Many of my clients live in the negative zone. Now, it’s important to understand that residing in the negative zone means that no matter what good may come your way, you will find something wrong with it. This is what is called the Eeyore Syndrome.

You remember A.A. Milne’s classic character Eeyore. This friend of Winnie the Pooh was a threadbare, grey donkey that was always moping around, talking to himself and awaiting his inevitable misfortune.

Well, that’s often my clients. Once a client visited the Caribbean, a free all expenses paid holiday, they came back and when I asked what was good about the holiday, they couldn’t wait to tell me everything that went wrong including how it rained every day.

Well let’s get this straight. The rain didn’t ruin their holiday. What really ruined it was the constant bombardment of negative thinking that caused them to feel victimized. It was their thoughts about the bad weather that supported an overwhelmingly negative belief system and a pre-existing bad attitude that ruined the holiday.

Of course, it would have been nice if they had some sunshine but they didn’t and in concentrating so much of their energy on what wasn’t working, they never gave themselves a chance to have a good time. It’s impossible to have a good time if your thoughts are causing you to be miserable.

When you allow outside circumstances that you have no control over to determine your happiness, you’re up a gum tree, as a dear friend of mine would say and that’s how you get caught up in the Eeyore Syndrome.

This type of thinking reflects a lack of confidence in yourself and as a result, your enjoyment and appreciation of all the good things that life has to offer gets distorted, leaving you unhappy.

Remember, thoughts don’t just happen. They are something we create and therefore we can direct them. When something upsets you, it’s how you respond that determines the effect it will have on you.

So instead of focusing on how bad things are, or have been, you should see the situation from a more positive angle, remembering, the goal to bouncing back from any negative experience is to gradually shift your way of thinking to things that make you feel better.