--- title: Negativity Has No Upside | The Sales Blog description: In business and in life you are going to have to deal with challenging situations and circumstances. You don't produce a better result by being negative. image: https://www.thesalesblog.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/shutterstock_218172817.jpg --- ### [Now booking SKO meetings for 2026/27! 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You do not achieve greater outcomes nor greater return on investing negative emotional energy in your problems, challenges, and inconveniences. Negativity creates a disempowered mindset. By reminding yourself how unhappy you are about a certain situation, you are changing your focus and your mental state. You negative mindset will cut you off from potentially positive choices. Your negative focus will blind you to opportunity. You make a negative situation even worse by investing your negative emotional state in it. You amplify the negativity. When something is already difficult or stressful, ratcheting up the negativity ratchets up already heightened emotional states. This is how relationships are destroyed. Being negative doesn’t help you to solve problems or challenges faster. Nor does it allow you to solve them more effectively. In fact, the opposite is true of negativity. It can be debilitating. Negativity doesn’t draw people to your cause. In fact, it can repel the very people whose help you need. [Negativity attracts negative people](http://thesalesblog.com/2010/10/01/negativity-the-only-cancer-that-spreads-by-contact/). But to break through difficult challenges, you need the positive, can-do people who believe greater things are possible. Negativity doesn’t make a [difficult conversation](http://thesalesblog.com/2014/11/13/how-to-maintain-a-resourceful-state-in-difficult-conversations/) any easier. Quite the opposite. Negativity can make a difficult conversation crushingly painful. The emotional state and mindset of negativity makes it more likely that you turn a difficult situation into irreconcilable differences. Negativity is how relationships are damaged (or worse). In business and in life, you are going to have to deal with challenging situations and circumstances. You are going to have to deal with unpleasant and difficult people. You are going to fail from time to time, even when failure is not an option. Being negative about any or all of the above does nothing to change the situation or circumstance, nor does it allow you to deal with the circumstances more effectively. You don’t produce a better result by being negative. Making yourself feel bad does nothing to make you feel better. Deciding to feel powerless is not a recipe for being empowered and taking whatever necessary actions are required of you. [Negativity is really fear](http://thesalesblog.com/2014/12/07/facing-the-two-types-of-fears/). You are afraid that something bad will happen to you. You are afraid that you aren’t going to get what you want, that you aren’t capable of succeeding, or that you are going to be harmed in some way. There is no upside to negativity. But the upside for optimism and an empowered mindset is limitless. ###### Tags: [Sales](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/tag/sales) [2016](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/tag/2016) Post by [Anthony Iannarino](https://www.thesalesblog.com/blog/author/anthony-iannarino) on June 7, 2016 Written and edited by human brains and human hands. ![Anthony Iannarino](https://www.thesalesblog.com/hubfs/ai-blog-profile-crop.jpg) Anthony Iannarino is an American writer. He has published daily at [thesalesblog.com](https://www.thesalesblog.com) for more than 14 years, amassing over 5,300 articles and making this platform a destination for salespeople and sales leaders. Anthony is also the author of four best-selling books documenting modern sales methodologies and a fifth book for sales leaders seeking revenue growth. His latest book for an even wider audience is titled, The Negativity Fast: Proven Techniques to Increase Positivity, Reduce Fear, and Boost Success. Anthony speaks to sales organizations worldwide, delivering cutting-edge sales strategies and tactics that work in this ever-evolving B2B landscape. He also provides workshops and seminars. Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn, X or Youtube. 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