When you walk around with resentful feelings toward other people or situations, you create a dark cloud of misery. This pattern of fixating on the negative takes everything to the extreme, spiraling from one negative to another. It goes back to childhood where the negative perspective was cultivated, so it feels hopeless. In attached relationships, there’s always something to be upset about—you feel short-changed or have a chip on your shoulder. Perhaps you mask it with a shiny exterior so nobody knows, or perhaps you’re so disconnected from yourself, you don’t realize how you feel. No matter your situation, inside your head you feel everything in your life sucks.

The problem with fixating on the negative is it’s a limited perspective, allowing no possible room for happiness or a different viewpoint. You think that when your circumstances change, you’ll be happy, but it’s the INSIDE that needs to change. When you focus on changing the negative outside, it doesn’t affect the negative inside. You will still find something to complain about, I guarantee it. Negativity is all a perception. If there’s something in your partner you can’t accept, look at that quality in yourself and ask what you can’t accept about it. It’s the struggle with your own self-acceptance that leads you to this negative place.

Fixating on what’s wrong outside is a distraction from looking within to identify what you’re not accepting inside. You get to choose how you see the world and your circumstances. Start by looking at what you can’t accept, and your expectations around that. Then challenge those expectations by doing the opposite. You’ll then start to breakdown the patterns and see there is a different way of looking at things. I have a free download that walks through the steps of shifting your perspective. Get it at www.tracycrossley.com/podcast/229.