Literally just one, and it can ruin your entire day. Even if everything else has been good in your day and other positive things have been said to you that day, just one bad one and it takes it all down.

I’ve suffered from this for years, in both work and my personal life. I pride myself on being good at my job but even when I know I’m doing a good job at most things, just one bad thing and it makes me think I’m bad at my job and failing in some way

When it comes to work maybe it can be put down to imposter syndrome (where you never really believe you’re good or competent enough to be doing the job you are) so you accept the negativity more easily as you’re subconscious goes “see I was right”. But in our personal lives too? Do we really have that little self belief?

I was having a good day the other day, not the best, I’d spent most of it travelling so it wasn’t exactly a very exciting day, but nevertheless I was happy enough and good things had happened in the day. And then I got one message from a friend, which wasn’t even really negative, they just didn’t react in the way I expected them to and seemed a bit dismissive.

I may well even have just misunderstood the tone but it instantly affected my mood and self belief in such a surprisingly strong way. I dwelled on it, I focused on it and forgot everything good that had happened that day.

I was even conscious of it happening and so tried to focus on the positive things of the day instead but even whilst actively trying to change my mind set it was so difficult to pull myself out of the negative affect of just that one comment.

I watched a TED talk a little while ago on why negative things have so much more of a detrimental affect on us than the positive which is the only reason I was conscious of it. But still even with the knowledge that we have to work harder to get over negatives I didn’t do very well at it. I guess I need to practice more.

It may not have worked for me yet but it’s a great talk. You can see it here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7XFLTDQ4JMk