Negative emotions—anger, fear, sadness, frustration—are good. It took me too long to understand, and even longer to embody, that a negative emotion isn’t really negative; it’s a means of encouraging change (i.e., growth).
When do we feel more motivated: after a win or a loss, or after a great performance versus a poor one? When we lose or perform poorly, we become driven. We may feel insubordinate, worthless, or inadequate, but these are all just signs that we are not where we wish to be and have space to grow. Negative emotions are instigators of action that compound into change.
Remember, emotions don’t happen to us; we produce them to highlight experience—nothing more. Positive and negative exist only in the mind, so why not use the negative, for lack of a better word, to inspire positive change?
