Dealing with Negative Emotions

Hello Everyone,

I hope you've all had a wonderful two weeks. Today, I have just one idea about dealing with negative emotions.

To outline this idea, let's start with the facts: humans have a cognitive bias toward negative emotions. It's a product of our evolutionary upbringing. In the time before society, whatever people reacted to threats quickly and effectively,

Too often, we focus on what makes us angry, sad, or upset. As a result, sometimes we humans don't see things for what they are, and act impulsively to respond to negative events.

For example, crime and airplane crashes are horrible events, but rates of both have been falling for 20+ years now. Combined, deaths from crime and airplane crashes amount to around 25,000 people a year in the US. But consider this, in the US, approximately 678,000 people die a year from unhealthy diets.

So, it is probably better for the government to worry slightly more about producing better health guidelines for food than to double down on regulating airlines or solving crime (that's not to say that they should stop doing those things of course.)

But what does this mean for us individuals? It just means that we must take our bias into account. Whenever we fear a group, tragic event, or movement, we must think about the silent things that will impact our lives. In addition, we must make sure our reaction to these events is not emotional or illogical. Plus, if it's useful we can use our negative emotions to power a positive part of our lives.

For most of us, sleep, diet, and friends will impact our lives much more than a potential criminal or plane crash. So maybe we need to think about ways to improve the mundane parts of our lives equal to or more than we need to search for the safest aircraft or best gun to defend ourselves from a homeless man on the street.
Instead, maybe we can channel our fears into something more positive - using our fear of loss to create incredible medications, life-saving inventions, or new research to make the world a better place.

In short, we humans are often blinded by negativity. Therefore, we are responsible for keeping ourselves pragmatic in the face of events that may make us react in extreme ways. However, as a result of this imbalance, we gain the opportunity to channel our emotions into something productive which can be a powerful force for good.

Anyway, that's all I've got for this week! Sorry for missing last week's post, I tried to write about this topic but thought it sounded off so I took a break and wrote it today.

Have you have a good week!

-Ethan

P.S. I know I'm also a picky eater, but I'm working on it.