Negative Energy Is A Symptom Of Unhappiness
Kristyn Meyer is on a journey to make herself the best human that she can be. These posts are a reflection of that. She welcomes your support via reading and through commissioned affiliate links within her posts! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. To stay up to date on all of her shenanigans, please subscribe to her email list! (psst…there’s a free gift involved)
Recently, I had a moment of anger.
The anger that I experienced was brought on by the acts that I was seeing on social media. Anticipating the upcoming New Years posts, people were sharing meme’s stating things like: “Get ready for the 2019 year in review posts!” This was typically followed with emoji’s that clearly relayed their annoyance over seeing that type of post.
I, personally, was annoyed over seeing their negative energy about other people’s positivity.
Thoughts were flying all over the place in my head:
“Why do they care so much?”
“Is being supportive not an option?”
“Why don’t they just keep scrolling?”
Mostly, I was angry that they couldn’t understand the work that went on behind people accomplishing these goals. It came on stronger after I read this article from Working Mother. The article is about a mom that posted everything that actually happened behind the scenes to accomplish what she had for the past decade. But in her writing it wasn’t just as simple as “had a baby”. In actuality, it was: try for baby, have tests, have surgery, get pregnant, have baby. Much more than what the simple sentence in those kind of summary posts typically implies.
All in all, it goes back to people seeing what they want to see. They see the highlight reel and accept it for face value, when that should not be done. One should instead be realistic about what comes across their news feed. A person knows that a baby doesn’t just appear out of thin air. We wish, but it’s just not the case. Bringing a human life into the world takes a ton of work and effort, and it’s something that people are proud of all their life.
So why can’t we just celebrate that with them, no matter how many times they talk about it?
After coming to this thought, I stewed about it for quite awhile. I even made a Facebook live video about it to share my irritation with others.
And then something forced me to think about the opposing side.
Why are they like that? What is the reason for their negativity? For the negative energy towards others?
Then it happened. It was then that I had a flashback to myself, not that long ago.
I was that person.
Not even just in things that I posted, but in my everyday actions as well. Negative Nancy was my legit nickname.
But why was I that way?
I pushed myself to think about it further. What made me that person? Was I truly that opinionated about things? Was everything around me really that level of negative?
No, it was not.
What it was is that I was unhappy.
In summary, my own happiness level was causing me to react in a negative way.
Even if I wouldn’t ever admit it, I was jealous of a lot of things that I saw.
Pictures of a great vacation? I want that.
Purchase of a new, beautiful home? That too.
Semblance of a calm, happy life? That’s what I wanted most.
I couldn’t see then that my lack of happiness was causing me to be negative about the success of others. All that I saw in that moment was that they were bragging about what they had. Even if they weren’t, I just saw them as flaunting things that others didn’t have.
I couldn’t see it as what it was. They were celebrating their accomplishments. Their hard-earned accomplishments at that.
Maybe it’s the fact that I was able to work myself out of the place that I was in before that I am able to see things differently now.
Perhaps it’s that I grew tired of the negative mindset that I had and changed it.
I can’t really nail down exactly what happened or even when. But what I do know is that misery loves company. And when I was miserable, I was searching for anyone out there that could keep me company. My searching missions included making negative comments in group settings to see who sided with me. It also included putting attention-grabbing statuses on social media to see if anyone was in agreement with my thoughts.
And even if they were, and they supported my sentiments, it didn’t really help in the end.
Because in the end, I was still the same person. The same person in the same situation.
So just as I went on about seeing the effort that is done behind accomplishing goals and being happy for people, maybe we need to do something else too. Maybe we need to look at the people who aren’t happy for the goal accomplishers. Perhaps they have a lot of things going on behind their statements as well. And if they do, maybe encouragement from others will help them through it, just as the same type of encouragement helps others achieve their goals.
All’s well that ends well. Let’s be there for everyone.
