3 emails ruined my week

Couple of weeks ago, I published a newsletter about the Silent Husband syndrome.

47 replies came in.

44 were from women sharing their stories. Thanking me. Saying "finally someone gets it."

3 were angry.

"You're generalizing all Indian families."
"What about wives who don't respect their in-laws?"
"This doesn't apply to every marriage."

A week later, I can recite every word from those 3 emails.

The 44 positive ones? I remember they existed. That's it.

My brain picked 3 negative voices over 44 supportive ones.

That's when I realized something was off.

Roy Baumeister spent years analyzing hundreds of studies on human psychology. What he found changed the field.

Bad events hit harder than good ones.
Significantly harder.

His research showed it takes 5 positive experiences to psychologically balance out 1 negative.

John Gottman found the same ratio in marriages. Couples need 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative just to stay stable.

Work teams? High performers maintain 5.6:1. Low performers slip to nearly 1:3 negative.
That's just how every human brain works.

I met my friend Anjali at a wedding.

She's 34. Works at a fintech startup. Just got promoted to team lead.

Over dinner, I congratulated her.

"Thanks. But honestly, I'm terrified of the town halls.”
"You present to clients every week."
"That's different. Those are in small rooms with known faces."

"Remember that all-hands in June? I presented our Q2 numbers. Everything went well."

"So what's the problem?"

"After the meeting, our VP pulled me aside. Said the deck was good but I should 'work on executive presence.'"

Three months ago.

Since then, Anjali's pitched to 5 major clients. Won 3 of them. Led her team to exceed targets by 40%.

She can't remember those clearly.

But "work on executive presence" plays on loop before every presentation.

"Last week the CEO told the leadership team my quarterly performance was outstanding. You know what kept me up that night?"

I didn't need to guess.

"Whether I fumbled a word during my two-minute update. An update nobody else even remembers."

One vague comment from June still outweighs everything else.

I told her about Baumeister’s research. About 5:1 ratio. About how this wasn't her problem. Every brain works this way. Hers was doing exactly what it was built to do.

She called me 2 weeks later.

“I presented at the town hall yesterday. I wrote down three things that went well before I went on stage. The first time I didn’t spiral after.”

Nothing changed about the VP’s comment. She just stopped letting it be the only thing she remembered.

After talking to Anjali, I kept thinking about why so many people I know in India carry old criticism for so long.

Geert Hofstede surveyed 88,000 IBM employees across 76 countries and measured what he called Power Distance: how much a society accepts that authority is distributed unequally.

India scores 77 out of 100.

The world average is 55. The United States is at 40.

What that number means: when someone above you in the Indian hierarchy says something critical, it doesn’t feel like one person’s opinion.

It feels final.

Because your whole life, you were taught that authority is not questioned. Not your father, not your teacher, not your boss. You absorb what they say. You don’t push back on it.

You can’t tell your teacher they’re wrong. That’s insolence.

You can’t tell your elders they hurt you. That’s disrespectful.

You can’t tell your in-laws the comment stung. That’s causing conflict.

So it doesn’t get processed. It gets stored.

For years sometimes.

Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report found that South Asia has the highest rates of sadness (42%) and anger (34%) felt at work across any region in the world. 1 in 5 Indian employees is actively disengaged. 58% are looking for a way out.

I don’t think this is only about bad managers or low salaries.

A lot of it is people carrying words from years ago that were never meant to be permanent sentences.

The engineer who wanted to be a filmmaker but heard “arts is not a real career” at 17 and never let himself forget it.

The founder who remembers one investor’s “this won’t work” more clearly than the 50 customers who love the product.

The product manager who can’t move past one stakeholder’s “this feature is basic” despite three quarters of users asking for it.

We’re not raising anxious people by accident.

We’re raising people who were never taught that authority can be wrong.

Baumeister’s research shows positive experiences fade unless they’re recorded with detail. Vague positives disappear. Specific ones stay. So I write them down before my brain discards them.

For every criticism I give my team, I make five genuine observations about what’s working.

Not hollow praise. Real, specific acknowledgment. Because the ratio is the ratio whether you believe it or not.

And when criticism lands, I ask myself one question: will I remember this next year?

Usually no. That question takes most of the weight out of it.

Three months in, I sleep better. Negative comments still come. They just don’t wake me up at 2 AM anymore.

44 people found last week’s newsletter valuable.

3 didn’t.

My brain wanted me to quit because of the 3.

That’s not a personal weakness. That’s biology. And in India, it’s biology sitting on top of a culture that taught us to take authority’s words seriously and keep quiet about the damage.

You can’t undo that wiring overnight.

But you can start counting the 44.

Until next week,
Ritesh

P.S. What’s the one criticism you can’t forget? Hit reply and tell me. I read every email.