By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo
I got these psychological facts from a video in You Tube by Brainy Dose entitled “15 Psychological Facts That Will Blow Your Mind”. I just listed down two out of the fifteen they have presented, which I found interesting, because I could relate it to a spiritual or philosophical point of view.
It Takes Five Positive Things to Outweigh a Single Negative Thing
The video says we must have heard of the advice to end our day grateful by thinking of the positive things that happened to us during the day. But one negative event could simply overshadow at least five positive things that happened to us that instead of focusing on the positives of that day, we end up pissed off because of that one negative event. Psychologists call this phenomenon as negative bias. We tend to focus on the negative rather than the positive things in life. My take on this is that negative things seldom happen. We usually go through most of our days uneventful or as the famous saying goes “just another day in the office”, or life is usually just pretty much a repetition of the day before. When we encounter a negative event, such as getting into an argument with a colleague at work or an argument with our spouse at home, of course it could ruin our day because it rarely happens. Aside from that a spiritual writer once said, “Sadness hurts us more, than the feeling of joy lifts us up.” Meaning the feeling of sadness is always a stronger feeling than the feeling of happiness when we are in good spirits. That is why some people have traumas they could not shake off.
My advice is to offer up these hurts or negative feelings to God. This is doing penance for our sins, much like what our Lord Jesus Christ did on the cross in our behalf. We would then have turned evil into good, put some meaning and purpose into our suffering and grow in holiness. I believe our hurts would then ease off gradually.
We Would Rather Know Something Bad is Coming Than Not Know What to Expect
The video says, “Have you felt a drop in your stomach when someone tells you, ‘We need to talk’?” Our natural mental reaction would be, “I must have done something very bad” and speculate a thousand things what it could be. The video continues that if it were a romantic partner who says to you that dreaded line “We need to talk” in a text, many of us would rather prefer that they break up right there and then rather than make us wait and be anxious. Or if it were your boss at work, he or she might as well fire you on the spot rather than be on your nerves the whole day wondering what you have done wrong. Philosophy would tell us that this is precisely the definition of fear which is being afraid of the uncertain. We fear something or someone when we lack knowledge of it or we don’t know what to expect. We fear ghosts for example because they are spirits without bodies and we fear a dead corpse as well because it is a body without spirit. We are used to humans who have both body and soul intact and are alive and kicking.
When somebody would tell us, “We need to talk” we can minimize our fear or anxiety by always trying to be honest with our actions. If we have a clear conscience knowing that we have done things in good faith then we need not be too stressed if someone will point out to us our mistakes. There are many blind corners in our actions and we simply can’t see them all, and that’s why we need others to point them out for us. We should be thankful rather than be resentful for these people because they have just told us where we can grow more. We have to be open to being corrected because it is part of our being human of having defects and imperfections no matter how good or holy we might think we are. That’s what we call “feedback” and it is important for growth in business as well as for individual persons.
