The Negativity Fast

Negativity has a way of spreading.

Once upon a time, we had a volunteer who was terribly negative. To be honest, hearing his negative remarks about just about everything made me feel incredibly frustrated. So my very young, 22-year-old self decided we could do a negativity fast and ask all our volunteers to participate. To be fair, it was really just so we could ask him to stop talking to us.

What I didn't realize at the time was that a few years later, I would find myself trapped in my own cycle of negative thinking.

Where have you allowed negative thoughts and comments to overtake your daily joy? Where have you perhaps allowed these negative patterns to circulate for too long, to the point that they actually impact your relationships with others? If you want to be happy, if you want to be full of joy, sometimes you need to omit these negative thoughts—or create some distance from the people who are constantly negative around you.

Of course, it’s not that simple. It’s not like pressing delete on your keyboard or binning a photo on your phone. There’s certainly much more complexity to it than my “forced negativity fast” with a volunteer group.

Just a couple of years after this “fast,” I too was caught in a negative spiral. I was constantly filled with anxiety over the feeling that I was alone. I believed the lie that I was alone. I spoke negativity to myself daily and couldn’t find freedom for many months.

Until I finally found freedom in the truth that I was not alone. God was with me. In my sadness and in my loneliness, God was there and had never left me. I replaced the lie with the truth, and in doing so, I experienced great freedom, transformation, and joy. The people I was doing day-to-day life with noticed. They commented on it, and they too were impacted by my newfound hope and joy.

This is something I practice with our students frequently in sports class. Sometimes students don’t think they can perform a certain exercise, stretch, or activity. I always encourage them with, “You can do it!” It’s the same thing I tell myself when I’m running or lifting weights. I remind them that the more we tell ourselves, “I think I can,” the more we often discover that we actually can. So much of life begins with what we believe about ourselves and about the situations we face.

It’s the same thing with God. What do we believe about Him? Do we believe that He is actually who He says He is? Do we believe that He is truly good? That He is for us? What we believe about God can have a dramatic effect on our outlook on life, how we raise our kids, and how we interact with others.

When we are negative, we don’t just impact ourselves—it has an effect on those closest to us. Negative thoughts often stem from wounds, fears, or unhealthy places in our hearts. As we work on those issues internally, we can learn to bridle our tongue and become more aware of the negative comments we speak.

Today, I encourage you to identify the lies you might be believing, replace them with truth, and seek to walk in a positive mindset that comes from the source of true joy: JESUS!