Most people think negativity exists because life has gone wrong somehow.
Because they have suffered.
Been disappointed.
Been betrayed.
Been treated unfairly.
And sometimes this is true.
But it does not fully explain why negativity persists.
Many people experience pain without becoming deeply negative.
Others carry negativity long after the original wound has faded.
Negativity survives because it serves a purpose.
It offers certainty.
If you expect disappointment, disappointment cannot surprise you.
If you expect rejection, rejection cannot expose you.
If you expect failure, failure cannot humiliate you.
Negativity becomes a form of preparation.
A way of getting there first.
A way of softening the impact.
And over time it begins protecting something deeper.
An identity.
The person who was overlooked.
The person who never got what they deserved.
The person who could have been more.
The person whose life did not unfold according to plan.
These identities can become strangely difficult to release.
Because they have become familiar.
People often imagine they are trying to escape their suffering.
But often they are trying to preserve the person they became because of it.
That is why they keep returning to it.
Because letting go of it would mean letting go of themselves.
It would mean abandoning explanations they have carried for years.
It would mean questioning stories that once gave meaning to their pain.
And perhaps most difficult of all:
It would mean grieving the life they thought they were going to have.
Negativity often becomes an argument with reality itself.
An insistence that something should have been different.
That they should have been different.
That life owes them an alternative version of events.
And as long as that argument remains alive, negativity remains useful.
It preserves the possibility that someone is still to blame.
That something is still owed.
That reality made a mistake.
That the story is not yet finished.
Most people spend years arguing with reality.
Collecting evidence.
Rehearsing old stories.
Strengthening conclusions they reached long ago.
Not because the conclusions are necessarily true.
But because they support a version of themselves they are reluctant to abandon.
But there is something else worth noticing.
People often assume negativity is the problem and positivity is the solution.
As though one is a mistake and the other is wisdom.
Reality does not seem particularly concerned with either.
A storm is not negative.
A sunny day is not positive.
Winter is not pessimistic.
Spring is not optimistic.
These are interpretations.
Life itself appears indifferent.
And because of this, the pursuit of positivity can become just as imprisoning as the attachment to negativity.
A person who constantly chases positivity is often doing the same thing as the person who clings to negativity.
Both are trying to escape part of reality.
One avoids darkness.
The other avoids light.
Neither sees clearly.
The goal is not positivity.
The goal is not negativity.
The goal is to stop demanding that reality conform to your emotional preferences.
To see what is there before deciding what it means.
This does not mean negativity appears for no reason.
There are many reasons a person may become negative.
Pain.
Disappointment.
Loss.
Humiliation.
Fear.
A difficult childhood.
A difficult marriage.
A difficult decade.
There are countless experiences that can teach a person to use negativity as a shield.
Countless experiences that can convince them it is necessary.
And perhaps for a time it was.
Perhaps it helped them survive.
Perhaps it helped them endure.
Perhaps it helped them make sense of something that otherwise felt unbearable.
But eventually a different question emerges.
Not why the shield appeared.
Why it remains.
Because there comes a point where the shield is no longer being handed to you.
It is being carried by you.
Many things can lead a person into negativity.
Many things can teach them to rely upon it.
Many things can convince them it is necessary.
But whether it remains is ultimately up to you.
To keep choosing it.
Or to let it go.
I work privately with a small number of people.
The serious may apply by replying to this email.
I choose who I work with carefully.
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison