The sad truth is that debts in emotional balances, just like debts in financial balances, have compound interest. The way you react sets a precedent for the way you handle future incidents. Over time, the thought pattern becomes stronger. You are more likely to perceive an offense, more likely to hold a grudge. You can reach the point where you begin to ward off a perceived attack before an offense even occurs. We reach a point where we are suffering in this negative mindset, and we use negative insecurity as a weapon to limit our suffering. But by using negative insecurity, the best that we can achieve is a balanced transaction. Forget happiness; forget fulfillment; the best we can hope for is just simple neutrality. And, honestly, that’s a pretty crappy best-case scenario.

This is one of the key takeaways that I want you to consider: Negative behaviors are not useful. At most, they can bring you back to a neutral state of nonsuffering. At worst, you’ve expended mental energies that you can never get back and are now at a permanent loss.

Get ready for your next key takeaway: Suffering is caused by attachment to things that are not real. Our lives are in a constant state of flux, and, as a natural part of that, loss and growth and change are all inevitable. You can never be the same as you were a moment ago. But still we attach ourselves to the idea of our current, present self-suffering when it’s threatened with change and uncertainty, even if that is still a better position than where we were when we started. Attachment to things that are not real causes us to suffer, and that suffering causes us to react negatively. When we are consumed with negative thinking, we are distracted.

True story: I have a horrifying fear of spiders. This is an example of negative insecurity. When I am attached to the idea that my current physical self is safe, I suffer when I perceive a threat that makes me think negatively and defensively.

There are three ways that self-defeating behavior manifests: mind, body and spirit. I think that the mind part is fairly self-explanatory. When we are distracted, we can’t focus enough to reach our full potential. For the body, we need to introduce this helpful little hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone. It can’t differentiate between imminent, physical dangers, like a spider, and internal distractions. When it senses danger, cortisol prepares your body for your fight, flight, fear or freeze reaction, and it continues to affect your body for as long as you continue to be distracted by those negative thoughts. Basically, for as long as you are holding the grudge, your cortisol thinks that the spider is still out there, probably above you.

And now for the third part: spirit. You can’t be your true, ethical self when you are distracted by negative thinking. Consider the mind and body portions. You are not as focused, so you are producing subpar work and not making as much money. You are also physically tired and distracted by your health challenges. Then an opportunity comes along, and the potential is really good.

It is so easy to deceive ourselves into thinking that cutting some tiny little insignificant corner really is not that bad as long as we are still doing what is right for the client, and the business is processed in a timely manner. Nobody is keeping a balance sheet of your ethical decisions, but they will judge your success based on how much money you make. You will judge your success based on how much money you make.

When you are attached to these desires for make-believe concepts, such as money or power or image, you suffer at the potential loss of these things. We feel unsuccessful in that moment, and so we look for leverage points to get a hand up. We become so distracted trying to limit our suffering in the short term that we open ourselves up to actions that are self-defeating to a healthy, robust, long-term ethical business.

Imagine that a client, who has always been pretty difficult, but mostly passive, posts a message on social media about how poor your service is. You happen to cross the post, and you get upset. Attachment can be the desire to have something or the desire not to have something. What could you be attached to that is causing you to suffer? I’m attached to the idea of my integrity. I’m scared that people will believe her, and they’ll think I have no integrity. And that’s a really uncomfortable thought for me.

How about your reputation? You’ve gone out of your way to always have an ethical, professional business and to always show up in this moment as a competent professional. Now your reputation could be in danger.

What about Alzheimer’s? Especially if you have a family history, that can be a pretty terrifying thing to think about. Maybe the review was truthful. Maybe you did get those emails and phone calls but did not respond. Could your memory be the thing that you are attached to? What about honesty and the idea of truth? You have been raised never to tell a lie, and you are attached to truth as a fundamental value that we should all hold. And so you suffer to even think that, for others, it can be so carelessly and publicly discarded.

All of these things, these ideas, we can become attached to, either with the desire to have them or the desire not to have them. And we can feel that attachment pretty strongly, but none of these ideas are real. They are all just a relative state measured against some previous moment, which is not the same as the moment that we are in right now.

Negative thinking is distracting, and it is entirely self-defeating because it convinces us to focus our thoughts on limiting the potential future loss, balanced transaction, media critique. So why do we allow ourselves to suffer if we know that the attachment is causing it? Why don’t we just release our attachment and stop thinking so negatively? Well, the first reason is that negative thinking is sticky. Spiders are dangerous; that mushroom is poisonous. We are designed to hold on to these negative thoughts and the negative parts about these things so that we can live longer.

The second thing is that it is effective. Negative thinking results in a changed behavior, which then reinforces negativity as a quick way to protect ourselves from future loss.

And finally, negative thinking is painless for our egos. It takes less courage and less effort to tell people what they should do instead of considering what we would do ourselves. Do you know what that makes us? Hypocrites. Well, what happens if, instead of using negative insecurity and the threat of future loss to change somebody else’s behavior, we use positive insecurity and the promise of a future gain to show them who they can be?

Meagan S. Balaneski, CFP, RFP, is a eight-year MDRT member from Vermilion, Alberta, Canada, who has run her own practice, Advantage Insurance & Investment Advisors, since the age of 25. She received the president’s award for the top mark in Canada for the November 2013 sitting of the Certified Financial Planner exam. She has been published more than 100 times, including features in national magazines.