When facing setbacks, most people will encourage you to take a positive attitude towards them. However, Susan David, a lecturer in Harvard University, does not agree with this opinion. Instead,in the book Emotional Agility she says although positive thinking is beneficial to people, but excessive praise or reliance will make people fall into a dilemma easily that every knotty problems will be smoothly solved as long as they hope for the best.
Susan David said, in the positive thinking atmosphere, people regard negative emotions or thoughts as harmful things.Provided there is a bad idea in their mind, intuition will let their own do not think too much. But according to the study of psychology, The more people try to suppress an idea, the more strongly they stay in mind. It is the same as the people who lose weight. They force themselves to give up favorite sweets, but in the end they dream of eating while sleeping, so are negative emotions.
Negative emotions or thoughts reflect the values or things that people value most. Instead of focusing on positive thinking and ignoring negative thoughts, Susan David argues, people should try to exercise their emotional sensitivity and accept all their thoughts and emotions.
She suggests that when facing negative emotions or thoughts, we can follow four steps to find coexistence equilibrium to these :
Firstly, face these emotions positively and face the sounds of your heart frankly, believing that these difficulties or negative emotions can help us;
Secondly, try to separate yourself from the present emotion, observing yourself from an objective point of view, just like a chess player jumping off the "next step" mentality by looking at the chessboard , realizing that they actually have more possibilities;
Thirdly, analyse yourself, identify your own values from negative thoughts. For example, the reason why you don’t like your ideas you come up with to be copied by others is that you care about fairness and justice very much;
Finally, think over the question why these values are important to you. In addition, you should tardily adjust your state of mind, habit, or attitude according to them, and then gradually improve your life.
方法：如何与负面情绪共处
遭遇挫折时，大多数人会来鼓励你，劝你从积极、正面的角度去看待问题，哈佛大学讲师苏珊·大卫（Susan David）不太认同这种做法，她在《情绪敏感力（Emotional Agility）》这本书里表示，虽然正向思考对人有益，但过度推崇或依赖，反而容易让人陷入“凡事只要往好处想，就能迎刃而解”的迷思里。
苏珊·大卫说，在正向思考的氛围里，人们把负面情绪或想法看作有害物，只要有一丝不好的念头，直觉上就会让自己别想那么多，但是根据心理学研究，当人们越是想要抑制某个想法，这个想法反而会更强烈地停留在脑海中，就像减肥的人强迫自己放弃喜爱的甜食，最后却连睡觉都梦到在大吃，被压抑的负面情绪也是如此。
负面情绪或想法能够反映出人们最重视的价值或事物。苏珊·大卫认为，比起一味地强调正向思考、忽视负面想法，人们应该尝试锻炼自己的情绪敏感力，接受所有的思绪和情感。
她建议，遇到负面情绪或想法时，可以通过以下四步找到与这些情绪共处的平衡点：首先要正面面对这些情绪，坦然面对自己内心的各种声音，并相信这些困境或负面情绪可以帮助我们；然后，试着把自己和眼前的情绪分离，从客观的角度观察自我，就像棋手通过俯瞰棋盘从“下一步”思维中跳脱出来一样，了解到自己其实拥有更多可能性；接着是分析自我，从负面想法中辨识自己的价值观，比如你不喜欢自己想出的点子被剽窃，背后的原因也许是你非常在意公平和公正；最后要思考，为什么这些价值观对你来说很重要，并根据它们慢慢调整自己的心态、习惯或态度，逐步改善生活。
