Negativity Serves a Purpose

The next few days seemed like an eternity. Each morning Matt woke up and looked into Bubba's empty cage. He tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't. He missed Bubba and his sadness consumed him. He knew it wasn't doing him or anyone else any good to be sad but he couldn't help it. He felt like the positive dog inside him had died.

Then, one night while looking at the stars that filled the dark, clear sky, Matt thought about the negativity he was feeling and realized that negativity does serve a purpose; it helps you see the positive in the world, just as the darkness allows you to see the stars. If you didn't have negative experiences, you would never be able to appreciate the positive ones. If you were never sad, you wouldn't know what it felt like to be happy. If you never felt fear, you wouldn't know what faith felt like. If you were positive all the time, then you wouldn't even know you were being positive because there would be no contrast. You would feel the same all the time.

Matt decided that negativity was a part of life and one should never try to get rid of it completely. After all, if there wasn't a negative emotion such as sadness then he wouldn't know what it felt like to miss his best friend Bubba. If he wasn't able to feel anger, he would have never been able to protect himself from the wild animals he met in the forest before he was brought to the shelter. If he never complained, he wouldn't know how good it felt to be grateful and create solutions.

Matt realized that, ironically, there were positive benefits to be gained from negativity. Negativity actually helps you see and appreciate the positive. Negativity forces you to feel those painful emotions so you can recognize and appreciate positive emotions. Negativity builds character and strength when we persevere and overcome it, and facing negative dogs in the world causes us to build positive mental and emotional muscle.

The next day, as soon as he got outside, Matt walked to the spot where Bubba buried Jade's book and dug until he found it. He scooped it up and found the part that supported his belief that negativity was in fact a necessary part of life. According to the book, the key was to have more positivity than negativity. In fact, research by Barbara Fredrickson showed that the key ratio to remember is three positive emotions for each negative one. People who flourished experienced a ratio greater than three to one. (Three positive emotions to one negative emotion, whereas those with lower ratios—2:1 or 1:1—languished.) The research also showed this to be true for teams at work. Teams that experienced interactions at a ratio greater than three positive to one negative were more productive and higher performing than those with a ratio of less than three to one.

Discovering this ratio shook Matt out of his funk. He was still sad Bubba was gone, but he just needed to turn a negative into a few positives. He needed to experience more positive emotions than negative emotions. He was so inspired he decided that if he ever met Barbara Frederickson, he would lick her hand.

Then he asked himself, “What would Bubba do?” and knew it was time for action.