E11: Overcoming A Negative Mindset, Why Venting is Harmful

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer Cudmore (00:57)
Today I wanted to address the topic of a negative mindset because this was something that I really struggled with and I think a lot of people have challenge in this area. So my question to start us off is this, our worldview, our outlook on life is shaped by our experiences but

also our attitude. So would you say that you have a negative mindset or would you say that you typically have a positive mindset? Does your time, your energy, your attention, does it tend to drift towards what’s wrong in your world or your life or your day or your situation? Or do you tend to focus on what’s good, all the good things that are going on?

we have previously mentioned that the quality of our thoughts and emotions affect the quality of our life, right?

So we can choose what we focus on. We can choose the negative side of things or the positive side of things, right? The glass half empty or the glass half full. So as we get started, I wanted to just point out that there are several Bible verses that talk about leaning towards a positive mindset versus focusing on what’s negative in our lives.

So the first one being Proverbs 18, 21, it says, death and life are in the power of the tongue. So what we speak over ourselves or over our situation or even just general conversation is going to bring life into that situation, into that conversation, or it’s gonna bring death into that conversation or the situation. So what does that mean? It means we can have

an outlook of the things that give life, that are life-giving, that are uplifting and encouraging, or we can have an outlook on all the things that are sort of dark and wrong and bad. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about pretending everything’s fine and that life is hunky-dory. That’s not realistic and that’s foolish to do that. But…

You know, it says in the book of James, out of the mouth can come blessing or cursing and that’s not the way it should be. So what is the challenge today? It’s what’s coming out of our mouth? What are our thoughts and emotions focused on? The negative or the positive? I remember growing up, I heard this phrase a lot from my parents and I loved this concept. said, or they used to tell us that,

you paint your world with your words. And I don’t know where they learn this, but it was just a fascinating topic that you can create an environment around you. You are pouring into the atmosphere. So are you pouring in life or are you pouring in death? And we do that by negativity or positivity. So are we…

contributing to a happy, healthy, vibrant atmosphere or are we contributing to the opposite of that? In Philippians 4, the Bible talks about how we need to think about things that are pure, lovely, honorable, admirable.

That’s where our focus should be. And those are positive things. Those are good things. Those things bring joy and happiness and goodness into our lives, right? But negativity pulls us away from that. And so the Bible is pretty clear in several different places that we need to be careful what we’re focusing on. We’re told what to focus on, and it’s not negativity.

Nowhere in the Bible has God ever said, you know what would be really good? I think everybody should just take a minute to stop and complain. I want to make sure that every day you’re focusing on venting and criticizing and, and, you know, complaining, of course not. That’s nowhere in the scripture and nor does he ever say that to us here in our daily lives. But sometimes that can be a default. can be a habit that we accidentally create and we need to be careful of it. We need to be aware of it because that

doesn’t produce good fruit in our life, that doesn’t make our lives happier, more successful, better in any way, that actually drags us down. So why does it matter if we’re positive or negative? I wanna go into a few things that I have noticed. So number one, being negative sucks the life out of everything. It sucks the life out of you, the person that you’re talking to, the situation itself, that’s death.

And it’s draining it subtracts from your life. It doesn’t add anything to your life it there like I said, there’s no good fruit There’s nothing healthy. There’s nothing happy that comes out of it. Everybody leaves the conversation Feeling worse than when they came in it drags them down. It drains us so Negativity there’s nothing good that comes out of it. So there’s no point and the truth is that we

magnify what we’re focusing on. So are we focusing on what the scripture tells us, those things that are good, lovely, admirable, or are we focusing on the bad in our life, the things that we don’t like, the negativity, the everything that goes wrong, because whatever gets our attention, whatever gets our time and our energy, that grows bigger. So what are we feeding? I’ve had a couple times where,

God has directly spoken to me and said, you’re being negative. You need to stop feeding the beast, you know, that beast of negativity. And I have to pause and catch myself and say, yeah, okay. I need to look at this through a lens of faith and dependence on the Lord instead of everything that’s going wrong.

When and the other piece of that being the more we focus on what’s going wrong and all the negative Then we have a really hard time seeing anything good It’s like we can’t even notice it or recognize it and so the more we fixate on it the less we can experience any goodness in our lives, so I liken it to being a little dark rain cloud and I’ve

sort of use this in an endearing way over certain people in my life of, okay, let’s not play the Eeyore role today, right? Let’s not just do the self pity thing, but let’s, you know, bring smiles to people. be encouraging and uplifting versus grouchy and angry and depressed. I mean, nobody wants to be around us when we’re like that.

And honestly, there are times when we’re going to walk into a room and we’re acting that way and people are going to scatter. And we did that, right? We created that. We are making them not want to be around us by constantly carrying that negative attitude. So how would you rather feel? Would you rather feel happy and uplifted and encouraged? And again, I’m not talking about fakeness. I’m talking about a real attitude change. So would you rather feel

low and down and dark and grouchy and angry or like which direction gives you a better quality of life? Obviously the more positive side. So what are you creating around you? What are you contributing to the environment to make your life better or pull you backwards and hold yourself down? I’ve also heard this phrase from people that will say, well, positivity is

is kind of a bunch of bunk, know, they’ll say, I’m a realist. And so these are real true facts of life or of the situation. And honestly, my perspective of that is that you’re just a pessimist using a fancy title that makes you sound a little bit better than and justify your position. I don’t like the term realist. That’s just my personal opinion, because I think when you look at life through a lens of faith, there’s always hope.

and there’s always goodness because that’s what the scripture tells us. So you can be very real about a situation and you can be very real about a negative, dark, not so great situation and still approach it from a healthy perspective, from a positive outlook. And it will make the situation just a little bit easier to deal with. So let me move on into a more specific

topic of negativity. had mentioned the other day when I was doing the episode on gratitude, I had mentioned that I believe that venting is wrong and it’s actually harmful. And so I had promised I would bring this back up. And so I wanted to go over that today. So my observations really are this venting is harmful for us and not just harmful for us, but for other people listening and you know, the situation it brings about no good.

So number one, I say that it’s harmful because honestly, it’s keeping our focus on ourselves. It’s keeping our mind on ourselves. It’s actually, venting is all about me, what I wanted, what I thought should have happened, how I was treated, and that’s a dangerous place to be. The Bible tells us to die to self, to put others first and to, I was just talking to someone the other day about serving when we are,

you know, especially like servant leadership, how the goal is to uplift other people and promote other people ahead of yourself. And so when we’re venting, our focus of the conversation is all about me, what I deserve, what I didn’t get and all of that. And so that’s not a great place to live, right? The next thing would be that a lot of times when we’re venting, we come across with the attitude that

We have a right. We deserve to be able to vent and complain about the situation because of the wrongs that happened and how justice wasn’t served. And yes, I could say technically everyone has a right to behave in certain ways, but honestly, how is this helping you? How is this serving you? How does this bring any goodness into your life or the listener’s life at all?

nothing good comes out of it. It doesn’t help the situation. It doesn’t make anybody feel any better. And honestly, to demand your rights or claim your rights is actually a prideful attitude. I remember one time I was, I don’t remember the situation, but somebody must have done something that upset me and I was praying about it and…

I was feeling some conviction like the Lord wanted me to stop talking about it. And I said, but God, I have a right to complain. I wasn’t treated well. And God said, do you really, do you really have a right to complain? And that was very convicting for me. Cause I thought, you know what, all I’m doing is just trying to enforce my opinion and defend myself and even to God who saw the whole thing and he knew what was happening. So I didn’t even need to.

to bring it up to him other than maybe just help processing what happened. having a right to vent or complain really, it just adds to the negativity. Nothing good comes out of that attitude. A part of that too is I’ve heard people say, well, I always feel better after I vent. I just had to get it off my chest. And I just want to say to them, but do you really feel better?

Do you actually feel better? Did it really make a difference? Because honestly, what I see is the more you talk about it, the more you stay stirred up, the more you stay angry and upset. So it doesn’t actually make us feel better to talk about it other than maybe the listener is validating our position and kind of stroking our ego. I feel like sometimes we just want to vent because we need somebody to take our side.

And that’s, again, not a good motive for having that conversation. I believe that a good friend is actually going to challenge your outlook and say, hey, while I can agree, while I can validate your feelings of not being treated well, I’m also only going to commiserate with you up to a certain point because you need to own the areas where you maybe didn’t handle this correctly or you’re not seeing the whole picture. You’re being a little too black and white in this situation and there’s some gray that you need to

to keep in mind. think that when we’re venting, we tend to go to the people that we know are gonna take our side. And that’s not helpful to us. That doesn’t serve us. That doesn’t get us any closer to having a happy, successful life, right? There’s really no point. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t bring any good into our lives. It doesn’t give us a resolution to like, if the problem was never resolved, venting doesn’t give you a solution.

It’s just a matter of spewing a bunch of emotion everywhere. So, and then the other thing I would say is that venting, because it keeps us stirred up, it holds us in this dark mood. holds us, how do I want to say this? It keeps us down where our emotions are stuck in this negativity. We don’t feel great. We can get into a cycle or a rut of

staying in this low place where everything is upsetting and we just can’t be happy and we can’t move on. So again, you know, it doesn’t help us when we’re venting. We are actually speaking death into the situation. We’re speaking death. What I would suggest is taking a different approach. Not that you can never talk about it because I don’t think that is the right solution.

What I have found is that I need to sometimes process things that happen to me, but it’s about your motive. It’s not coming from a place of I’ve got to prove that I’m right. I’ve got to get my point across. I got to defend myself. It’s from a place of, know what? I’m really upset right now and I need to pull back. I need to seek a broader perspective of this issue and I need to talk this out with someone who’s objective.

so that I can fully process what just happened and the right way to move forward. So the difference really is motive. Am I trying to find a resolution? Am I seeking understanding? Am I trying to grow from the situation or am I just defending my situation, criticizing the other person, trying to get validation from the listener, whatever. So when I’m approaching it,

from a viewpoint of just trying to process the situation, I can use positive language. I can take ownership of my part and maybe how, maybe I had the wrong tone of voice, maybe I used the wrong words. mean, who knows depending on the situation. I guarantee you, you didn’t behave perfectly in that situation. And so how can we step back and take a look and say, you know what, this is what I can do better next time so that I don’t.

have this kind of thing happen again. also, using positive language instead of being focused on self, but instead focusing on solution and growth, it makes it a lot easier to let go. Like I don’t stay stirred up so long. I tend to work through it in a few minutes versus being mad all day or being upset every time something else comes up. I can drop it and I can learn to be okay with it and accept where

where it’s at or if I need to go back and seek a resolution, I can do that with a clear head and with a calm heart. So I think it also really matters who you’re talking to because again, like I was saying a minute ago, a lot of times when we’re venting, we’re choosing somebody that we know is gonna take our side. And that’s not actually what we need, right? What we need is somebody to challenge our mindset. We need to get out of ourselves, get out of our own head.

and try to look at the big picture. So it’s better to choose a safe person who you can tell the whole truth to, but then they’re also gonna push back on some things and make you think outside the box, help you get over your emotions and settle down a little bit and come at the situation, come at the conversation from a perspective of how do we tackle this without causing more problems or causing more.

negativity, more negative emotions, all those things. So I remember this one time, my husband was having a really hard time with a specific person at his job.

And every time my husband would tell me something new that happened, I would just get so angry and upset. I just could not believe that this person was treating my husband this way. He didn’t deserve it. And nobody was doing anything about it to help my husband. so, you know, he would come to me with his frustrations and it would just get me so irate. And then finally, one day I said, you know what, babe, I’m so sorry, but I cannot talk to you about this anymore. If you have…

any more issues with this person, I need you to take it to a different friend. Pick somebody else who can be more objective because I don’t like that you’re getting picked on, right? And so every time you tell me about it, it makes me more more resentful at that person. And I’m not supposed to be that way. Like I’m supposed to be the Bible talks about forgiveness and not holding onto offense. And every time you tell me something new that that person did,

I’m holding on to that offense and it’s really hard for me to let go. So until I get to a place of full forgiveness, I need to not discuss this with you anymore.” And he was totally understanding. I mean, I think he was a little surprised, but I’m human, you know? I don’t like it when people pick on my family. It’s, you know, nobody, we’re all like that, right?

Anyhow, of course that got resolved and I was able to kind of work through my own issues and then later we could go back and talk about that person and I would no longer get irate. But there was a few months where I had to take a break and he had to go process these issues with a different person. And I did feel a little bit bad about it, but I knew my limitations and I knew my weakness and I didn’t want to add to his offense by stirring up my own. And so by us not…

discussing it together, both of us were able to kind of simmer down and be more forgiving and understanding towards that person. So it really makes a difference who you’re talking to, that your agenda is not just about defending yourself or getting someone on your side. And the last thought that I would say is we actually don’t need to share everything that happens. There’s been several times where

I’ve been mistreated or I was involved in a situation that I felt like wasn’t handled correctly. And the Lord has told me, be quiet, don’t tell anybody what happened because he knew if I were to talk about it, I would start getting stirred up and I would start leaning into resentment and unforgiveness. And so by being quiet, I was actually able to more quickly let it go and move on. And so I think a sign of maturity is

that we don’t have to share everything that happened. We can pick and choose and pick and choose the right people to share with. learning to come to a place of maturity where you can say, I might not have been right. I’m not always right. I’m a human. And so just because my perspective seems like it’s right, I need to humble myself and say, you know what? I could be wrong.

Maybe my perspective isn’t necessarily 100 % accurate. And who am I to say that my way is the only right way? That’s, you know, again, a place of pride. So humbling ourselves to be able to say, you know what? It’s possible that I don’t have the right perspective on this. It’s possible that I didn’t handle this the right way.

there was a sermon at church where the pastor was talking about how we like to argue and stand up for our rights and get people to understand our position. We’re always talking to get them to understand us and, or let me rephrase, I don’t want to say always, but we tend to join a conversation wanting to be heard.

And our motive is less about listening and loving and more about getting our point across. And so one of the things that our pastor had challenged us on is say what you want to say in a kind manner, but then step back and say, you know what, I might be wrong. And that was really empowering for so many of us because it was like, you know what, I am human. I’m going to make mistakes. And to assume that my perspective is the only right way

is really arrogant. And I don’t want to be arrogant, right? The Bible warns us against pride. And so coming at it from a place of humility and saying, you know what, even though I’m really adamant about my perspective or on this specific issue, it’s possible that my way is not the right way. I might be wrong, and that’s OK. And the last thing that I would say is that scripture

talks in so many places about being thankful, being grateful, having a thankful heart. And, you know, God doesn’t like complaining and yet we think that it’s okay to do it. We think that we have a right to do it because of an injustice or whatever the situation. And so the challenge is that, you know, maybe, maybe I could step back and look at this a little bit differently. Maybe there’s a better way to handle this situation. Maybe I don’t need.

to talk about it, maybe I can just let this go. and then let me just throw this out really quick. I’m talking about just normal daily life situations. There are gonna be abnormal things that come up like if you’re in a toxic environment or maybe a person has a hormone imbalance or whatever, that things that are adding to the situation to create a lot of problems and negativity.

some of this stuff isn’t going to apply. So just keep that in mind. I’m talking about just normal life. And if something abnormal is happening, you’re going to make sure that you need to get a support system and get some help to navigate that. in general, just negativity inventing, it’s just not good for us. We really should lay it down and let it go. Lay it down and let it go. So my question as we go about our week and wrap things up, let’s explore the depths of this final thought.

Where are you investing your energy, your time, and your attention? Is it towards the negative or is it towards the positive? Is it towards complaining or is it towards encouragement? Is it towards problems or is it towards solutions? Is it focused on just what’s going wrong or is it

or is it shifted to seeking out the good of the situation and what’s going well? So I would encourage you to try to figure out where you’re thinking and speaking negatively in your life and try to ditch that negative mindset and adopt a grateful heart.