"When your mind is narrow, small things agitate you very easily.
Make your mind an ocean." - Lama Thubten Yeshe
* Do you have an easy time wallowing in whats wrong: the negative? *
If so, then you're like most of us. We all filter our experiences -- but most of us pay too much attention to what goes wrong and too little attention to the good things in our lives -- to what goes right.
The psychological phenomenon is called the NEGATIVITY BIAS: humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative than positive experiences. Humans are prone to this negativity bias, which shows up in our lives in many ways.
If we have a good experience and a bad experience, we tend to give more weight to the negative and quickly lose sight of whats good.
Our capacity to weigh negative input so heavily has evolved for a good reason -- to keep us out of harm's way--our survival depended on it. Remember fight or flight? Scared --> Flee. Angry --> Fight.
It makes sense to learn from things that go wrong, but often we just obsess or wallow about them, which leads to catastrophizing. Such brooding sets us up for anxiety and depression, and it robs us of joy, contentment, and happiness.
* Want to make a deposit in the psychological bank account -- to make your mind an ocean? *
Then its time to focus on the GOOD events, but most of us are not nearly as skilled at analyzing them as we are at dissecting bad events (hence the negativity bias). So, we need to practice being aware of and learning from good events. And the good news is that noticing and analyzing good things sets us up for more good things: more gratitude and more hope in our lives.
* Ready to think about building this capacity in your own life? *
Heres a method for increasing your awareness and consciousness of whats already good:
The activity is called THREE GOOD THINGS.
Every night for two weeks, set aside 10 minutes before you go to bed. Use that time to write down three things that went really well on that day and why they went well. The three things you list can be relatively small in importance (My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today) or relatively large in importance (My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy). Next to each positive event in your list, see if you can answer the question, Why did this good thing happen?
In the morning, when you wake up, reread the list.
This will help you FRAME the new day with in a positive light and prepare you to be even more conscious of whats already good in the new day.
» left by Louis Alloro from New York, NY (183 days 14 hours ago.)
Thanks, Connor. I agree that extreme optimism is unlikeable. I like to think of it in terms of realistic optimism. We always have a choice--how do we choose to view certain situations? This is where a coach comes in handy.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
