Ep. 132 - You Are What You Think You Are: The Power of Being Positive

In a world that often highlights the negatives, it’s easy to overlook the positive elements that surround us. In this episode we are going to take a closer look at how positivity (and negativity) play roles in our life. Join the conversation as we look at strategies to help us train our minds to notice the good, embrace a mindset shift, and give our lives balance with gratitude and appreciation.

Transcript

All of us have natural skills and talents. Things that just come a little more easily. We may not always see them as talents since they’ve been part of us for so long. Or we hesitate to claim them as such due to outdated tapes running in the back of our minds that contain early adjectives or comments that we adopted as truths many years ago. 

For example, my older brother, Kurt, has had a successful financial career. So it’s not surprising to remember that he kept a paper ledger to track his allowance when we were kids. I, on the other hand, would pound away writing stories using an old typewriter. Growing up, Kurt was good at math and numbers. Somehow, I took that to mean that he was the numbers person in the family. So I didn’t see that as a talent I could also have. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized I was pretty good at numbers, too. 

So what are you really talented at? Can you actually answer that pretty quickly or do you feel the urge to add a lot of qualifiers to it?

I know, I know, it can be tricky to proclaim ourselves as excellent. It’s probably much easier to make a list of things that we’re not good at. 

Here’s the thing though, we get to decide our adjectives and attributes and, yes, even our talents. And they get to evolve.   

The Bottom Line on Top of this episode is to be careful of where we make permanent decisions about ourselves from temporary – or outdated – circumstances.  

As we move through life, our list of Good At This and Bad At This get filled in from different sources. Have you ever done poorly in a class or on a test and then just decided you’re not good at that subject? Or maybe you didn’t get the job or promotion that you wanted, so we decide that’s just not the path for us. And then there are all the free opinions from other people – family, friends, partners, teachers, managers, and even strangers. 

We’re far more likely to believe negative elements more than positive ones, regardless of the source. Think about someone who struggles to take a compliment – maybe that someone is even you. 

Psychology calls this our negativity bias, which is the mind’s tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on that negativity. In almost any interaction, we are more likely to notice negative things and then later remember them more vividly.

For example, you might be having a great day or have a great time at an event and then someone makes an offhand comment. You might find yourself revisiting this throughout the day or after you’re done with the event. Later, if someone asks you how your day was or how the event was, you’re more likely to reply negatively —even though it was overall quite good up until that one thing that bothered you.

Why is this?

Neuroscience has shown there is greater neural processing in the brain in response to negative input. Negative information causes a surge of activity in the critical information processing area of the brain. In turn, our behaviors and attitudes tend to be shaped more powerfully by that negative element.

And all of this negative recall impacts our future decision making and risk tolerance. 

Research studies have shown that people often fear the consequences of the negative outcome more than they desire the potential positive gains, even when the two possibilities are equivalent.

So, when imagining scenarios involving either gaining or losing something, the risk of losing tends to loom much larger in people’s minds. For example, people will have a stronger negative reaction to losing $20 than the positive feelings that would come from gaining $20. This same instinct applies to our aspirations and our ambitions.

Whew, I know this is a lot. 

So let’s turn this into action, doing so means to put more positivity into play. 

It takes more effort for positive experiences to be remembered, so make a point to acknowledge the positive things when and as they happen. This can be a quick practice of noticing the positive elements each day. My kids and I have a practice whenever we’re having a meal is we share our “la la’s” from the day. That reflection becomes data for yourself and for others, and that data gets moved to your long-term memory. So this isn’t just touchy feely homework; it’s actual cognitive calories.  

Another way to do this is to capture the positive components somehow. Our memory is tied to the five senses so find ways to highlight the highlights: Write them down (it can be with your hand or on an app), make them visible somehow with a list or a photo, speak them out loud (even if just to yourself).  

For the next few days, make more space for the good stuff. We find what we seek, so see where the good can multiply. It’s a good thing to remember the good things. And it’s always a good thing to take care to take good care.