HPS Magazine

In media studies, mass communication, media psychology, communication theory, and sociology, media influence and media effects are topics relating to mass media and media culture‘s effects on individual or an audience’s thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Whether it is written, televised, or spoken, mass media reaches a large audience. Mass media’s role and effect in shaping modern culture are central issues for study of culture.

The influence of mass media has an effect on many aspects of human life, which can include voting a certain way, individual views and beliefs, or skewing a person’s knowledge of a specific topic due to being provided false information. The overall influence of mass media has increased drastically over the years, and will continue to do so as the media itself develops. The influence of the media on the psychosocial development of children is profound. Thus, it is important for physicians to discuss with parents their child’s exposure to media and to provide guidance on age-appropriate use of any media, including television, radio, music, video games and the Internet. As mass media evolve, media criticism also often evolve – and grow in strength – during times of media change with new forms of journalism, new media formats, new media markets, new ways of addressing media markets and new media technologies. Media influence is the actual force exerted by a media message, resulting in either a change or reinforcement in audience or individual beliefs. Media effects are measurable effects that result from media influence or a media message. Whether a media message has an effect on any of its audience members is contingent on many factors, including audience demographics and psychological characteristics. These effects can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short-term or long-lasting. Not all effects result in change; some media messages reinforce an existing belief. Researchers examine an audience after media exposure for changes in cognition, belief systems, and attitudes, as well as emotional, physiological and behavioral effects.

There are several scholarly studies which addresses media and its effects. Bryant and Zillmann defined media effects as “the social, cultural, and psychological impact of communicating via the mass media”. Perse stated that media effects researchers study “how to control, enhance, or mitigate the impact of the mass media on individuals and society”. Lang stated media effects researchers study “what types of content, in what type of medium, affect which people, in what situations”. McLuhan points out in his the media ecology theory that “The medium is the message

Sphere

The relationship between politics and the mass media is closely related for the reason that media is a source in shaping public opinion and political beliefs. Media is at times referred to as the fourth branch of government in democratic countries. As a result, political figures and parties are particularly sensitive towards their media presence and the media coverage of their public appearances. Mass media also establish its influence among powerful institutions such as legislation. Through the proper consent in mediums to advocate, different social groups are able to influence the decision-making that involves child safety, gun control, etc…

History

Media effects studies have undergone several phases, often corresponding to the development of mass media technologies.

Power of media effects phase

During the early 20th century, developing mass media technologies, such as radio and film, were credited with an almost irresistible power to mold an audience’s beliefs, cognition, and behaviors according to the communicators’ will. The basic assumption of strong media effects theory was that audiences were passive and homogeneous. This assumption was not based on empirical evidence but instead on assumptions of human nature. There were two main explanations for this perception of mass media effects. First, mass broadcasting technologies were acquiring a widespread audience, even among average households. People were astonished by the speed of information dissemination, which may have clouded audience perception of any media effects. Secondly, propaganda techniques were implemented during war time by several governments as a powerful tool for uniting their people. This propaganda exemplified strong-effect communication. Early media effects research often focused on the power of this propaganda (e.g., Lasswell, 1927). Combing through the technological and social environment, early media effects theories stated that the mass media were all-powerful.

Representative theories:

• Hypodermic needle model, or magic bullet theory: Considers the audience to be targets of an injection or bullet of information fired from the pistol of mass media. The audience are unable to avoid or resist the injection or bullets.

Limited media effects phase

Starting in the 1930s, the second phase of media effects studies instituted the importance of empirical research while introducing the complex nature of media effects due to the idiosyncratic nature of individuals in an audience.The Payne Fund studies, conducted in the United States during this period, focused on the effect of media on young people. Many other separate studies focused on persuasion effects studies, or the possibilities and usage of planned persuasion in film and other media. Hovland et al. (1949) conducted a series of experimental studies to evaluate the effects of using films to indoctrinate American military recruits. Paul Lazarsfeld (1944) and his colleagues’ effectiveness studies of democratic election campaigns launched political campaign effect studies.

Researchers uncovered mounting empirical evidence of the idiosyncratic nature of media effects on individuals and audiences, identifying numerous intervening variables such as demographic attributes, social psychological factors, and different media use behaviors. With these new variables added to research, it was difficult to isolate media influence that resulted in any media effects to an audience’s cognition, attitude, and behavior. As Berelson (1959) summed up in a widely quoted conclusion: “Some kinds of communication on some kinds of issues have brought to the attention of some kinds of people under some kinds of conditions have some kinds of effect.” Though the concept of an all-powerful mass media was diluted, this did not determine that the media lacked influence or effect. Instead, the pre-existing structure of social relationships and cultural contexts were believed to primarily shape or change people’s opinions, attitudes, and behaviors, and media merely function within these established processes. This complexity had a dampening effect upon media effects studies.

Representative theories:

• Two-step flow of communication: Discusses the indirect effects of media, stating that people are affected by media through the interpersonal influence of opinion leaders.
• Klapper’s selective exposure theory: Joseph T. Klapper asserts in his book, The Effects Of Mass Communication, that audiences are not passive targets of any communication contents. Instead, audiences selectively choose content that is aligned with previously held convictions.

Chomsky filters

Noam Chomsky has named five filters through which mass media operate:

• Ownership: At the end of the day, mass media firms are big corporations trying to make profit so most of their articles are going to be whatever makes them the most money.
• Advertising: Since mass media costs a lot more than what most consumers are willing to pay, media corporations are in a deficit. In order to fill this gap, advertisers are used. While the media is being sold to consumers, those consumers are, in effect, being “sold” to advertisers.
• The Media Elite: By its nature, journalism cannot be completely regulated, so it allows corruption by governments, corporations, and large institutions that know how to “game the system”.
• Flak: It is difficult for a journalist to stray from the consensus because the journalist will get “flak”. When a story does not align with the narrative of a power, the power will try discrediting sources, trashing stories, and trying to distract readers.
• The Common Enemy: Creating a common enemy for audiences to rally against unifies public opinion.

Rediscovered powerful media effects phase

Limited media effect theory was challenged by new evidence supporting the fact that mass media messages could indeed lead to measurable social effects. Lang and Lang (1981) argued that the widespread acceptance of limited media effect theory was unwarranted and that “the evidence available by the end of the 1950s, even when balanced against some of the negative findings, gives no justification for an overall verdict of ‘media importance.'”

In the 1950s and 1960s, widespread use of television indicated its unprecedented power on social lives. Meanwhile, researchers also realized that early investigations, relying heavily on psychological models, were narrowly focused on only short-term and immediate effects. The “stimuli-reaction” model introduced the possibility of profound long-term media effects. A shift from short-term to long-term effect studies marked the renewal of media effects research. More attention was paid to collective cultural patterns, definitions of social reality, ideology, and institutional behavior. Though audiences were still considered in control of the selection of media messages they consumed, “the way media select, process and shape content for their own purposes can have a strong influence on how it is received and interpreted and thus on longer-term consequences” (Mcquail, 2010).

Representative theories:

• Agenda-setting theory: Describes how topic selection and the frequency of reporting by the mass media affected the perceived salience of specific topics within the public audience.
• Framing: Identifies the media’s ability to manipulate audience interpretation of a media message through careful control of angles, facts, opinions, and amount of coverage.
• Knowledge-gap theory: States the long-term influence of mass media on people’s socioeconomic status with the hypothesis that “as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, higher socioeconomic status segments tend to acquire this information faster than lower socioeconomic status population segments causing the gap in knowledge between the two to increase rather than decrease”.
• Cultivation theory: As an audience engages in media messages, particularly on television, they infer the portrayed world upon the real world.

Negotiated media effects phase

In the late 1970s, researchers examined the media’s role in shaping social realities, also referred to as “social constructivism” (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989). This approach evaluated the media’s role in constructing meaning and corresponding social realities. First, the media formats images of society in a patterned and predictable way, both in news and entertainment. Second, audiences construct or derive their perception of actual social reality—and their role in it—by interacting with the media-constructed realities. Individuals in these audiences can control their interaction and interpretation of these media-constructed realities. However, when media messages are the only information source, the audience may implicitly accept the media-constructed reality. Alternatively, they may choose to derive their social reality from other sources, such as first-hand experience or cultural environment.

This phase also added qualitative and ethnographic research methods to existing quantitative and behaviorist research methods. Additionally, several research projects focused on media effects surrounding media coverage of minority and fringe social movements.

Representative research:

• Van Zoonen’s research (1992): Examines the mass media contribution to the women’s movement in The Netherlands.

New media environment phase

As early as the 1970s, research emerged on the effects of individual or group behavior in computer-mediated environments. The focus was on the effect of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in interpersonal and group interaction. Early research examined the social interactions and impressions that CMC partners formed of each other, given the restrictive characteristics of CMC such as the anonymity and lack of nonverbal (auditory or visual) cues. The first generation of CMC researches simply compared existing “text-only” internet content (e.g. emails) to face-to-face communication (Culnan & Markus,1987).For example, Daft and Lengel (1986) developed the media richness theory to assess the media’s ability of reproducing information.

The internet was widely adopted for personal use in the 1990s, further expanding CMC studies. Theories such as social information processing (Walther, 1992) and social identification/deindividuation (SIDE) model (Postmes et al. 2000) studied CMC effects on users’ behavior, comparing these effects to face-to-face communication effects. With the emergence of dynamic user-generated content on websites and social media platforms, research results are even more conducive to CMC studies. For instance, Valkenburg & Peter (2009) developed the internet-enhanced self-disclosure hypothesis among adolescents, stating that social media platforms are primarily used to maintain real-life friendships among young people. Therefore, this media use may enhance those friendships. New CMC technologies are evolving at a rapid pace, calling for new media effects theories.

Preference-based effects model

New media and web technologies, including social media, are forcing communication scholars to rethink traditional effects models (Bennett and Iyengar, 2008). With changing media environments and evolving audience behaviors, some argue that the current paradigm for media effects research is a preference-based effects model (Cacciatore, Scheufele & Iyengar, 2016). This model is called preference-based reinforcement because the increasingly fragmented online news environment matches content with audiences based on their existing beliefs and preferences.

This is driven by three phenomena:

1. Media outlets have become increasingly tailored towards narrow ideological fragmented publics in order to creative more lucrative advertising environments
2. Individuals rely on self-selected information consistent with their prior beliefs aggregated into personalized feeds, called “echo chambers”
3. New media interfaces, such as tailored results from search engines, lead to narrow information tailoring by both voluntary and involuntary user input

These three factors might also lead to rethinking strong media effects in the new media environment, including the concept of “tailored persuasion”.

Typology

The broad scope of media effects studies creates an organizational challenge. Organizing media effects by their targeted audience type, either on an individual (micro) or an audience aggregate (macro) level, is one effective method. Denis McQuail, a prominent communication theorist, organized effects into a graph.

Micro-level

Theories that base their observations and conclusions on individual media users rather than on groups, institutions, systems, or society at large are referred to as micro-level theories.

Representative theories:

• Elaboration likelihood model
• Social cognitive theory of mass communication
• Framing theory
• Priming theory

On a micro-level, individuals can be affected in six different ways.

1. Cognitive: The most apparent and measurable effect; includes any new information, meaning or message acquired through media consumption. Cognitive effects extend past knowledge acquisition: individuals can identify patterns, combine information sources, and infer information into new behaviors.
2. Beliefs: A person cannot validate every single media message, yet might choose to believe many of the messages, even about events, people, places, and ideas they have never encountered first-hand.
3. Attitudes: Media messages, regardless of intention, often trigger judgments or attitudes about the presented topics.
4. Effect: Refers to any emotional effect, positive or negative, on an individual from media exposure.
5. Physiological: Media content may trigger an automatic physical reaction, often manifested in fight-or-flight response or dilated pupils.
6. Behaviors: Researchers measure an individual’s obvious response and engagement with media content, noting any change or reinforcement in behaviors.

Macro-leve

Theories that base their observations and conclusions on large social groups, institutions, systems, or ideologies are referred to as macro-level theories. Representative theories:

• Knowledge gap theory
• Risk communication
• Public sphere theory in communication
• Limited effects theory
• The Dominant Paradigm
• Culturalist theory

McQuail’s typology

Figure 1: McQuail’s typology of media effects

Created by Denis McQuail, a prominent communication theorist who is considered to be one of the most influential scholars in the field of mass communication studies. McQuail organized effects into a graph according to the media effect’s intentionality (planned or unplanned) and time duration (short-term or long-term). See Figure 1.

Key media effects theories

Micro-level media effects

The following are salient examples of media effects studies which examine media influence on individuals.

Third-person

Individuals often mistakenly believe that they are less susceptible to media effects than others. About fifty percent of the members in a given sample are susceptible to the third-person effect, underestimating their degree of influence. This can allow an individual to complain about media effects without taking responsibility for their own possible effects. This is largely based on attribution theory, in which “the person tends to attribute his own reactions to the object world, and those of another, when they differ from his own, to personal characteristics.”Standley (1994) tested the third-person effect and attribution theory, reporting people are more likely offer situational reasons for television’s effect upon themselves, while offering dispositional reasons for other members of an audience.

Priming

This is a concept derived from a network model of memory used in cognitive psychology. In this model, information is stored as nodes clustered with related nodes by associated pathways. If one node is activated, nearby nodes are also activated. This is known as spreading activation. Priming occurs when a node is activated, causing related nodes to stand by for possible activation. Both the intensity and amount of elapsed time from the moment of activation determine the strength and duration of the priming effect.

In media effects studies, priming is how exposure to media can alter an individual’s attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs. Most media violence research, a popular area of discussion in media effects studies, theorizes that exposure to violent acts may prime an individual to behave more aggressively while the activation lingers.

Social learning

Miller and Dollard (1941) pioneered social learning theory with their finding that individuals do not need to personally act out a behavior to learn it; they can learn from observation. Bandura (1977) expanded upon this concept, stating that audiences can learn behaviors from observing fictitious characters.

Media violence

The effects of media violence upon individuals have many decades of research, starting as early as the 1920s. Children and adolescents, considered vulnerable media consumers, are often the target of these studies. Most studies of media violence surround the media categories of television and video games.

The rise of the motion picture industry, coupled with advances in social sciences, spurred the famous Payne Fund studies and others. Though the quality of the research has been called into question^{[by whom?]}, one of the findings suggested a direct role between movies depicting delinquent adolescents and delinquent behaviors in adolescents. Wertham (1954) later suggested that comic books influenced children into delinquent behaviors, provided false worldviews, and lowered literacy in his book Seduction of the Innocent. This research was too informal to reach a clear verdict, and a recent study suggests information was misrepresented and even falsified, yet it led to public outcry resulting in many discontinued comic magazines.

Television’s ubiquity in the 1950s generated more concerns. Since then, studies have hypothesized a number of effects.

Behavioral effects include disinhibition, imitation and desensitization.

• Disinhibition: Theory that exposure to violent media may legitimize the use of violence. Has found support in many carefully controlled experiments. In one study, men exposed to violent pornography were found to behave more aggressively towards women in certain circumstances.

1. Imitation theory: States individuals may learn violence from television characters. Bandura‘s Bobo doll experiment, along with other research, seems to indicate correlation even when controlling for individual differences.
2. Desensitization: An individual’s habituation to violence through exposure to violent media content, often resulting in real-life implications. Studies have covered both television and video game violence. Desensitization: Has become an issue with Hollywood adaptations in regard to crimes. It is very easy for a movie producer to become so caught up in making their films look artistic that they begin to make their audiences indifferent to the true horror taking place on screen.

Cognitive effects include an increased belief of potential violence in the real world from watching violent media content leading to anxiety about personal safety.

Macro-level media effects

The following are salient examples of media effects studies which examine media influence on an audience aggregate.

Cultivation

Not all media effects are instantaneous or short-term. Gerbner (1969) created cultivation theory, arguing that the media cultivates a “collective consciousness about elements of existence.” If audiences are exposed to repetitive themes and storylines, over time, they may expect these themes and storylines to be mirrored in real life.

Agenda setting in the news

There are two primary areas of media agenda-setting: (i) the media tells us the news and (ii) the media tells us what to think about the news. Press coverage sends signals to audiences about the importance of mentioned issues, while framing the news induces the unsuspecting viewer into a particular response. Additionally, news that is not given press coverage often dissipates, not only because it lacks a vehicle of mass communication, but also because individuals may not express their concerns for fear of being ostracized. This further creates the spiral of silence effect.

Framing

News outlets can influence public opinion by controlling variables in news presentation. News gatherers curate facts to underscore a certain angle. Presentation method—such as time of broadcast, extent of coverage and choice of news medium—can also frame the message; this can create, replace, or reinforce a certain viewpoint in an audience. Entman (2007) describes framing as “the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among them to promote a particular interpretation.” Not only does the media identify supposed “causes of problems,” it can also “encourage moral judgments” and “promote favored policies.”

One long-term implication of framing, if the media reports news with a consistent favorable slant, is that it can lend a helping hand to certain overarching institutions of thought and related entities. It can reinforce capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, individualism, consumerism, and white privilege. Some theorize this bias may reinforce the political parties that espouse these thought paradigms, although more empirical research is needed to substantiate these claims.

Media outlets contend that gatekeeping, or news filtering that may result in agenda-setting and specific framing, is inevitable. With a never-ending, near-limitless amount of information, filtering will occur by default. Subcultures within news organizations determine the type of published content, while editors and other news organization individuals filter messages to curate content for their target audience.

The rise of digital media, from blogs to social media, has significantly altered the media’s gatekeeping role. In addition to more gates, there are also more gatekeepers. Google and Facebook both cater content to their users, filtering though thousands of search results and media postings to generate content aligned with a user’s preferences. In 2015, 63 percent of Facebook and Twitter users found news on their feeds, up from 57 percent the previous year. With some many “gates” or outlets, news spreads without the aid of legacy media networks. In fact, users on social media can act as a check to the media, calling attention to bias or inaccurate facts. There is also a symbiotic relationship between social media users and the press: younger journalists use social media to track trending topics.

Legacy media outlets, along with newer online-only outlets, face enormous challenges. The multiplicity of outlets combined with downsizing in the aftermath of the 2008 recession makes reportage more hectic than ever. One study found that journalists write about 4.5 articles per day. Public relations agencies have begun to play a growing role in news creation. “41 percent of press articles and 52 percent of broadcast news items contain PR materials which play an agenda-setting role or where PR material makes up the bulk of the story.” Stories are often rushed to publication and edited afterwards, without “having passed through the full journalistic process.” Still, audiences seek out quality content—whichever outlet can fulfill this need may acquire the limited attention span of the modern viewer.

Spiral of silence

Individuals are disinclined to share or amplify certain messages because of a fear of social isolation and a willingness to self-censor. As applies to media effects studies, some individuals may silence their opinions if the media does not validate their importance or their viewpoint. This spiral of silence can also apply to individuals in the media who may refrain from publishing controversial media content that may challenge the status quo.

Limited effects theory

According to Lazarsfeld‘ s research in the 1940s, the mass media is not able to change strongly-held attitudes held by most people, as contrary to the popular beliefs. This theory suggests that viewers are selective media messages in accordance with their existing worldviews. The use of mass media simply reinforce these concepts without easily changing their opinion, or with negligible effects because well-informed people are heavily leaned on personal experience and prior knowledge.

The Dominant Paradigm

This theory suggests that the mass media is able to establish dominance by reflecting the opinion of social elites, who also own and controls it, described by sociologist Todd Gitlin as a kind of “importance, similar to the faulty concept of power”. By owning, or sponsoring particular medium, the elites are capable to alter what people perceived from the use of mass media.

Features of current studies

After entering the 21st century, the rapid development of the Internet and Web 2.0 technology is greatly reforming media use patterns. Media effects studies also are more diverse and specified. After conducting a meta-analysis on micro-level media effects theories, Valkenburg, Peter & Walther (2016) identified five main features:

Selectivity of media use

There are two propositions of this selectivity paradigm: (1) among the constellation of messages potentially attracting their attention, people only go to a limited portion of messages; (2) people are only influenced by those messages they select (Klapper 1960, Rubin 2009). Researchers had noticed the selectivity of media use decades ago and considered it as a key factor limiting media effects. Later, two theoretical perspectives, uses-and-gratifications (Katz et al. 1973, Rubin 2009 and selective exposure theory (Knobloch-Westerwick 2015, Zillmann & Bryant 1985), were developed based on this assumption and aimed to pinpoint the psychological and social factors guiding and filtering an audience’s media selection. Generally, these theories put the media user in the center of the media effect process, and conceptualize media use as a mediator between antecedents and consequences of media effects. In other words, users (with intention or not) develop their own media use effects.

Media properties as predictors

The inherent properties of media themselves are considered as predictors in media effects.

• Modality: Media formats have been evolving ever since the very beginning. Whether the modality is text, auditory, visual, or audiovisual is assumed to be affecting the selection and cognition of the users when they are engaging in media use. Known for his aphorism of “The medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhan (1964) is one of the best-known scholars who believe it is the modality rather than the content of media that is affecting individuals and society.
• Content properties: The majority of media effects studies still focus on the impact of content (e.g. violence, fearfulness, type of character, argument strength) on an audience. For example, Bandura’s (2009) social cognitive theory postulates that media depictions of rewarded behavior and attractive media characters enhance the likelihood of media effects.
• Structural properties: Besides modality and content, structural properties such as special effects, pace, and visual surprises also play important roles in affecting audiences. By triggering the orienting reflex to media, these properties may initiate selective exposure (Knobloch-Westerwick 2015).

Media effects are indirect

After the all-powerful assumption of mass media was disproved by empirical evidence, the indirect path of the media’s effect on audiences has been widely accepted. An indirect effect indicates that an independent variable (e.g., media use) affecting the dependent variables (e.g., outcomes of media use) via one or more intervening (mediating) variables. The conceptualization of indirect media effects urges attention to be paid to those intervening variables to better explain how and why media effects occur. Additionally, examining indirect effects can lead to a less biased estimation of effects sizes in empirical research (Holbert & Stephenson 2003). In a model including mediating and moderating variables, it is the combination of direct and indirect effects that makes up the total effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable. Thus, “if an indirect effect does not receive proper attention, the relationship between two variables of concern may not be fully considered” (Raykov & Marcoulides 2012)

Media effects are conditional

In correspondence with the statement that media effect is the result of a combination of variables, media effects can also be enhanced or reduced by individual differences and social context diversity. Many media effects theories hypothesize conditional media effects, including uses-and-gratifications theory (Rubin 2009), reinforcing spiral model (Slater 2007), the conditional model of political communication effects (McLeod et al. 2009), the elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo 1986).

Media effects are transactional

Many theories assume reciprocal causal relationships between different variables, including characteristics of media users, factors in the environment, and outcomes of media (Bandura 2009). Transactional theories further support the selectivity paradigm (Feature 1), which assumes that the audience shapes their own media effects by selectively engaging in media use; transactional theories make an effort to explain how and why this occurs. Transactional media effects theories are the most complex among the five features. There are three basic assumptions. First, communication technologies (e.g., radio, television, internet) function as reciprocal mediators between information producers and receivers, who engage in transactions through these technologies (Bauer 1964). Second, the effect of media content is reciprocal between producers and receivers of media content, meaning they influence each other. Producers can be influenced by receivers because they learn from what the audience needs and prefers (Webster 2009).Third, transactions can be distinguished as interpersonal.

However, these features are only limited within micro-level media effects studies, which are mostly focused on short-term, immediate, individual effects.

Political importance of mass media

One study concluded that social media is allowing politicians to be perceived as more authentic, with a key finding showing voters feel politicians are more honest on social media compared to in interviews or on TV shows. This opens up a new voter base for politicians to appeal to directly.

Though new media allows for direct voter-politician interaction and transparency in politics, this potential to subvert information on a wide scale is particularly harmful to the political landscape. According to a 2018 report from Ofcom, 64% of adults got their news from the internet and 44% from social media. Features distinct to social media, such as likes, retweets, and shares, can also build an ideological echo chamber with the same piece of real or fake news recirculating.

There are three major societal functions that mass media perform to political decisions raised by the political scientist Harold Lasswell: surveillance of the world to report ongoing events, interpretation of the meaning of events, and socialization of individuals into their cultural settings. The mass media regularly present politically crucial information on huge audiences and also represent the reaction of the audience rapidly through the mass media. The government or the political decision-makers have the chance to have a better understanding of the real reaction from the public to those decisions they have made.

What Is Juneteenth? The Federal Holiday’s History and Meaning, Explained

What is the history of Juneteenth?

The celebration started with the freed enslaved people of Galveston, Texas. Although the Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in the South in 1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865.

Laura Smalley, freed from a plantation near Bellville, Texas, remembered in a 1941 interview that her former master had gone to fight in the Civil War and came home without telling his slaves what had happened.

“Old master didn’t tell, you know, they was free,” Smalley said at the time. “I think now they say they worked them, six months after that. Six months. And turn them loose on the 19th of June. That’s why, you know, we celebrate that day.”

Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. That was more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.

Granger delivered General Order No. 3, which said: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”

The next year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston. Its observance has continued around the nation and the world since. Events include concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Why is it called ‘Juneteenth’?

The term Juneteenth is a blend of the words June and nineteenth. The holiday has also been called Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day.

When did Juneteenth become a federal holiday?

The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was signed into law on June 17, 2021, two days before the 2021 Juneteenth holiday.

However, the vast majority of states already recognized Juneteenth as a holiday or a day of recognition, like Flag Day, and most states hold celebrations. For years, Juneteenth has been a paid holiday for state employees in Texas, New York, Virginia and Washington, and hundreds of companies give workers a day off for Juneteenth.

When is Juneteenth 2022 and will federal employees get a day off?

This year, federal and private employers are giving workers the day off to observe the holiday on Monday, June 20, because June 19 falls on a Sunday.

Will markets and banks be closed for the holiday? 

Yes, the Federal Reserve System and the New York Stock Exchange have added Juneteenth to their list of observed holidays and will be closed on Monday, June 20, because June 19 falls on a Sunday.

Since most financial institutions follow the Fed’s holiday schedule, the vast majority of banks are expected to be closed on Monday as well.

The U.S. Postal Service will also be closed on June 20, as will all federal government buildings and government offices.

How do you observe Juneteenth?

Early celebrations involved church picnics, family gatherings and speeches.

Today, while many of those traditions remain, some larger cities host parades and festivals for the community.

Why was Juneteenth made a federal holiday?

The national reckoning over race helped set the stage for Juneteenth to become the first new federal holiday since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was created.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and had 60 co-sponsors. Bipartisan support emerged as lawmakers struggle to overcome divisions that are still simmering following the police killing last year of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Supporters of the holiday have worked to make sure Juneteenth celebrators don’t forget why the day exists.

“In 1776 the country was freed from the British, but the people were not all free,” Dee Evans, national director of communications of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, said in 2019. “June 19, 1865, was actually when the people and the entire country was actually free.”

There’s also sentiment to use the day to remember the sacrifices that were made for freedom in the United States — especially in these racially and politically charged days. Said Para LaNell Agboga, museum site coordinator at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center in Austin, Texas: “Our freedoms are fragile, and it doesn’t take much for things to go backward.”

By: Staff and AP  • Published June 17, 2022 

Bundle your incentives. Be flexible. Get some support. Here’s how to get — and stay — motivated.

I was so tempted to skip the run. It was a Thursday afternoon in early December, and by the time my five Zoom meetings were done, it was getting dark and the sky was spitting sleet. Still, I headed out the door, because my last call of the day had been with a couple of professional runners, each with multiple national championship titles in distance running under their belt. Physician Megan Roche and her husband David had encouraged me to think of my workout as recess after a long day of work, rather than another item on my to-do list.

“I struggle with motivation all the time,” Mr. Roche said. What gets him over the hump is finding joy in the activity itself. Sometimes it helps to get a little silly, he said. “It sounds ridiculous, but if you’re running down a slight hill or even just tired, put your arms out like you’re an airplane and suddenly everything become less serious.”

It did sound silly, but when I tried the airplane arms trick, my dark, cold run became surprisingly joyful. Here are some other ways you can find inspiration and maybe even a little glee in your daily workout.

Don’t think of it as exercise.

When exercise isn’t appealing, making it feel like something else can help. Crystal Steltenpohl, a psychologist at University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, who studies exercise motivation, recalls a conversation she had with a participant in one of her studies who said, “I go play basketball, but that’s just hanging out with friends.” In other words, although the activity qualified as exercise, that was just a fringe benefit, rather than the motivating factor.

I spent years as a competitive runner, cyclist and skier. And while I continue to do these activities, I usually get the recommended 22 minutes per day of moderate-intensity exercise automatically, without ever thinking about exercise. Instead, I do my morning walk to clear my head, feel present in my surroundings and connect with my husband and my dogs.

“If you ask, most people will say they want to exercise for their health, and that’s a great goal,” said Katie Heinrich, an exercise scientist at Kansas State University. “But what gets people actually moving is doing something they enjoy.” There’s no perfect activity for everyone. “How do you like to move?” Dr. Heinrich said. “Maybe it’s dancing, or it could be a walk in the park. For some people, it might be CrossFit or Peloton.”

Casey Johnston stumbled upon weight lifting through a Reddit thread by a woman starting a strength-training program. That post inspired Ms. Johnston, a health and science writer who now publishes the newsletter She’s a Beast, to try a similar program. She discovered that she loved it much more than running. Whereas running gave her too much time to ruminate over anxious thoughts, “You can’t think of anything else when you have 200 pounds on your back,” she said.

Bundle your incentives.

Last month, researchers published a megastudy testing the effectiveness of 54 different approaches to motivating people to exercise more. The experiment, which enlisted more than 60,000 members of the 24 Hour Fitness chain as test subjects, found that offering a free audiobook was one of the most effective ways to get people to the gym. The idea was to give participants something to look forward to while exercising, said one of the study’s organizers, Katy Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.”

Make exercise a priority.

“The number-one reason people give for not exercising is time,” Dr. Heinrich said, and the only reliable way to find the time is to prioritize it. “You have to make a decision to put exercise into your day, it’s not just magically going to happen.”

Ms. Johnston used to try and squeeze exercise into her life by doing things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, “But that never really stuck or gave me any validation that I was doing anything meaningful,” she said. “Giving exercise a distinct place in my life was motivating.”

If you think of exercise as optional, you give yourself permission to skip it. Instead, try thinking of it as an essential part of your job, said Brad Stulberg, author of “The Practice of Groundedness” and a frequent writer about human performance. “Whether you are a parent, business person, physician, writer, artist, lawyer or educator, exercise will make you better at what you do,” he said. “It will help you focus, stay calm and collected, and improve your energy.”

Be flexible.

Making exercise a priority doesn’t mean you need a rigid schedule. A study Dr. Milkman and some colleagues published in 2020 found that giving yourself flexibility to meet your goals might boost your chance of success. Researchers studied more than 2,500 Google employees, randomly assigning some of them to get paid for going to the company gym during a window of time they had identified in advance as the most manageable, while others could opt to go anytime.

The researchers had expected that committing to specific times would help people form stronger habits, said lead author John Beshears, a behavioral economist at Harvard Business School. Instead, the people who’d been given flexibility ended up going more often after the payments ended. When the group on the rigid program missed their planned workout, they didn’t go at all, whereas the group that had practiced finding the time continued to do so, Dr. Milkman said.

Get some support.

“The best fitness motivator is a friend. They hold you accountable to show up and they support you when you don’t,” Mr. Stulberg said.

In one 2017 study, Dr. Heinrich interviewed CrossFit gym owners and coaches and found that feelings of community were a strong motivator for people who continued with the classes. “It’s not that you have to go, it’s that you want to go and are drawn in by the group,” she said.

Having a cheerleader on the sidelines can also give you a boost, Dr. Steltenpohl said, by affirming that you’re putting in the work and acknowledging the obstacles you’ve faced. “If you work out alone, having someone to check in with can be helpful.”

Create an environment for success.

Look for ways to make your surroundings more inviting for physical activity, Dr. Steltenpohl said. Find or create a place where exercise feels enticing. That could be a gym, a park, a walking path or even just your bedroom with an exercise mat and a fitness app, she said. The key is that your surroundings are priming you to succeed.

Dr. Roche usually runs first thing in the morning, and she preps ahead of time by laying out her clothes, getting the coffee pot ready and queuing up an energetic music playlist while she gets ready to run. On winter mornings, she also turns on bright lights and occasionally warms her muscles first in a hot shower.

Anticipate how exercise will make you feel.

It’s tempting to think you’re too stressed or tired to exercise, but oftentimes exercise is exactly what you need to feel better. “You don’t need to feel good to get going, you need to get going to feel good,” Mr. Stulberg said.

Exercise can help you manage your moods, Dr. Steltenpohl said, and when you’re feeling lousy, sometimes exercise is a powerful antidote. “When I get really frustrated, I find that’s a good time to take a walk.”

Ms. Johnston is motivated by how her workouts feel. “I really enjoy how it feels physically to use my muscles and do one concrete task,” she said. She’s also urged on by the progress she achieves through weight lifting. “It’s impossible to make people understand the feeling of getting stronger, especially when they’re new at it,” Ms. Johnston said. It’s a benefit that happens pretty quickly, she said, and it can create a positive feedback loop.

If you slip, try to get back on track right away.

The most effective trick identified in the 24 Hour Fitness megastudy was to incentivize people to get back on track when they missed a session. In this scenario, people committed to coming to the gym on certain days and times, and if they missed one of these planned visits, they’d get a reminder and also a chance to earn extra points if they made their next planned visit. (Participants earned points that they could convert to Amazon cash.)

It didn’t take much — about nine cents in extra points — to get people back to the gym, and Dr. Milkman theorizes that it’s the signal “don’t miss your workout twice” that nudged people, rather than the trivial bonus. You could imagine making this more potent by joining the gym with friends, she said.

Let Us Help You Pick Your Next Workout

Looking for a new way to get moving? We have plenty of options.

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• Looking for a mood boost? Try the 8-minute joy workout.
• Are you older or new to exercise? Try the low-impact standing 7-minute workout.
• For something more challenging, pick the original 7-minute workout.
• Looking to improve your form? Our guides can help you master essential movements like pull-ups and push-ups.
• For a gentle workout, try yoga for relaxation. Or choose yoga to make you strong.
• To build muscle, this 9-minute workout will strengthen your core, arms and legs.
• For proven fitness benefits, try this 11-minute routine used to test the effects of brief body-weight workouts.
• Hoping to take your workout out of the gym? You have plenty of options to explore, including swimming and bouldering.

Keith E. Morrison for The New York Times

Having occasional feelings of anxiety is a normal part of life, but people with anxiety disorders experience frequent and excessive anxiety, fear, terror and panic in everyday situations. These feelings are unhealthy if they affect your quality of life and prevent you from functioning normally.

Common symptoms of anxiety disorders include:

• Feeling nervous
• Feeling helpless
• A sense of impending panic, danger or doom
• Increased heart rate
• Hyperventilation
• Sweating
• Trembling
• Obsessively thinking about the panic trigger

These feelings of anxiety and panic can interfere with daily activities and be difficult to control. They are out of proportion to the actual danger and can cause you to avoid places or situations.

You should see your health care provider if your anxiety is affecting your life and relationships. Your provider can help rule out any underlying physical health issue before seeing a mental health professional.

While most people with anxiety disorders need psychotherapy or medications to get anxiety under control, lifestyle changes and coping strategies also can make a difference.

Here are 11 tips for coping with an anxiety disorder:

1. Keep physically active.
   Develop a routine so that you’re physically active most days of the week. Exercise is a powerful stress reducer. It can improve your mood and help you stay healthy. Start out slowly, and gradually increase the amount and intensity of your activities.
2. Avoid alcohol and recreational drugs.
   These substances can cause or worsen anxiety. If you can’t quit on your own, see your health care provider or find a support group to help you.
3. Quit smoking, and cut back or quit drinking caffeinated beverages.
   Nicotine and caffeine can worsen anxiety.
4. Use stress management and relaxation techniques.
   Visualization techniques, meditation and yoga are examples of relaxation techniques that can ease anxiety.
5. Make sleep a priority.
   Do what you can to make sure you’re getting enough sleep to feel rested. If you aren’t sleeping well, talk with your health care provider.
6. Eat healthy foods.
   A healthy diet that incorporates vegetables, fruits, whole grains and fish may be linked to reduced anxiety, but more research is needed.
7. Learn about your disorder.
   Talk to your health care provider to find out what might be causing your specific condition and what treatments might be best for you. Involve your family and friends, and ask for their support.
8. Stick to your treatment plan.
   Take medications as directed. Keep therapy appointments and complete any assignments your therapist gives. Consistency can make a big difference, especially when it comes to taking your medication.
9. Identify triggers.
   Learn what situations or actions cause you stress or increase your anxiety. Practice the strategies you developed with your mental health provider so you’re ready to deal with anxious feelings in these situations.
10. Keep a journal.
    Keeping track of your personal life can help you and your mental health provider identify what’s causing you stress and what seems to help you feel better.
11. Socialize.
    Don’t let worries isolate you from loved ones or activities.

Your worries may not go away on their own, and they may worsen over time if you don’t seek help. See your health care provider or a mental health provider before your anxiety worsens. It’s easier to treat if you get help early.

Siri Kabrick is a nurse practitioner in Behavioral Health in Fairmont, Minnesota

What is inner strength?

• Inner strength means the possession of willpower, self-discipline and staying power.
• It is resilience, perseverance and tenacity.
• It means inner fortitude.
• It expresses itself as assertiveness, courage, and the ability to withstand difficulties and obstacles.
• Inner strength is like a powerful engine that drives you forward, towards accomplishment and achievement.
• It is like a powerful battery that gives you the power, endurance and discipline to carry on in situations, where other people fail or break down emotionally and physically.

Inner strength is an essential skill, necessary for carrying out tasks, chores and decisions, and for the achievement of goals. Without it, it’s difficult to start anything, and it’s difficult to get to the finish line.

1. We need inner strength in our life. We need it for dealing with stressful people, with our boss, and with our employees.
2. Teachers need it when they teach and while dealing with difficult children.
3. Business people need it for dealing with customers and when plans do not proceed in the way they want.
4. It is an essential skill for athletes, to help them persevere with their training and to keep going in contests.
5. We need it for keeping our patience and when dealing with impatient people.

This list can go on and on.

This skill is erroneously considered as belonging only to highly successful people.

The truth is that everyone can develop inner strength. Everyone can improve this power with some training.

What Are the Benefits of Inner Strength?

Sometimes, in certain circumstances, people display a great degree of inner strength, which they did know they possessed.

In difficult or dangerous situations, many break down, but some, display some kind of unexplainable power, and help themselves and others.

In order to make this power available to you at any time, you need to cultivate it. This requires training.

• Inner strength enables you to control unnecessary and harmful impulses and habits
• If you tend to be lazy, developing this skill will help you overcome laziness.
• If you procrastinate, it will help you stop procrastinating.
• Inner strength can enhance your self-esteem and self-control.
• Cultivating and gaining inner strength will give you more control over your life.
• It makes it easier to make decisions and follow them through.
• It gives you the courage and strength to endure difficulties and hardships.

You need this ability for doing a good job, for success in business, for studying, losing weight, exercising, maintaining good relationships, changing habits, self improvement, meditation, spiritual growth, keeping promises and for almost everything else.

Do You Lack Inner strength?

How many times you wished you had more inner strength, willpower or self discipline?

How many times you lacked the persistence and inner stamina to follow your decisions and plans?

Do you admire and respect strong individuals, who have overcome obstacles and difficulties and reached far, because of the inner strength they possessed? Most people are not are not born with inner strength, but it can be developed like any other skill.

• A great number of people lack the inner strength to say “no”.
• Many find it difficult to display assertiveness.
• A lot of people lack the inner strength to follow their dreams.
• Some, are afraid to take action and make changes, preferring to leave things as they are.
• There are people who lack the resolution and the persistence to go on with their plans to the end.

How to Cultivate Inner Strength

You can cultivate your inner strength, even if you lack it now. How far you go and how strong you become depends on your earnestness, ambition, and the time devoted to this pursuit.

Developing this ability requires that you train your willpower and self-discipline. This is a gradual process and is highly beneficial.

I have emphasized the importance of developing willpower and self-discipline in my article on this topic, and in my book Strengthen Your Willpower and Self Discipline.

Contrary to erroneous beliefs:

1. You do not require super ordinary powers to gain inner willpower, self-discipline and inner strength.
2. You do not need to sleep on a bed of nails, fast, or stand on one foot for days, as fakirs supposedly do.
3. The concept that the development of inner strength requires you to undergo suffering and physical hardships is not true.

You get stronger through constant practice, just like exercising your muscles at a gym makes your muscles stronger. In both cases, when you need inner power or physical strength, they are available to you and are at your immediate disposal.

Steps and Exercises for Gaining Inner Strength

Here are a few steps and exercises to increase your inner strength:

1. Refuse to satisfy unimportant or unhealthy desires of yours. Stop and think how unimportant and meaningless they are.
2. Strive to carry out important tasks, even if you feel inner resistance to make the effort. Refusing to satisfy useless, harmful or unnecessary desires, and abstaining from negative reactions adds to your inner strength.
3. Don’t read the newspaper for a few days.
4. Now and then, drink your coffee or tea without sugar.
5. Climb up the stairs instead of taking the lift.
6. Park your car a little farther away from you destination, so that you have to walk.
7. Now and then choose not to watch one of your favorite TV programs.
8. Read a book that is useful and informative, but which you find boring.
9. Curb your desire to criticize people.
10. Delay your desire to retort angrily.
11. Strive to get out of bed quickly on a cold day.
12. Be more mindful of your actions.
13. Learn to respond calmly, while using your common sense, instead of reacting instinctively and with anger or impatience. Showing more compassion and forgiveness are an act of inner strength, especially when people display resentment and anger and are unable to forgive.

Though the exercises seem simple, their practice adds you inner strength.

These exercises are only a few examples to show you how you can develop your inner strength. By practicing these or similar exercises, you gain inner power, which you can use when you are in need of it.

Practicing these simple exercises, will develop your inner muscles, just like lifting barbells develops your physical muscles.

After practicing the above mentioned exercises, I strongly advise you to read and practice the exercises in the book about willpower and self-discipline. You will find in this book a simple but powerful and systematic method of training.

In time, you would gain control over yourself, your habits, your reactions and your life. This will take you closer to achieving you dreams and your goals.

About the Author

My name is Remez Sasson. I am the author and creator of SuccessConsciousness.com, which I have been running since 2001. Join me on a fabulous journey to self improvement, happiness, success, positive lifestyle, conscious living and meditation, through my website, articles and books.

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Over the past few months, we’ve had plenty of opportunities to dwell on all that’s wrong, but you’d be surprised at how you can find ways to smile, even laugh, amidst turmoil.

Comedian and U.S. Coast Guard veteran Jim Tews (BA ’10) was walking across a New York City street in September 2018 when a car ran a stop sign, hit him, then kept going. He lived to joke about the accident, starting that day with the paramedics.

“I remember telling them ‘you don’t have to take me to the VA because they’ll probably stitch me up with yarn.’”

There weren’t any cameras in that area and the driver was never found. 

“Once I realized I was okay, what I really wanted was video… I didn’t necessarily care that they caught the guy, I just wanted to see what I looked like getting hit by a car.”

Even in the aftermath of an accident that could have been much worse, Tews finds humor in everyday life and uses it to get through tough times. Here he shares five tips on how you can, too.

Find your comedy comfort food. Mine is old episodes of Cheers and Taxi. There’s a lot of great new comedy you can watch to distract yourself, but there’s something more soothing about watching a show that doesn’t use cell phones in a storyline.

Learn to laugh at yourself. It happens to be my coping mechanism that I’ve turned into a career. We’re all ridiculous beings. 

Share your most embarrassing stories with people you love. This is pretty connected to number two, but I spend a lot of time around my peers who regularly do embarrassing and mildly improper things. Being able to share those stories is cathartic. Just know your audience. This might be a better activity for a family gathering as opposed to a work meeting.

Laugh at a stranger when they’re well out of earshot. Feel okay about it, knowing a stranger will one day do that to you.

Get a cat or a very goofy dog. I laugh more at my animals than pretty much anything else. They’re hilariously shameless and unaware.

What Causes Negative Self-Talk? Negative self-talk can come from a place of depression, low self-confidence, and anxiety and be part of a more significant mental health concern. However, you may also have habits that are causing negative self-talk.

Do you ever find yourself asking this question; why am I so negative about myself? You are not alone; research has found that of the thoughts we think throughout the day, 80 percent of them are negative. 

This negativity impacts not only mental health but also physical health. Do you have a desire to learn how to overcome negative self-talk? 

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Are you wondering what is negative self-talk? Keep reading and learn everything you need to know about negative self-talk. 

What Is Negative Self-Talk?

Do you ever hear the little voice in your head telling you that you are not good enough? Or that you will never get what you want or reach your goals? 

That is negative self-talk. Take all the bad thoughts you have about yourself, and they all fall into this category. 

What Causes Negative Self-Talk?

Negative self-talk can come from a place of depression, low self-confidence, and anxiety and be part of a more significant mental health concern. However, you may also have habits that are causing negative self-talk. 

Some of these habits include: 

• Not addressing relationship problems
• Poor health habits
• Too much time alone
• Not asking for help
• Failing to practice self-care
• Denying your negative self-talk experience
• Surrounding yourself with negative people

If you are regularly engaging in any of the above habits, they can cause negative self-talk. 

Effects of Negative Self-Talk

Everyone gets down on themselves sometimes. So, what’s the big deal about negative self-talk? 

Constant negative self-talk can have many effects that go beyond the thoughts in your head.  

Perfectionism

One of the effects of negative self-talk is perfectionism. In this instance, it’s no longer good enough to be good or great. You must be perfect. 

This need for perfection can have a significant impact on your life and cause additional stress. 

Limited Thinking

How often is that little voice in your head telling you that you are not good enough or that you can’t do it? Eventually, you will start believing the thoughts that are persistent within your head. 

Physical Symptoms

The thoughts in your head can lead to changes in your hormones and biochemistry. This can begin to cause you to have physical symptoms. 

Some of the physical symptoms you could experience include gastrointestinal or digestive problems. 

Impact on Relationships

Negative self-talk can impact your relationships with others. These thoughts can make you seem needy or insecure. 

In addition, these thoughts can cause you to shut yourself off and communicate poorly. If you have children, this can impact your relationship with them as well. 

If your child sees you constantly criticizing yourself, they will learn that behavior as well. Part of helping a child with negative self-talk is learning how to help yourself. 

Depressed Feelings

Negative self-talk can cause feelings of depression. These feelings can encourage even more negative self-talk, which creates a vicious circle. 

Positive and Negative Self-Talk Examples

How do you combat negativity and bad self-talk? One of the ways you can combat negative self-talk is through counseling. 

In addition, learning what negative self-talk phrases look like can help. 

This helps you learn to first identify them; you can then begin to replace talking bad about yourself with positive self-talk. The best way to combat negative self-talk is by fighting it with positive affirmations and taking away the power the negative thoughts have. 

Negative Absolutes

“I always screw up” or “I will never get this right,” are great examples of using absolutes in thinking. These thoughts are perfect examples of negative self-talk. 

So how do you replace those thoughts? Once you recognize and notice these thoughts, tell yourself the opposite. 

If your thought is that, “I always screw up,” replace that thought with, “sometimes I make mistakes, but that’s okay, I will learn and grow from those mistakes.”

If your thought is, “I will never get this right,” change that thought with this, “I am struggling with this, but I will get it.”

Focusing on Negative Thoughts

“I’m fat.” “I’m too tall.”

“I’m a horrible athlete.” “I’m dumb.”

These are all examples of things you can tell yourself that are negative. These thoughts will chip away at you. 

It can be hard to replace these thoughts when you believe them to be true. However, you can do it. 

Try replacing these thoughts with positive thoughts. Anytime you catch yourself saying something negative about yourself, say five positives about yourself. 

“I am smart.” “I am loving.” 

“I am fun.” “I am talented.”

If needed, you can even surround yourself with these positives. Try writing affirmations on sticky notes and putting them places you will see throughout the day. 

Personalizing

“Sally is upset. I must have done something to make her feel this way.”

“No one wants to hang out. They must not want to spend time with me.”

Personalizing can also be called mind reading. You believe you know what others are thinking about you. 

Not only do you know what they are thinking, but it is negative. This form of negative self-talk is sneaky. It is also more difficult to combat and recognize.

However, you can not only recognize it but learn to combat it. 

“Sally is upset. I wonder if something happened at work?”

“No one wants to hang out. They probably made plans already; I will call and ask about doing something another day.” 

Catastrophic Predicting

“I am going to fail.” “I will not get the job.” 

In this type of negative self-talk, you convince yourself of a bad outcome. Even if there is no reason to believe that the worst will happen, you do. 

When you catch yourself doing this, you can replace those thoughts as well.

“I might not be successful right away, but I will learn and succeed.”

“I will put forth my best foot and do my best. I will get the job.” 

The worst part of catastrophic predicting is that it can cause you to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Negative self-talk in this form can undercut your confidence. You believe you will fail, so you do. 

Guilt

“I hurt Susan by doing this.”

“I was late to work too many times, and I got fired.” 

When you reflect too much on feelings of guilt, it is negative self-talk. These feelings of guilt can influence you negatively. 

Learning to replace these thoughts with positive self-talk is difficult. In part, because in this instance, you need to learn how to forgive yourself. 

“I hurt Susan, but I learned from this mistake and grew. I need to forgive myself.”

“I got fired for constantly being late to work. But I forgive myself and will use this experience to help me be better.”

How to Minimize Negative Self-Talk

1. Catch Your Critic. …
2. Remember That Thoughts and Feelings Aren’t Always Reality. …
3. Give Your Inner Critic a Nickname. …
4. Change Negativity to Neutrality. …
5. Cross-Examine Your Inner Critic. …
6. Think Like a Friend. …
7. Shift Your Perspective. …
8. Say It Aloud.

Give yourself some loving kindness

Try this visualization technique that encourages us to direct goodwill first to ourselves and then to others.

But if there is no “off” switch to our ruminating, the question is ‘How to combat negative self-talk?’ Ultimately, we are the ones in control of this inner voice … even if it sometimes doesn’t feel that way. But one effective tool to prove the truth of this is meditation. Using the Headspace app for just 10 days has been shown to decrease negative emotions by 28% and increase satisfaction with life by 7.5%.

Through training the mind, we get to shift perspective and not let our thoughts and feelings define us. With regular practice, meditation teaches us to let go of self-talk and rumination, and instead access a place of deep confidence that exists beyond the thinking mind.

A new perspective

Meditation will not silence the voice in our heads, that is not the intention. But it will help to find a new perspective that allows us to let go of our inner-critic.

Headspace’s Blue Sky animation reminds us that our thoughts and feelings come and go, like the clouds in the sky, but our underlying sense of happiness and natural self-confidence, like the blue sky, is always present.

Headspace co-founder and former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe says: “For me, the magic happens when we stop … when we stop searching, when we stop trying to be a happier, calmer person and just allow the mind to express itself exactly as it is. Because underneath all the crazy thoughts and challenging feelings is that blue sky.”

• In the right context, negative emotions like anger, grief, sadness or jealousy are perfectly normal.
• Long lasting bouts of negative emotions can stop you enjoying life.
• Coping strategies can help to curb persistent negative feelings.

About negative emotions

Negative emotions can be described as any feeling which causes you to be miserable and sad. These emotions make you dislike yourself and others, and reduce your confidence and self-esteem, and general life satisfaction.

Emotions that can become negative are hate, anger, jealousy and sadness. Yet, in the right context, these feelings are completely natural. Negative emotions can dampen our enthusiasm for life, depending on how long we let them affect us and the way we choose to express them.

Holding onto negative emotions causes a downward spiral

Negative emotions stop us from thinking and behaving rationally and seeing situations in their true perspective. When this occurs, we tend to see only what we want to see and remember only what we want to remember. This only prolongs the anger or grief and prevents us from enjoying life.
The longer this goes on, the more set the problem becomes. Dealing with negative emotions inappropriately can also be harmful – for example, expressing anger with violence.

Emotions are complex reactions

Emotions are complex reactions involving many biological and physiological processes within our bodies. Our brain responds to our thoughts by releasing hormones and chemicals, which send us into a state of arousal. All emotions come about in this way, whether positive or negative.

It’s a complex process and often we don’t have the skills to deal with negative feelings. That’s why we find it hard to cope when we experience them.

How to deal with negative emotions

There are a number of coping strategies to deal with negative emotions. These include:

• Don’t blow things out of proportion by going over them time and again in your mind.
• Try to be reasonable – accept that bad feelings are occasionally unavoidable and think of ways to make yourself feel better.
• Relax – use pleasant activities like reading, walking or talking to a friend.
• Learn – notice how grief, loss and anger make you feel, and which events trigger those feelings so you can prepare in advance.
• Exercise – aerobic activity lowers your level of stress chemicals and allows you to cope better with negative emotions.
• Let go of the past – constantly going over negative events robs you of the present and makes you feel bad.

Where to get help

Your doctor

Your local community health centre

Mental Health Foundation of Australia (Victoria) National Mental Health Helpline Tel. 1300 MHF AUS (643 287)

Sourced from: Better Health Channel