by Heather Martin, VPG Contributor
As child, my mother would often tell me, “you can’t choose your experiences in life; you can only choose how you respond to them.” As an adult, I’m discovering the wisdom in these words.
About a year ago, I left a job that, by the end of my tenure, had become an increasingly negative environment. However, despite the toxicity of the workplace, I made several exceptionally good friends, and we still get together once a month for lunch. We met for lunch at the beginning of May, and the women who still worked there regaled us with negative stories. As I journaled that night, I found myself writing that I was thankful not to be in such a negative environment. But then I realized that sentiment was also a negative takeaway, so I wrote about how grateful I was to still be friends with those ladies a year later. I wrote how thankful I was for their continued companionship, and I found my mood lifting as I wrote.
We all have negative things in our lives, past or present, work or personal, and it’s quite easy to get caught in the trap of negative feelings. While being thankful for something might sound positive, I knew it was not. Focusing on my gratitude for not being in the toxic environment, I found myself dwelling on the bleak feelings I had at the time and remembering negative interactions. Once I reframed my thoughts to being grateful for the relationships I had been able to maintain, my mood changed and my memories too.
Dr. Chris Mosunic, Chief Clinical Officer at Calm, says that when you reframe “your thoughts, you start to focus on the positives rather than getting stuck on the negatives” (Mosunic). I know this to be true because as I reframed my journal entry, I remembered all the good times we had at work together, and I found myself looking forward to more lunches, baby showers, and whatever else the future held for my friends and me. If we don’t focus on the negative experiences in our lives, we will find ourselves more optimistic about the future.
One way Dr. Mosunic said to reframe our thoughts is by changing the negative to a positive. Importantly, he said, “This doesn't mean ignoring the problem but rather viewing it in a more balanced way.” (Mosunic) This is what I did for myself. Remembering some of the people at my former job makes me anxious and unhappy. Even after being out of it for a year, I still can remember the feelings. But replacing those thoughts with the true positives from that experience brings me joy and calms me.
I personally have had experiences in my life, not just in jobs, that were negative. And I could spend a lifetime focusing on those bad feelings, but what kind of life would that be? Now that I’m older, when I reflect on my mother’s saying, usually said to me when I came to her wallowing in my own sadness, I realize how well she was preparing me for life. There will always be bad things that happen in our lives, whether through our choices or completely out of our control. The lesson she taught me on controlling my thoughts is as true now as it was then, so I’m going to choose to respond by reframing or replacing my negative thoughts so that I will look forward to a brighter future rather than back at a (sometimes) dark past.
Mosunic, Dr. Chris. “Reframing Negative Thoughts: How to Challenge Negative Thinking.” Calm Blog, 5 Jan. 2024.
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