Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

Our DNA does program us to a huge degree. But a more productive way of thinking about your experience in this life is that you are what you do. And you have some executive control over what you do. In other words, you can change who you are by changing what you do. For example, learning good manners and making it a habit to use them often will turn you into a polite person even if you weren’t “born that way.” One of the best mental habits you can develop is to think in positive terms even when you don’t feel positive.2 For example, I was a negative person in my twenties, but I didn’t know it. I thought I was humorously pointing out the flaws in everything around me. I wasn’t aware of how damaging it was to the people who had to listen to it. Nor did I realize how the negativity affected my own sense of happiness. Dwelling on the negative is expensive in terms of your social life, your mental health, and even your career success. People like to be around positive people, for all the right reasons. One day a friend explained to me with brutal honesty (alcohol might have been involved) that I was too negative and it was a drag. I was surprised to hear that my continuous complaining about just about everything wasn’t being well received by the people I liked most. So I set out to change that with a simple technique that I borrowed from another friend: if I need to talk about something negative, I pair it with at least one positive thought. I’ve made such a habit of this over t...