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2 Ways To Be Happy After Receiving Bad News

Unwanted experiences are present in everybody’s lives. The trick to dealing with them is how you interpret them and how you behave once you’ve received the news.

Pretend for a moment that good and bad do not exist and all there is… is “just is”. Your ego is the one determining whether something is good or bad, so you need to release that for the moment. Once you’ve taken your emotional response away from the situation you can begin to see the event as just an occurrence. It’s neither good nor bad – it just is.

Good is in the eye of the beholder, as is bad.

Here are a couple of tips to help you get into alignment after hearing some bad news.

First decide whether you can stop thinking about it or not. If you can stop thinking about the problem or news that has happened… then do so! Start thinking about something enjoyable and that makes you happy. Take your mind and attention away from the situation. Do not talk about it, do not visit friends who will talk about it, do not expose yourself to more of it.

If you cannot stop thinking about it, then you need to find good things around the subject that you can focus upon instead. Gradually you’ll be working your way up your emotional scale and out of the bad news and into good news again.

Let’s look at an example.

Bad scenario: You’ve just been rear-ended by another car and you’re unhappy. You cannot stop thinking about it, so you know you should spend time focusing on the positive aspects of the scenario.

You should begin by determining where you currently are. Grab a sheet of paper and write down what you are currently thinking and feeling.

“I’m frustrated because that was my brand new car and he is a stupid driver and shouldn’t be on the road”

Now – from this starting point we need to start thinking and feeling about the positive aspects of the situation.

“Well at least no one was seriously injured”
“It’s just a car at the end of the day”
“It could have been a lot worse than it was”
“I can probably get my car fixed quite quickly”
“The car still works!”
“It gave me the opportunity to see more of my kids today”

You see, by applying just a little effort you can easily find the positive aspects in ANY situation. And I do mean ANY situation. You’ve just got to try it and stay focused for just a little bit.

Realistically you should be able to work yourself out of any bad circumstance in under an hour and start to feel good about whatever it is that’s troubling you.

Next time you think you’re in a bad situation – try it!