What’s wrong with the world today? That’s the age old question, isn’t it? It can be any number of things, but if you take note from Louis Armstrong, you can discover a wonderful world, even in the midst of life’s greatest challenges.
But learning to look past the negative requires you to first acknowledge this truth: you have an instinctual bias in place when you are under stress. It causes you to default to a negative perspective. More importantly, it negatively influences your relationships, your personal wellness, and your perspective of the world.
It’s called Negativity Bias.
Negativity Bias is our tendency to give greater attention and credence to negative information and experiences. More specifically:
- It’s complaining about how horrible the traffic is at 8am, while ignoring the kind person who let you in when you were stuck at the stop sign.
- It’s always noticing when your kids “don’t listen,” but failing to notice the ten other times they do.
- It’s complaining about that “thing” your spouse does that drives you nuts, but not thanking him or her for the twenty other things they do that make you feel loved.
Why does this happen?
Negativity Bias is one of our brain’s natural defense mechanisms. It is used to protect us from what it perceives as dangerous or a threat to our survival. Unfortunately, it doesn’t distinguish between reality and fantasy. Therein lies the problem.
Most of us reading this silly blog aren’t facing serious life-or-death threats, like starvation or a lion moving in on our living quarters. Instead, we are facing a long drive through heavy traffic, the idiosyncrasies of others, and what your “friends” post on Facebook.
Our brain sees those negative things as a real threat to your survival! We know them to be merely annoyances or inconveniences, or at worst, things that make us angry. Yet, our brain makes it feel like you aren’t going to survive them! We know we will, but it feels like we won’t.
It keeps us from seeing the wonder of the world around us and causes us to focus on stresses, fears, and anxieties. As a result, we miss the wonder of it all.
So how do we fix it? Well, you can’t “fix it,” but you CAN manage it.
Here are a few simple ways to start:
- Acknowledge your Negativity Bias exists…it takes self-awareness and willingness to take responsibility for your negativity.
- Ask the question, “Is the threat/fear/anxiety I feel reality or fantasy?” or “Am I really in critical danger?”
- Verbally acknowledge the positive in other people – your spouse, kids, co-workers, and the like.
- Keep a gratitude list. Write down three to ten VERY SPECIFIC things each day for which you are grateful.
- Mindfulness exercises…see some of my other blogs for a few.
Do these things consistently and you will begin to notice some of the people and situations in your life aren’t as bad as you thought. You might even begin to think to yourself, “What a wonderful world. “