Trying to only think positively can give you a distorted and unhealthy view of reality. It doesn’t prepare you for the hardships and tragedy that many of us will often face throughout the course of our lives.
There’s a tool called negative visualization that can help you build a more grounded and realistic view of reality. The basic idea is to imagine the different ways your life could be much worse than how it really is.
This teaches you to accept the pain, negativity, and suffering that exists in the world. And by doing this, you learn to better prepare yourself for the ups and downs in your own life.
Negative visualization also teaches you to see the “bigger picture” of your life and how grateful you should be because of the many ways things could be worse.
This article covers 3 different types of meditations on suffering and tragedy that you can use as part of your own negative visualization exercise: sickness, death, and poverty.
As part of your negative visualization, take a moment to close your eyes and imagine specific ways your life could be much worse than it currently is. Here are suggestions on the types of things you can choose to focus on:
Sickness
- Cancer
- Heart Disease
- AIDS
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar Disorder
- Learning Disabilities
- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- Addiction
- Severe injury from an accident
- Any chronic physical or mental illness
Death
- War
- Natural Disasters
- Murder
- Suicide
- Car crash
- Animal attack
- Losing any loved one unexpectedly
Poverty
- Homelessness
- Starvation
- Unemployment
- Not being able to provide for your family
- Living paycheck to paycheck
- Not being able to enjoy simple luxuries like new clothes, TV, or internet
To start your negative visualization, just choose one of the three meditations. Then spend 5-10 minutes just imagining how your life would be if you had to go through this kind of suffering.
Visualize yourself in the scenario, and ask yourself, “How would I feel in this situation?” and “How would my daily life be different than how it is now?”
No matter where you currently are in life, you’ll find that there is always something to be grateful for.
Reflect on the lives of other people – whether it’s people on the news, or people you know in real life, or just hypothetical situations – and recognize the pain, suffering, and tragedy that they go through.
We often like to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, or try to justify it in some way, but sometimes making other people’s suffering and tragedies a key focus can help us put our own lives into perspective.
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