Nov 13
How To Stop Being Cynical and Feel More Positive
5 Easy strategies to stop this negative behavior
What is cynicism and who is a cynical person
Cynicism is an attitude of doubt and a way of thinking in which you regard everyone to act out of self-interest.
A cynic has mental reservations and suspects everyone to have a motive or a hidden agenda behind what they do.
Cynical people’s mistrust runs deep, and they doubt everything and everyone.
Cynics go to the extent of questioning every action and every piece of knowledge, casting doubts on its relevance and validity.
In their big scheme of things, cynics see people as selfish, self-centered, and self-absorbed, lacking values and morals.
They consider society on the whole as weak and corrupted and regard the system to be broken beyond repair.
Cynical people also believe that situations can’t get better, odds will always be stacked against them, and they won’t succeed at anything.
What makes people cynical
Cynicism is a defense mechanism against suffering, so to speak. Often, the cynics have a backstory, a past failure, a previous experience of being wronged, or disappointed by some specific people or the system in general.
These people are unable to cope with letdowns in the usual way. The dejection and fear of being disappointed get etched on their minds which evokes strong negative emotions and makes them defensive.
To avoid experiencing painful feelings again and to escape mental agony and frustration, cynical people adopt a negative and suspicious attitude as a coping mechanism.
When you don’t have too many hopes and place expectations at rock bottom, you cannot be disappointed. Failure becomes less painful when you’re not hopeful of success.
Cynical people are closed to reasoning and explanations and disregard all evidence that might prove their opinions wrong. They rationalize their behavior and, in their mind, are convinced that their screwed outlook is the reality.
What is wrong with cynical thinking
When you have a defeatist attitude and view life through a negative lens, you see things worse than they are.
Cynical thinking kills your inner drive
Cynical people typically lack hope. They, therefore, feel unmotivated to take action on their goals and make peace with living in mediocrity.
Cynics don’t achieve much in life
People who have a cynical attitude often run worse-case scenarios in their minds. They visualize plans failing and things not reaching fruition. This discourages them from making efforts because, in their mind, they are sure success will elude them. Thus cynical people rarely accomplish big things in life.
Cynics have problematic personal relationships
Your mindset shapes your thinking and behavior. When you operate from a cynical standpoint, you have problems trusting others. This affects your relationships and prevents you from bonding and getting close to others.
Cynics have trouble working with others
A person disposed to cynical thinking looks for hidden agendas in others.
Constantly doubting other people’s intentions affects your interpersonal interactions, creates problems at the workplace and prevents you from being a team player.
Cynics live lonely lives
Cynical people have negative views on most things. They constantly complain, are sarcastic, and don’t think twice before putting others down with scathing criticism. Thus most people avoid their company. Cynics are seen to be more prone to anxiety, depression, and other health problems.
Cynics live stressful lives
People with cynical attitudes always live in disappointment because they are incapable of seeing the positive aspects of things and live in their make belief reality.
They suspect others to have mean motives and so are on the vigil all the time. This causes stress and prevents them from living peacefully and happily.
Here are five ways you can shake off cynicism and embrace optimism.
1. Be aware of your negative behavior
As is popularly said, what is unnamed is unknown and, therefore, cannot be corrected. To change your cynical behavior, you must first be able to acknowledge the fact that you are a cynic.
This can be challenging, especially when negativity is ingrained in your mind. However, monitoring your thoughts can help you isolate and red-flag cynical thoughts.
Regularly catching yourself thinking and acting negatively will enable you to turn around your thought process and consciously replace cynical thoughts with positive and empowering thoughts.
2. Let go of the defensive stance
Cynical people mentally program themselves to be a certain way. They justify their opinions, actions, and behaviors and refuse to budge even when shown proof and convinced otherwise.
In their mind, they are trying to shield themselves from pain, and the defensive stance is to safeguard them from any disappointment they might face.
To stop being a cynical person, you must give up being defensive and put an end to playing on the back foot.
Adopt a proactive approach to identify the situations that derail your thinking and understand your triggers. You must also be willing to confront your cynical response and reason out the negative behavior.
Once you gain clarity on what pushes you into the downward spiral of cynicism, you’ll be able to accept things as they are.
Breaking up with your disempowering habits and negative behavior will help you read the situations and people on their merit instead of putting general labels on them and doubting their credibility.
3. Stop suspecting people
There’s a wide variety of people in this world, from saints to crooks and everything in between. If there are bad people, there are kind-hearted people as well.
Being cynical, painting everything in the same hue, and thinking everyone has an ulterior motive will trap you in a negative mindset.
If you find yourself doubting others without reason, stop yourself there and then and confront the suspicion. Challenge yourself and ask for a valid explanation. Make it a habit that for every negative thought about a person, actively look for and appreciate three positive aspects of their personality.
4. Change your mental framework
You make sense of things from how you perceive them. If you keep telling yourself false stories and judge others based on your biases and preconceived notions, you’ll see everything as flawed and lacking authenticity.
To alter your cynical thinking, change your perspective. Let go of the fixed attitude and allow others to be seen as they are.
Resist the temptation of jumping to conclusions or terming someone wrong without evidence. At the end of the day, it’s not the distorted world but your own hazy lens that shows you the blurred image of everything around you.
5. Practice self-reflection
Cynics draw heavily on their negative life experiences, and thus their thinking is centered on doubt and suspicion. They erroneously believe that things will inevitably end up with an adverse outcome since they didn’t work out in the past.
This is where they get it all wrong.
Practicing self-reflection can help you stop ruminating over the past and see things objectively.
When something happens that is not in accordance with what you wanted, get to the root of the matter and identify what went wrong. Figure out how you could have done things differently or how you could have been more careful and foreseen things so that you were not taken by surprise.
Introspection and self-examination can enable you better deal with unmet expectations and disappointments and help negate cynicism to a large extent.
In Conclusion
Every day you meet distrustful people and see and experience various unpleasant and disgusting things. As you grow older, these life experiences embitter you and make you lose faith in the goodness of people.
However, you must be on guard and prevent yourself from becoming cynical.
Cynical thinking might seem insignificant, but it can be a big stumbling block on your path to success and hold you back from achieving your goals.
Although it is not easy to change this personality trait, especially if you’ve been a cynic all your life. But there are strategies you can adopt that will help you move away from cynicism and see things more rationally.
As they say, nothing is set in stone. Actively tuning your thoughts into positivity, changing your habits, and altering your behavior patterns can go a long way in helping you see things in their entirety and examine them from a different standpoint.
Originally published on drroopleen.com
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5 Ways To Train Yourself To Stop Worrying About Everything
Dr. Roopleen is the author of ‘And So Can You’ and From Average to Awesome
