Critic

Hinawajon! There are those around us who constantly complain; look for the faults of others and even see the dark side of life ALL THE TIME. The ones who practice dwelling on the positive side often wonder what kind of life are they living. It seems that they are enjoying on the suffering and misfortunes of others.

“Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything. Your thoughts become things.” These are two sentences that could be considered as BIG WORDS from Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret”. It can be gleaned from the theories she present here that disciplining the mind to dwell on the positive side of everything allows the positive energy to materialize. Most successful persons think positive thoughts and this is the KEY, their SECRET in attaining their successes.

Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D. mentions that we spend hours and hours dwelling and ruminating on the negative and fearful things in our lives. We worry about what could go wrong, instead of focusing and paying attention to the rational, the positive and the good.  We should train ourselves to focus on thoughts that will move us forward in the right direction.

But why is it that there are some of us who really could NOT appreciate the things around him/her? According to psychologists, it is because they fail to train their minds on appreciation. Instead, they are always critical. In the education, appreciation is a competency which is difficult to attain since it must be constantly instilled in the lessons specifically in the affective learning pedagogy.

The pioneer of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, studied all kinds of techniques for making people happier. The three he found to be the most effective were: remembering three positive experiences at the end of every day, finding a main strength that you have and applying it in a different arena, and writing a letter of gratitude to somebody and delivering it personally.

We might also consider the fact that most common mental health problems include a major component of criticism. In depression people frequently struggle with self-critical thoughts, in anxiety fear of failure is often bound up with self-criticism, and self-criticism often also has a key role in body image issues, self-harm, psychotic experiences, and addictions.

For this reason, Barker (2016) says that therapies and practices involving kindness and compassion have become increasingly popular in recent years. The tendency to evaluate, judge and criticize ourselves harshly is often related to a similar approach to other people. Therefore expressing gratitude and appreciation might be a useful counter to this tendency. Perhaps we can cultivate self-compassion to counter self-criticism, and appreciation to counter our criticism of others?

Also, inferiority and envy are the root causes of critical minds. These persons always gauge themselves with the accomplishments and achievements of others to the point that they will look for loopholes on others’ personality to feel secure and feel better than the persons they are comparing themselves with.

When the criticism becomes constant and vicious, that person is probably not making a healthy assessment of others’ mistakes. It’s probably more like the defense mechanism known as “projection.” They see the person as a mirror; they criticize the things in him or her that they don’t like about themselves.

Psychologists find that, over time, feeling grateful boosts happiness and fosters both physical and psychological health, even among those already struggling with mental health problems. Studies show that practicing gratitude curbs the use of words expressing negative emotions and shifts inner attention away from such negative emotions as resentment and envy, minimizing the possibility of ruminating over them (a hallmark of depression).

So, let us practice being grateful. Whatever others might look, achieve and even fail, we try to look for the beauty in the situations.

Let us make it a point to think that our thoughts matter. Thoughts are matter. They will soon become real. Do not project something BAD will happen. It might be realized. It’s like a prayer of its own. Project good things and feel good inside.

Make the SECRET be practiced in your life.