Life is hard.
But what makes it even harder is that our minds invariably focus on the negatives rather
than the positives.
The sad part is we often can’t help it.
It’s part of human design.
Naturally, as hunter-gatherers, we needed to pay special attention to dangerous situations
in life lest we became food for a wild tiger nearby.
This is called the Negativity Bias and it states that things of a more negative nature
have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and processes than neutral or positive
things, even when of equal intensity.
Researchers at Harvard University found this to be true through an interesting experiment.
They asked participants to identify “blue” dots from a series of a thousand dots ranging
in color from blue to purple.
These dots would flash on the screen one after the other.
Initially, participants identified the colors pretty accurately.
At this time, roughly half the dots were blue and half were purple.
As time went on, however, the researchers started showing fewer blue dots.
Strangely, the participants reacted by identifying a greater number of blue dots than were actually
present.
As the number of blue dots decreased, the participants started identifying dots as blue
when in reality, they were a shade of purple.
It’s as if the participants were trained to see and expect a certain number of blue
dots.
And even when they were not shown, the participants expanded their definition of “blue” to
include shades of purple.
Okay, enough with the blue dots.
Now comes the interesting part.
In further experiments, the researchers found the same effect when participants had to identify
aggressive faces from a group that ranged from ‘very threatening’ to ‘not very
threatening,’ and again when separating unethical research proposals from ethical
ones.
Even though the occurrence of “problems” went down, participants began to misread friendly
and neutral faces as threatening and ethical proposals as fraudulent.
This came to be termed as the “Blue Dot Effect” which suggests that our mind is
conditioned to look for threats and issues, regardless of how safe our environment is.
This means you could be sitting on a vacation in your dream city but still find yourself
focusing on the negative aspects of the journey.
The better things get, the more we nitpick on even the smallest of issues.
This is evident in the fact that we live more comfortable lives than ever before but our
satisfaction levels somehow don’t improve.
While this is how our brain is wired, there’s definitely some good news — we can change
this!
Cultivating a positivity bias is just like any other habit.
Similar to learning the guitar or a dance routine, you will learn with repetition.
To Cultivate a Positivity Bias, First Experience The Positive
The brain learns by repetition.
In order to continuously identify the positives in your life, you first need to experience
these positives consistently, on a daily basis.
This implies you need to have moments of calm, peace, happiness, and joy in your life so
you can eventually make them your default state.
As you learn to engage in these states of consciousness deliberately, the brain will
form new neural connections to turn this into a habit.
New connections in your brain are being formed at every moment.
The more you focus on the negative, the more your brain will be trained to focus on the
negative.
The more you focus on the positive, the more the brain will learn to find positivity.
Most people, however, don’t have the level of awareness this practice requires.
They’re running frantically from one thing to the next without even being aware of their
own biases.
To cultivate this awareness, I would highly recommend some sort of mindfulness training.
It can be meditation, mindful walking, or anything else that grounds you in the present
moment.
All the positive emotions that we talked about exist abundantly in the present moment.
But bringing the mind to the present moment is a challenging task.
That’s what mindfulness helps you with.
As you come back to the present moment, you will start to experience those positive feelings
inside you.
Your task from thereon will be to simply extend those feelings and states of consciousness
to cover as much of your life as possible.
The H-E-A-L Framework To Take In The Good Psychologist Rick Hanson writes in his book
Hardwiring Happiness about how the feelings of contentment and connection, with centers
in the mid-brain and pre-frontal cortex, are easily overwhelmed by physical survival patterns
that inspire negative thinking.
To overcome this bias, Hanson argues that we need regular doses of positive thoughts.
Thus, he suggests practicing the HEAL method based on positive neuroplasticity.
Let’s look at the different components of the practice:
Have a positive experience The first step is to notice a positive experience
that you’re already having.
If not, then try to create one by looking for the good things in the current situation.
Try it now.
Think of a time when you were content, happy, and satisfied with what was going around.
That’s your positive experience.
Hopefully, this shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.
With practice, this process will become much easier.
Enrich it The second step is to enrich the positive
experience by staying with it.
Notice the sensations and the imagery associated with that great experience.
Embody it to make it real and intense in the present moment.
Think about how it made you feel.
What else are you able to notice about that experience?
Go in as much detail as possible.
Stick with your positive thought with a broad, open body, mind, and spirit.
Absorb it After you enrich the experience, let it percolate
into the depths of your heart.
Take it in in a way that really seeps into you.
Since positive thoughts are often so short-lived in our brains, we need to make them stick
for a longer time.
Create a sort of mental snapshot of that experience and store it in memory.
The deeper you go in this step, the easier it will be to remember it again the next time.
Link the positive and the negative Once you’ve skillfully learned to take in
the positive experience, it’s time to find a negative experience in your life and “rewire”
it.
This is important because let’s face it — life isn’t going to give you as many
positive experiences as you’d like.
Initially, try not to pick something too hard for this step.
Pick a mildly negative experience, for instance, someone talking rudely to you.
Now let both the positive and the negative experiences mingle a bit in your head.
Think of the positive one, but keep the negative one at the back of your mind.
Hanson says “what goes together grows together.”
This means that when you face that particular negative experience again, the positive experience
will automatically come to mind, making it easier to deal with the negative.
The “Even Though” Technique “Even though” is just a reframing technique
to put your negative experiences into context and finding the good things in everything.
It includes making a statement that starts with “even though” to reframe negative
experiences into positive.
For example: “Even though I scored badly on my exam,
it’s not the end.
I have other opportunities and I’m okay.
I’m doing other things that I feel inspired by and can take on other options to build
a career” “Even though my grandmother passed away,
she loved me a lot and taught me invaluable lessons.
I can draw on her love whenever I want.”
“Even though I failed in this business, I scaled it to a certain level, met many interesting
people, and learned a lot about entrepreneurship.
I can use them for my next project.”
This is a simple technique that you can use to acknowledge what happened, yet take in
the good without beating yourself up.
All of these techniques rest on one simple principle — what you focus on grows.
Our minds may be biologically built to focus on the negative, we can retrain them to do
the opposite.
The good news is you can control your experience of life just by changing what you focus on.
And you have more power over this than you believe.
So start taking in the good right now.