Do you feel like you spend your days ruminating or complaining about everything that goes wrong? This is completely normal. Our brain is a machine programmed to seek the easy way out, and pessimism requires less immediate energy than positivity.
Why your brain always chooses negativity
Between the tensions of everyday life and the bad news that flashes across our screens, it is easy to get overwhelmed. For the German doctor and theologian Alfred Sonnenfeld, this reflex is explained first and foremost by a biological strategy. The specialist in psychosomatic medicine explains it in the pages of the Spanish daily La Vanguardia: The brain always seeks to save energy.
Complaining or criticizing therefore requires less effort in the moment than maintaining a constructive attitude. Except that this comfort comes at a high price for our mental and physical health. When our thoughts, emotions and actions go all over the place, the body ends up expressing this misalignment through physical symptoms and chronic stress.
The difference between accepting and resigning
Faced with the unexpected in life, the classic trap consists of fighting against what we cannot change. However, the secret of serenity does not lie in resignation, but in what the doctor calls active acceptance. As he points out in the Spanish media: “Accepting is not surrendering, it is deciding not to expend energy unnecessarily.”
Let’s take a very concrete example, like a big traffic jam on the ring road. Getting angry won’t make cars move faster, but it will drain your emotional batteries. Choosing positive acceptance means deciding to let go of what is beyond your control to preserve your inner resources.
How to find this consistency on a daily basis?
To escape this vicious circle of resistance, Alfred Sonnenfeld invites us to find a form of harmony between our values, our actions and our words. He also recalls a simple rule to guide his days: “First be, then do and, finally, say.
Happiness and peace do not fall from the sky and do not depend on the total absence of problems. They arrive when we manage to align our attitude in the face of the trials of reality. Facing difficulties with this posture means choosing to make your mind work so that it finally becomes your best ally.
In summary, the next time the day starts off badly, instead of complaining about the annoyances, ask yourself if your energy is being spent in the right place. A little effort to step back today is the guarantee of a more serene mind tomorrow.