[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
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       Ask HN: How do you tackle your own negativity?
        
       I've noticed that the majority of my own comments here on HN have a
       negative spin on them and a lot of my blog posts unfortunately are
       very ranty. I guess to others this can make me look obnoxious. At
       the same time, I struggle to suppress my own negativity and feel
       like I need to get it out.  Does anybody else feel this way? How do
       (or don't) you tackle it?
        
       Author : c7DJTLrn
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2021-10-31 21:52 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
       | newbamboo wrote:
       | It's just the way hackernews works. You aren't allowed to post
       | vacuous comments like "this is great!", or "I think op is spot
       | on!" Because they are devoid of content. So criticism, rightly or
       | wrongly, tends to dominate. But the fact that you can't downvote,
       | only upvote, means even if your comments aren't "positive" your
       | impact on site content is. (I realize some people can downvote,
       | but most of those aren't real people.)
        
         | oblib wrote:
         | I may be wrong but I think being able to "downvote" may be tied
         | to a minimum "karma" points. I don't know what that minimum is
         | though. I know I'm a real person and I can downvote.
         | 
         | I'm sure it's fair to say I get more downvotes than I give and
         | give way more upvotes than downvotes.
        
       | holomorphically wrote:
       | Write it down and don't share it. Come back to it a day later and
       | see if it still makes sense. This is a very common trick in
       | cognitive behavioral therapy for teaching people basic
       | metacognition. The fundamental goal is to allow for reflection on
       | your own intentions and actions by delaying actions and then
       | leveraging those skills to close the gap between intentions and
       | actions without getting lost in negative emotions.
       | 
       | There is no easy shortcut or royal road. You'll have to do the
       | work to develop the required metacognitve skills.
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-31 23:01 UTC)