See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

hear no evil see no evil speak no evil

If you read the papers or watch TV, chances are that you are putting negative thoughts into your brain on a daily basis. Somehow people prefer hearing bad news over good news, and the media knows this. Front page news is usually negative, because it would be hard to sell the news otherwise. Some have tried to reverse this trend, the Good News Blog being a good example. Still, most of the sensory data you are bombarded with on a daily basis is likely to be negative.

photo credit: allyaubry

Some time back, I decided to eliminate as many negative influences in my life as I could. This was because I accepted that my brain was like everyone else’s, very susceptible to what I put into it. Because I am not capable of remaining positive and happy when I am constantly bombarded with negativity, there were only two courses of action: increase the positive input, and decrease the negative.

I read somewhere that it takes five positive thoughts to neutralise one negative one. Other people use a drop of red ink in a pail of water as an analogy – it takes a lot of water, much more than five drops to one, to dilute the red ink so that it is no longer visible.It’s not easy to inject that much positivity into our lives. An easier way is to simply reduce the negative.

Reduce the negativity you allow into your life

1. Skim through the bad news

Some very intelligent people I know of stop reading the newspapers altogether, to avoid the constant stream of bad news it seemed to bring. Since I like reading the papers to feel in touch with what’s happening in the world, the compromise was to skim the headlines of bad news instead of reading the whole article, and pay more attention to thought-provoking commentaries and even intelligent cartoons.

2. Avoid violent movies

Part of the reason I stay away from violent movies and TV shows is because I’m not a brave person and get queasy at the sight of blood, even artificial Hollywood blood. The other part of the reason is that I cannot find any good reason to feed my brain with images of violence if I want to lead a happy and fulfilling life. The research is not conclusive but many believe that the rise in violence among youth is because they grew up on a diet of violent TV shows.

3. Dissociate from negative people

Here I am referring to chronic complainers and crustified cynics who have nothing good to say about anybody or anything. These are to be differentiated from those who are merely going through a bad patch in their lives. If the negative person is a spouse or other family member, then this gets tricky. Obviously I don’t mean to cut them out of your life, but sometimes you would be wise to say that you have had enough negativity for a day and want to take a walk by yourself. You can dissociate at least temporarily.

How much negativity is enough?

Complete sanitisation of your environment and your thoughts is neither possible nor desirable. Crime does happen, and it is good to be aware of such crimes so that we can protect ourselves and pre-empt the same thing from happening to us. Clearly then, we cannot hope to live in a bubble with zero negativity.

Perhaps a good guiding principle is to ask ourselves what the purpose of any negative thought is. If there is an educational or spiritual purpose, then it may do us good. Financial debt has two kinds – good debt and bad debt. Good debt increases your asset value, while bad debt reduces it.

In the same way, we can differentiate between good negativity and bad negativity. Good negativity has the ultimate result of making us better people, while bad negativity serves no useful purpose. It is bad negativity that we should eliminate from our lives.



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Posted by Daphne | November 18, 2008 | in Think Deeply


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2 Responses to “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”

  1. Middle Way
    November 18th, 2008 @ 9:29 pm

    Great post Daphne!

    An awesome reminder that each of us has to do our own due diligence with respect to how much negativity we will healthfully allow into our lives.

    For those who have young ones, it is our responsibility to protect them.

  2. Daphne
    November 18th, 2008 @ 10:56 pm

    Hi Middle Way,

    Thanks, and yes you’re right, it’s about discerning what is a ‘healthful’ amount. I like that term. I also like your reminder to look out for the children in our lives – we should shower them with as much praise and love as we can to increase the positive input in their lives since we cannot eliminate the negatives entirely.

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