Resilience, Confidence, and Positive Thinking

2Negative Is Stronger Than Positive

The Rumination Phenomenon of Emotions

An important piece of knowledge when it comes to emotions is the rumination phenomenon. To ruminate means to repeat. It is a term that is also used to describe a cow munching on grass, but just as how it takes forever for a cow to stop chewing the grass, negative emotions seem to constantly cycle through our hearts.

Anger, worry, fear, depression, guilt, and embarrassment are some of the emotions that ruminate within us and don't exactly go away. Unfortunately, positive emotions such as joy and happiness disappear quite rapidly.

In other words, you are likely to remember negative experiences well, but you may not be able to recall positive ones as quickly. We call this phenomenon negativity bias.

Thinking about the persistence of negative emotions reminded me of when I was working at a consumer products company. At the time, I was involved in the production of dish soap. I would visit homes and do research on what was difficult to wash. The greasiest and hardest‐to‐wash items were woks. The least troublesome were Teflon‐coated frying pans.

How does my experience relate to emotions? The grease stuck on woks is like the negative feelings that never seem to go away, while positive emotions wash away and disappear easily as if they were Teflon‐coated.

In that way, negative emotions are more likely to remain ...