Picture this scenario with me:

You were once young and hopeful, full of aspiring dreams and ambitions. Life was too bright, even your fancy Rayban’s couldn’t block out all the sunshine and you danced in springy fields inhaling the aroma of the flowers of hope and positive life promises. Then suddenly, before you even know how it all began, the sun is no longer shining, the flowers of your hope are dead and the sky of your future is cloudy and gloomy. How did I get to this foreign land? You start to wander aimlessly, but the more you wander, the more you get lost and BAM!!, you are in this vicious loop of gloom and darkness and can’t get out. Sounds familiar? That is negativity land, the land where all positive outlooks are tarnished by the death-breath of negativity. How did you get there? The buildup of negative emotions created a hidden bridge that discreetly guided your steps, without you even noticing, into this horrible land and before you know it, you are stuck.

---

Some Context:

YOU are your greatest ally or your greatest enemy. It all boils down to how you perceive and treat yourself, specifically, whether you view your life and yourself with a positive or negative outlook. Having a negative outlook on life is usually the result of unconsciously harboring loads of swirling and poisonous negative emotions. The negative emotions, which are subconsciously created as a cumulative reflection of your thoughts in response to life stimuli, can be a great obstacle to your success. Therefore, you must be able to detect the presence of negative emotions clouding your consciousness and diffuse them. The buildup of negative emotions can lead you to be dissatisfied with your life and yourself which is a downward spiral from there. This invites further negative emotions to creep into your brain like poisonous fumes that turn all your thoughts and your consequent perception of yourself and life around you into a negative and depressed outlook. If that sounds familiar, this article is for you.

Digging Deep:

When we become negative people, the transition is often slow and goes by unnoticed. It is usually due to several unconscious factors or common thought processes that we unknowingly do. Therefore, this article will raise awareness of common thoughts and subconscious actions that can lead you to become negative, without you even realizing it. There are 6 roots of negative emotions that you can detect and consequently avoid:

1) Repeating Negative Affirmations

You are what you repeatedly do, likewise, you believe, what you repeatedly think. Just like the power of positive affirmations, negative affirmations have just as powerful an effect but on the negative spectrum. Filling yourself with negative affirmations lowers your self-esteem and your confidence in your abilities. This will lead to lowering your general satisfaction about yourself and your life as you will start to underperform due to not being confident which will further enforce your negative affirmation. You see the vicious cycle? Listen out to your thoughts, have a little bit of introspection, any time you catch a negative affirmation flying by, shush your inner critic and tell yourself that you are probably exaggerating.

2) Comparing Yourself To Others

People often compare their backstage with other’s spotlight which is an unfair and biased comparison because behind those perfect lives, there are dark aspects that you don’t get to see, a backstage that could even be much worse than yours. Don’t be fooled by what you see on social media. People often use filters, 87 shots and tons of lightening to perfect the look. People can simply choose what to show you and omit what they are insecure about. Don’t fall for that and don’t compare yourself to others. There are tons of people who pretend they have the perfect life while in most cases that could be false and they are doing it to fill some void, however, they filled a void and you created one for yourself based on their LIE. Maybe it is not a lie, maybe it is true, in which case, good for them. Look for what you could be grateful about, there must be at least a thing or two, whatever that little thing is that you don’t want to count, someone probably lacks it and would envy you for it. Practice gratitude and feel grateful about your life and yourself and positive energy will follow. Envy breeds negativity and evilness. Gratitude breeds true satisfaction, content and happiness.

3) Underestimating Your Abilities

Your thoughts have a huge impact on the outcome of your actions.

If you believe you are going to fail, you will. Not because you are a total failure, but because that’s what you believe in. Undermining your abilities and skills will not allow you to utilize the full potential of yourself and those skills because the limiting beliefs in your brain will constrict you from reaching greater heights that you could potentially soar to. In other words, the limit is where you think it is. Believe in yourself and your abilities and you will achieve far more things in life.

4) Surrounding Yourself With Negative People

The people around you have a huge impact on your overall emotional state and the average circulating thoughts you have. Surrounding yourself with negative people will make you view the world and consequently your life as a negative place. On the contrary, being surrounded by positive, productive and/or intelligent people will make you one yourself.

5) Looking For Other People's Approval

Looking for other people’s approval is a sign of low self-esteem and low self-esteem goes hand in hand with negative emotions.

If you find yourself constantly looking for approval from others, stop to ask yourself “why MY approval of myself and my capabilities isn’t enough?” and whatever the answer is, work on it to change it. Do I really need others to tell me about the one person I spend time with the most, myself? If the answer is yes, then you have to ask yourself why, “Why don’t I trust myself?”

6) Saying Yes, When You Want To Say No (Taking up more than you can handle)

Taking over more than you can handle is not good, neither for yourself nor for the one you are doing the favor to. The reason is that when you internally feel like saying no but instead you say yes, you would always be in an internal conflict. This internal conflict, even if it is minor, builds up with time and repetition of this action. Once built up to a sufficient amount, you start to feel unexplained anger and discomfort or irritation towards that person and even towards yourself. Because you are unaware of the reason, you become slightly unaware of your negative responses towards that person. Those responses are a natural reflex meant to release your subconscious anger/irritation that is mostly due to feeling overloaded or giving more than what you receive. Being a giver is great but it shouldn’t be on the behalf of your emotional health as this built up anger can lead to friction with that person and can even cancel off the positive effects of doing them favors which worsens the situations even more.

Those are 6 critical roots that breed unconscious negative emotions, did you find yourself doing/thinking one or more of the above things? If yes, then it is action time and time for a change. If you don’t do any of those things then congratulations, you are a rare breed! Keep up the good work and extend a helping hand to your brothers and sisters in the dark zone.

Let me know in the comments if you are a rare breed or stuck in negativity land? If you are a rare breed, do you have any special tips that you follow to remain pure and positive?

---

Hope you have found this week's log to be though stimulating. If so be kind enough to leave an upvote and as always lets start a conversation.

Check My first Thought Log here: https://steemit.com/life/@mahmoud-shafik/thought-log-1-when-emotional-resolution-isn-t-the-solution-a-call-for-reflection

You can find my Black and White Photography Challenge here: https://steemit.com/sevendaybnwchallenge/@mahmoud-shafik/seven-days-black-and-white-photography-challenge-day-7-the-haze