Have you ever walked away from a generally positive meeting and noticed your brain zeroing in on the one negative moment? If so, you are not alone. This is the way brains work! When we feel stressed and overwhelmed our brain responds by narrowing our focus, scanning for danger, and pouring mental energy into identifying problems rather than finding solutions. This is our hard-wired negativity bias in action.
But once we become aware of our brain’s natural tendency to respond this way, we can discover ways to interrupt the negativity cycle. We can redirect our own focus and energy toward the more positive aspects of life. This doesn’t mean we live in a fantasy world where everything is great, but rather that we recognize the bias at work in our own brain and choose to notice that our lives are also filled with good things. Two practices that can help us balance out negativity bias are gratitude and savoring.
Stopping to focus on the things in our lives we are grateful for allows us to notice things our negative brain might miss. Creating a regular gratitude practice helps our brain see the whole picture of what is happening in our lives, not just the bad stuff. Taking time each day to write down ten things we are grateful for can be a powerful practice. A few tips as you begin a gratitude practice: 1) Focus on small things first, you can be grateful for how comfy your couch is or how soft your cat’s fur feels; 2) Try to avoid comparison, try not to frame your gratitude in terms of ways you have more than others; 3) Try to get in touch with what really makes you feel grateful, not the things you think you should be grateful for. This list is just for you (it’s ok if your kids aren’t on it everyday.)
Another way to counter our negativity bias is with savoring. Savoring just means focusing on, and extending as long as possible, the good feelings we have throughout the day. Most of us have small moments each day when we experience joy or pleasure. It can be something simple like biting into a delicious strawberry or letting chocolate melt on your tongue. It can be feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin or the smell of blooming flowers. When such moments arrive, we can try to savor them as long as possible. Again, our brains naturally want to rush past the good things and dwell on the negative, but if we can learn to savor each positive moment a bit longer it can have a real impact on our overall happiness. Maybe begin by trying to find three times each day when you can savor something good. The practice may expand with time, but even a few moments of savoring will begin to balance out our negativity bias over time.
Photo by Amadeo Valar on Unsplash
