Aristotle studied human nature more extensively than perhaps any other philosopher in history. His conclusion: the ultimate goal of all human life and endeavor is happiness. Every act a person takes aims at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it.
This creates an obvious question: if everyone wants happiness, why are so many people unhappy?
Brian Tracy discovered the answer through years of research into positive and negative emotions, detailed in “Get Smart!”: “The main obstacle between each person and the happiness that he desires is negative emotions. Negative emotions lie at the root of virtually all problems in human life.”
If you could eliminate negative emotions, Tracy argues, you would wipe out most of mankind’s problems. When you eliminate negative emotions, “your mind automatically fills with positive emotions. You become a fully functioning person capable of fulfilling your full potential.”
This isn’t motivational theory. It’s psychology grounded in decades of research by figures like Abraham Maslow, Peter Ouspensky, and Martin Seligman. The implications are profound: your main job in life is to eliminate negative emotions.
The Nature of Positive Versus Negative Thinking
Your mind can only hold one thought at a time – positive or negative. But if you don’t deliberately hold a positive thought, a negative one will tend to fill your mind automatically. Negative thinking is easy and automatic – “the default setting of the brain for most people.”
Positive thinking requires effort and determination until it becomes habitual. “Fortunately, you can become a purely positive thinker through learning and practice.”
The starting point is understanding where negative emotions come from. The good news: no child is born with fears or negative emotions. All must be taught during formative years. Because negative emotions are learned, they can be unlearned.
Because they’re habitual responses to people and situations, they can be replaced with constructive habits. This is entirely a matter of choice.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
The Fearless Child
Children are born with two wonderful characteristics: fearlessness and spontaneity. Newborns will touch, try, or taste anything, however dangerous. Parents spend the first years preventing children from killing themselves.
Children are also completely spontaneous – laughing, crying, expressing themselves without limit or constraint, with no concern for others’ reactions.
Then parents begin making mistakes. Telling children “No! Stop that! Don’t do that!” and physically punishing exploratory behavior, children develop the belief that they’re small and incompetent. They start saying “I can’t” when confronted with anything new.
This “I can’t” feeling becomes the fear of failure – preoccupation with loss, poverty, rejection. “This generalized fear of failure acts as a brake on the child’s potential and then the adult’s potential. It is the single greatest obstacle to success in adult life.”
The Twin Fears
The two main fears that develop in childhood and plague adults are the fear of failure and the fear of criticism.
Children lose natural spontaneity when parents make love conditional on the child doing what they want. The child thinks: “I must do what Mommy and Daddy want, or they won’t love me.”
Because parental love and security are paramount to children, any threat of loss terrifies them and controls their behavior.
“Psychologists generally agree that most problems in adult life stem from ‘love withheld’ in early childhood,” Tracy writes. “The most powerful and profound way to distort the adult personality is rooted in ‘love deprivation’ or the giving and then withholding of love when the child is young.”
As Alexander Pope wrote, “Just as the Twig is bent, the Tree’s inclined.” A negative childhood leads to a negative adulthood.
Deficiency Versus Being Needs
Abraham Maslow studied self-actualizing people and concluded that 98 percent of adults are governed by “deficiency needs” – striving to compensate for perceived inadequacies, especially feelings of unworthiness and “I’m not good enough.”
Only 2 percent experience “being needs” – the desire and confidence to grow and realize full potential. These are characterized by high self-esteem and self-confidence.
The difference comes down to how you handle negative emotions, particularly blame.
The Four Sources of Negative Emotions
Tracy identifies four primary sources that create and maintain negative emotions:
Rationalization: Attempting to explain away unpleasant situations or behaviors – “putting a favorable interpretation on an otherwise unfavorable act.” We rationalize dishonesty by saying “everybody does it,” obesity by blaming genes, laziness as “just the way I am.”
This makes us unhappy and prevents improvement.
Justification: Creating elaborate reasons for negative emotions by claiming we’re entitled to feel this way because of what someone did. “If you could not justify a negative feeling or behavior, it would cease immediately.”
Judgmentalism: Setting ourselves up as judge, jury, and executioner – finding others guilty, condemning them, passing sentence. The Bible warns: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” and “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.”
When you judge and condemn another person, you actually judge and condemn yourself. Even though you’ve found them guilty, you feel negative toward yourself just as much or more.
Hypersensitivity: Seeing criticisms and slights where they don’t exist, worrying constantly about what others might think. In extreme forms, this paralyzes decision-making ability.
The Trunk of the Tree
Imagine the negative emotion tree – the fruit are all negative emotions you can experience. To eliminate them, you must cut down the tree.
Here’s Tracy’s breakthrough: “The trunk of the negative emotion tree is blame. It is impossible to experience a negative emotion without blaming others for something that they have done or not done of which you disapprove.”
The minute you stop blaming, your negative emotions cease completely.
How do you stop blaming? “It is impossible for you to blame someone else for a negative emotion and accept responsibility for the situation at the same time. The very act of accepting responsibility cancels the negative emotion associated with that situation.”
How do you activate responsibility? Say the magic words: “I am responsible.”
This positive, present-tense affirmation eliminates negative emotions instantly.
Because your mind can only hold one thought at a time, you cancel any negative thought by repeating: “I am responsible! I am responsible! I am responsible!”
How do you turn out Christmas lights on a tree? Jerk the cord from the socket – all lights go out instantly. How do you eliminate negative emotions? The same way – say “I am responsible!” and they all stop immediately.
Accept 100 Percent Responsibility
The key to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-respect is accepting 100 percent responsibility for everything you are and will become.
The instant you accept complete responsibility with no excuses, you become calm, clear, and positive. The sun rises and shadows disappear.
This requires one essential practice: forgiveness.
The Practice of Forgiveness
Everyone has been wronged – difficult childhoods, negative experiences, bad relationships, failed investments. Everyone has been lied to, cheated on, hurt, taken advantage of, abused somehow. This is normal and inevitable.
The only question: “What are you going to do about it?”
For you to be free, you must free everyone else. For you to be happy, you must forgive everyone who has ever hurt you. You must completely let go of all negative thoughts toward anyone in your life.
There are three types of people you must forgive:
Your parents: Forgive them for every mistake they made raising you. They’re normal people who made mistakes from ignorance and inexperience. Set them free. Better yet, tell them you forgive them for everything that hurt you. Set them free and become free yourself.
Everyone else who hurt you: Every personal relationship or business association, even those causing incredible turmoil. Issue a total pardon to all people you still think about negatively.
You’re not forgiving for their sake – forgiveness is perfectly selfish. You’re forgiving for yourself. By letting them go free through forgiveness, you allow yourself to go free.
Yourself: Forgive yourself for every mistake you ever made. The person you are today isn’t the person who made those mistakes. You’re a thoroughly good person. Any mistakes came from youth, inexperience, lack of knowledge. They’re over. Let them go.
As Helen Keller said, “When you turn toward the sunshine, the shadows fall behind you.”
The Trip Clause
Here’s where most people sabotage themselves. They agree to forgive everyone – except that one person or situation.
“All psychological, emotional, and psychosomatic problems can be traced back to the failure to let go of one negative event about which you are still angry and for which you cannot forgive.”
Tracy uses a powerful metaphor: imagine ordering a new Mercedes-Benz, perfect except one front brake is locked. You start the engine, shift into gear, step on the accelerator. What happens?
Your beautiful car goes in circles. You can turn the steering wheel and step on the gas, but with one brake locked, you just circle endlessly, burning out your engine and tires.
It’s the same with your life. If you refuse to forgive one person, it’s like having a locked brake. Your life spins in circles. You burn out emotionally and physically. You never make progress.
“This single insight is the key to understanding psychology and psychosomatic illness. It is the refusal to let go of a single event, and often several events, that locks a person in place and keeps him or her trapped in the past.”
What is the one person or event you cannot let go of?
“You must have the character and the courage to let it go. No matter how painful it was, you must say the magic words: ‘I forgive him or her for everything. I let him or her go. It is over.'”
Responsibility, Control, and Positive Emotions
There’s a direct relationship between responsibility accepted and control felt. Because stress and negative emotions come from feeling out of control, accepting responsibility immediately asserts control over yourself and everything happening to you.
There’s a direct relationship between responsibility, control feeling, and positive emotions. The more you accept responsibility and feel in control, the more positive you feel.
Finally, there’s a direct relationship between positive emotions and happiness.
The choice is completely yours.
Taking Back Control
When you blame anyone else for anything, you give up control of your emotions. You turn control over to the person you’re blaming, whether they know it or not.
By blaming someone else, you enable them to manipulate and control your emotions at long distance. You give them power over your happiness. In most cases, they don’t even know how much control they have.
By complaining and criticizing, you make yourself a “victim.” By blaming, you make yourself feel small, weak, angry, inferior. Instead of being totally responsible and self-reliant, you allow yourself to be controlled by others.
When you blame others, you become negative, angry, suspicious, hostile, weak.
The good news: at any time you can say “I am responsible” and put yourself back in the driver’s seat of your emotional life.
Whenever you experience a negative thought, immediately cancel it: “I am responsible!” Do this repeatedly until it becomes automatic.
Acceptance of responsibility is the mark of a leader, an achiever, a self-actualizing person.
The Takeaway
Negative emotions are the main obstacle between you and the happiness you desire. They stem from blame – holding others responsible for your situation and feelings.
The solution is radical acceptance of responsibility. By saying “I am responsible” and meaning it, you instantly cancel negative emotions. By practicing forgiveness – of parents, others, and yourself – you cut the roots of negativity permanently.
As Tracy emphasizes in “Get Smart!”, “Resolve today to become a completely positive person. Look for the good in every person and situation. You will always find it.”
The question is whether you have the courage to let go of blame, accept full responsibility, and issue the blanket pardon that will set you free.