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：如何與負面情緒共處
遭遇挫折時，大多數人會來鼓勵你，勸你從積極、正面的角度去看待問題，哈佛大學講師蘇珊·大衛（Susan David）不太認同這種做法，她在《情緒敏感力（Emotional Agility）》這本書里表示，雖然正向思考對人有益，但過度推崇或依賴，反而容易讓人陷入“凡事只要往好處想，就能迎刃而解”的迷思里。
蘇珊·大衛說，在正向思考的氛圍里，人們把負面情緒或想法看作有害物，只要有一絲不好的念頭，直覺上就會讓自己別想那么多，但是根據心理學研究，當人們越是想要抑制某個想法，這個想法反而會更強烈地停留在腦海中，就像減肥的人強迫自己放棄喜愛的甜食，最后卻連睡覺都夢到在大吃，被壓抑的負面情緒也是如此。
負面情緒或想法能夠反映出人們最重視的價值或事物。蘇珊·大衛認為，比起一味地強調正向思考、忽視負面想法，人們應該嘗試鍛煉自己的情緒敏感力，接受所有的思緒和情感。
她建議，遇到負面情緒或想法時，可以通過以下四步找到與這些情緒共處的平衡點：首先要正面面對這些情緒，坦然面對自己內心的各種聲音，并相信這些困境或負面情緒可以幫助我們；然后，試著把自己和眼前的情緒分離，從客觀的角度觀察自我，就像棋手通過俯瞰棋盤從“下一步”思維中跳脫出來一樣，了解到自己其實擁有更多可能性；接著是分析自我，從負面想法中辨識自己的價值觀，比如你不喜歡自己想出的點子被剽竊，背后的原因也許是你非常在意公平和公正；最后要思考，為什么這些價值觀對你來說很重要，并根據它們慢慢調整自己的心態、習慣或態度，逐步改善生活。
