This was posted on the INTJ forum by a guy who'd suffered long term depression and is now happy most of the time. It was a way of stripping things back and looking at things in a new way which made sense to me:
"Let's delve into what is, and what is not. When we're talking about what is positive, and what is negative, we're referring to something's value to us. We define positive as things we prefer, and negative as things we do not prefer. But to prefer is not an objective observation. An objective observer must remain neutral, and therefore an objective observer is incapable of preferring anything, and therefore also incapable of making value statements. Value is therefore subjective. So, what is value? Value refers to utility - usefulness. If something is useful to us, then it has value. Otherwise, it has no value. So, we've concluded that value is subjective, and refers to how useful something is to us. But what is usefulness? It is anything we can make use of. And whether we can make use of something, or not, is only limited by imagination. So, when something negative happens to you, it must therefore first be seen as something that is not useful to you (decision), therefore has no value or negative value (decision) and hence is baaaad. However, if you allow yourself to see the use of something, then it becomes useful to you - therefore it has value, and therefore it's positive.
So when you're fired, there is no objective value connected to the event (it cannot have one, because if it does, it is not objective), the subjective utility of the event is created through what we imagine we can use the event for. If you imagine it as something that retracts from your resources, then it will be assigned a negative value (low usefulness). If you imagine it as something that frees you from responsibility and allow you to find a new and better job, then it will be assigned a positive value (high usefulness). And here comes the crescendo - if usefulness is subjective, and you are the one assigning things their value, and it lies within your power to assign it usefulness, or unusefulness, and the former will make you happy and the latter will make you unhappy, the following question will then be asked;
If there's no objective value, and you alone decide how valuable an event is to you, then what possible rational reason could you have to assign something a value that does not make you happy?"
Therefore to consciously reinterpret negative events by assigning a positive value= happiness.
The Original Poster went on to stipulate that turning an assigned value into an automatic positive thought takes practice and repetition. Very important in strengthen those neural pathways of habit!
Unhappiness and negative thinking isn't all bad as it tells us there's something not right which needs attention so that it can be changed or learned from, but when negativity is having too much control over one's life, then assigning a new value seems like the way to go.
Thankfully I have matured and questioned certain things in life over the years which has made a positive benefit on my life. Rather than running on auto pilot without realizing it like many people, I decided it would be beneficial to instead learn what drives different people and trying to understand other's interpretation of the world. Doing so makes me more accepting of alternative opinions, where as I used to just think people were ignorant idiots if they didn't share my views- Sometimes, they still are! But at least that's not a knee jerk reaction I have now. Even stuff like getting dumped by women doesn't seem so bad- I used to think 'I'm a nice guy, why me!?' then hold a load of resentment towards these women for dumping me. Now I realize that it was never anything personal- I just wasn't meeting their needs or sharing their values and if value is subjective to each individual, how can I take it personally? In other words, in a long-winded, round-about way, I've come to my own conclusion that one person's trash is another's treasure. This makes me feel less negative towards myself and others, which is great!
However, I am still guilty of having certain set standards and opinions about things which haven't changed for years, if ever! Let's use drawing as an example. What happens is, I don't value: the process of drawing and being creative, the learning journey of tackling and overcoming tricky angles or shading or achievement in attempting to be productive and all I do value is achieving an expert end result. While this drives me to improve, it equally hinders me be creating negative feelings of failure if I don't consistently produce an expert result with ease, therefore to avoid such feelings, I don't practice and then don't improve. And then I feel shit for being bad at drawing! In this example, at least I know what my brain is thinking. I just need to assign new value to the process and less value to achieving a consistent expert result.
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