing.“
* “That’s just the way I am.“
* “I can’t help how I think or feel.”

Do any of these above state­ments sound famil­iar? These self-limiting state­ments stem from a fear of being unable to change. Its afford peo­ple an excuse for their behav­ior. After all, if it can’t be helped, then it can’t be your fault.

These state­ments can really limit you from achiev­ing your true poten­tial. If you believe the state­ments when you think about them, you will find you own reac­tions to them are almost always self-fulfilling. With these neg­a­tive thoughts run­ning through your mind, you are unable to accom­plish the goals that you have been set up for your­self even if you really want to.

Beside above these inter­nal sources of neg­a­tive think­ing, exter­nal sources are also play an impor­tant role towards to that, these sources can be eas­ier to rec­og­nize but a lit­tle harder to control.

Exter­nal sources of neg­a­tive think­ing always come from out­side your­selves but their true harm comes from the way you react to these sources. Think about this for a minute. You can­not con­trol the things that hap­pen to you, or the peo­ple that you come in con­tact with, but you can con­trol how you react to each of these events.

For exam­ple, if you are con­tem­plat­ing intro­duc­ing a new prod­uct to your inter­net busi­ness but every­one you share the idea with has neg­a­tive things to say, your reac­tion, you thoughts may start to change, you may with­draw your orig­i­nal idea.

Or, if you are about to under­take a new exer­cise pro­gram, but your spouse com­ments that you will never stick with it, your sub­con­scious may believe him or her and your reac­tion to it just lose your motivation.

The exam­ples show how a person’s com­ments can induce neg­a­tive think­ing, events can also have the same effect. For instance, you orga­nized an event to intro­duce a new prod­uct but turns out it didn’t sell well, the results may cause you think neg­a­tively towards your­self and your busi­ness abilities.

Or, if you started an exer­cise pro­gram but didn’t see the results that you wanted, your reac­tion might be to fall into a trap of think­ing it was your fault. Your inse­cu­ri­ties could cause you to think things like, “I knew I couldn’t do it” or “Noth­ing I ever do turns out right.”

Things that are even far­ther beyond your con­trol can also be a source of neg­a­tive thinking.

For exam­ple, if you were laid off from your job due to down­siz­ing, neg­a­tive thoughts can begin from that event. Although the actual lay-off had noth­ing to do with you or your abil­i­ties per­son­ally, the event can still lead you to think neg­a­tive things about your­self. One sce­nario would be to decide that you were cursed with bad luck. If you were to con­tinue believ­ing this, then you may shy away from new oppor­tu­ni­ties or auto­mat­i­cally talk your­self into fail­ing at your next job.

As you can see, each of these sources or inse­cu­ri­ties can even­tu­ally lead to neg­a­tive think­ing. The key is to learn to rec­og­nize these inse­cu­ri­ties and stop them before they can stop you.