Welcome back! This is episode #022 of To Take It Or Leave It, a podcast to help you change the way you look at things, end your mental suffering and give you some motivation and inspiration to live your best life! I’m so glad you’re here! I’m Val Poirier and I’m your host. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. Today’s topic is: Is Negativity Bias Running Your Life?
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Negativity bias causes our brains to naturally notice, focus on and become very aware of negative things instead of positive ones. It’s an evolutionary trait. Our brains are designed to help us survive back in the caveman days. Our survival back then used to depend on avoiding danger.
You can’t outrun your mind so it’s important to understand how to work with it. The more you understand it, the better you will understand how it impacts you and everyone around you. You will also understand why it operates the way it does. You see, our brains want to protect us and are on constant high alert to look for anything that can harm you and make you aware. It makes you aware of its perceptions through your body. This goes back to the basics. Our beliefs cause our thoughts, which cause our feelings, which cause our actions. When you’re in a negative mindset, you have negative emotions in your body which gets in the way of insight and finding solutions. It derails your focus away from reality.
So now you might be wondering how to overcome this if it’s built in to our brain. Well there are some strategies you can use and like everything else in life, the more you practice them, the easier they get until they become a habit. Self awareness is key. If you can check up on yourself throughout the day, you will start to recognize the thoughts and behaviours that are helpful and unhelpful in your life. Once you’re aware of these, you can then challenge them and replace them with more beneficial ones. Let’s say you notice that every afternoon, you need a pick me up and so you reach for a candy bar even though you know you will crash in a couple hours and it’s contributing to your weight problems. What if you could train yourself to go for a brisk walk or do some form of exercise instead and get the boost you need?
Another strategy is to become more mindful. Some techniques for this are breathing and meditating, both of which can be done almost anywhere. Through mindfulness, you can start to observe your feelings and thoughts more objectively, allowing you to replace them with better ones. Reframing the events in your life from negative to positive ones help you to overcome the negativity bias as well. Nothing means anything unless you tell yourself it does so be mindful of what you’re telling yourself.
Let’s take a simple example. Something that often triggers people is when people in their life are always late. You might ask yourself why this triggers you. What is the story in your head that you’re telling yourself? Maybe you’re telling yourself it means you don’t matter enough to the other person for them to be on time. But if you break that down even further, what’s your underlying belief? In this case, your belief would be that people who are late don’t care about other people. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe this to be true at all nor do I have any proof of it. Things happen. People have time management struggles. No one is perfect. I don’t like people for their time management skills, I like them for their company. But when you get upset that someone is late, you start a negativity spiral inside yourself. Before you decide to get upset, ask yourself if it will matter in a year and how much power and energy do you want to give in this moment?
So then what can you replace this with? It is physically impossible to experience negative and positive emotions at the same time. What can you do with your time when someone is late? Can you catch up on your e-mail? Can you create positive grateful thoughts and be mindful? Can you make choosing and reaching for positivity a habit and fight the human tendency to focus on the negative?
Negativity bias can often show up in our relationships as well. That’s why the 5 to 1 rule is key. This means that for every time you take out of the jar, which represents the relationship, you should be putting in 5 times. People feel the negative experiences more, so it’s important to make sure we’re having a lot more positive experiences than negative ones. What you focus on is what you will see, so if someone did something that was hurtful to you, it’s important to remember and focus on all the good things about them. People will hurt people. This is a fact and it’s because we are human and imperfect. This is also why communication and forgiveness are so important in all healthy relationships. When someone does something that is hurtful to you, let them know and also let them know what you need instead. People who care about you will listen and help you figure out something that works for the both of you. Most people don’t intentionally go out and try to hurt other people. Most people are good and are doing the best they can. Sometimes people are going through things in their personal life and it’s best to communicate with them to get a better understanding or give them some grace if they aren’t that close with you. At least that’s my belief.
Negativity bias can run your life or you can take control of it while taking control of your life. The choice is yours to make!
That’s it for today! Please share this podcast with someone you know and help share my message. The goal is to grow the podcast and I can only do that with your help so I appreciate it. I do this for you! Remember to love yourself first. You know yourself better than anyone else and be confident that you will make the right decisions for how to live YOUR best life.
If you’re looking for more motivation to achieve YOUR goals in life, join my Facebook group! This is an amazing community of like minded people! You can find it in my profile on Instagram @valcpoirier. Also, tag me in your stories with my podcast and what you think or what you’re doing while you listen to it and I’ll share it right back in mine! You are worthy and you are beautiful and I truly appreciate you all. Keep reaching for your goals….you got this! See you next time!