Like everyone else in the world, the coronavirus has really impacted my household and has forced us to make changes to our daily lives. During the lockdown my husband and I have been staying at home a lot and I’ve been lucky to have attended some valuable webinars and coaching conference events that have reminded me that our brains are soft and can be rewired. This is important because most of us tend to focus on the negatives in our lives rather than the positives and this seems to be especially true during this pandemic. Have you ever found yourself dwelling on an insult? Or fixating on your mistakes? You might have had a really good day but then a single offhanded comment from someone can ruin your entire day. You then spend the rest of the day stewing over the words and wondering what they meant or what you did to deserve that. When you go home and a loved one asks you how your day was, you reply that it was horrible, even though for the most part it was great apart from that one negative incident.
So what is negativity bias and what causes it? Why do humans tend to focus on the 1 bad instead of the 10 good things? Why do the bad things seem so much bigger and more important? It’s part of our human survival instinct to focus on and commit to memory our negative experiences, where our lives are negatively impacted; instances where we are wronged, and hurt, when specific foods make us sick or routes that make us feel unsafe, etc. Those who were more attuned to the dangers and the bad things in life were more likely to survive and therefore more likely to pass on this survival gene.
Think back to life during prehistoric ages, when we lived in caves and survived as hunters and gatherers. We had to quickly learn to hone our senses and skills in order to survive and provide for our family. Let’s say one day, you woke up to a beautiful day, everything was going well and safe and you even found an apple tree filled with apples that would be a good source of food for you and your family. Towards the end of the day, you were heading home with your apples and while walking along a specific path, you spotted a lion. You didn’t have your hunting tools with you so you were very scared. It followed you a while but you were able to get away. What would you have remembered from that day? Would you remember the beautiful day or the apple tree? Probably not. You would remember being stalked by a lion, your near brush with death. You would commit that to memory so you would be more careful next time when going down that specific route.
Research has shown that negative events have a much greater impact on our brains than positive ones. Our brains have a bigger response to negative stimuli than to neutral or positive ones and this starts before we are even 1 year old! This means that in almost any interaction, we are more likely to notice the negative things rather than the positive ones and will also remember the negatives things more vividly later.
Much like how we need pain to stop us from picking up hot pots or cutting ourselves, negativity bias protects us from other dangers in the world. However, this bias makes us pay more attention to the bad things that happen, making them seem more important that they really are. This can have a powerful effect on our behaviours, decisions and our relationships.
As humans, we tend to:
Remember traumatic experiences more vividly than positive ones
Recall insults more easily than compliments
Think about negative outcomes more frequently than positive outcomes
Respond more strongly to negative events than to equally positive ones
Focusing Our Minds
The interesting thing about the human brain is that it cannot multitask. We can only focus on one thing at a time. Take a look at the photo below and try to take note of all the red items.
Now, WITHOUT looking at the photo again, Can you remember what green objects there were? Maybe you cheated or maybe you have a photographic memory but the point of this exercise is to illustrate that we cannot focus on more than one thing at a time.
But what we CAN do is that we can try to focus on the positives instead. Try the following exercise:
Give yourself 1 minute to list all the negatives about your life during COVID-19
Now do the same by listing all the positives.
How did it go? Are you surprised that there are more positive things on your list than expected? They are all in front of you, we just choose to focus on the bad things.
Remember that we have CHOICE over our thoughts. Only when the negative thoughts start does our suffering start. Why are we so quick to label things as bad? If you think back in your life, have you ever experienced a really low part of your life but later realised that it was actually a good thing or good things came out of it? So why should we choose to remember or focus on the bad instead of the good? The first step is to be aware of your tendency to focus on the negative. Only then can you try to change your outlook into a more positive one.
Keep those positive thoughts going: how do we focus on the Apples rather than the Lion?
Something that I’ve started to do during our lockdown to help focus on positivity is working on a gratitude journal. It was time to finally practice what I preach. I started by trying to do a handwritten entry every night in a journal. That lasted for 1 night...
My husband then suggested that we share what we’re grateful for over dinner every night and we’ve been doing this during most of lockdown. We were able to establish a new Ritual of Connection while building a more positive outlook in life! Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
Recently I have also started to use the Gratitude app on my phone to jot down what I’m grateful for as we discuss it over dinner. I like to have them written down so that I can refer back to the entries. I’ve realised that a handwritten journal before bed just wasn’t for me but typing them out casually on my phone worked better. And that’s ok! What’s important is that I found a way that works for me. There’s no right or wrong way.
Some other gratitude prompts from the app:
What made today a good day?
What are you grateful for today?
What are you looking forward to?
What is something you learned today?
What made you smile today?
When you think of the things that made you smile today or what you’re grateful for, take the time to really savour those moments and focus on how they made you feel. Replay them in your mind several times and pay extra attention to them so that they are transferred and stored in your long-term memory.
I hope that these tips and exercises are helpful to understand how we can re-wire our brain to regain control of our emotions and re-engineer our outlook on life.
How do you try to focus on the positives of your day? If you feel like you want to share anything with me, feel free to contact me or comment below. I’ll be happy to hear from you!
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1. Alberini CM. Long-term memories: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Cerebrum. 2010;21.
3. Cacioppo JT, Cacioppo S, Gollan JK. The negativity bias: Conceptualization, quantification, and individual differences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2014;37(3):309-310.
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