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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Y Is for Yesses

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Your unconscious shrugs off neutral or positive news or experiences, sometimes barely registering them, and hones in on the negative. You have a stronger emotional reaction to negative stimuli, which increases the likelihood you’ll remember it. Since it takes less time for negative experiences to get stored in memory, your unconscious has more negative memories to draw on than positive ones when it’s evaluating information. And negative experiences affect you longer. As Rick Hanson famously says:

Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.

That’s because your brain’s main concern is your survival, so it’s primed to detect threats. Positive things may indeed help you survive. But negative things can kill you. It’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to expect and prepare for a possible threat than to be surprised or ambushed by one.

It’s easy to forget you’re operating with essentially the same brain your ancestors on the savanna had—a brain that doesn’t necessarily deal effectively with the stimulation, stressors, and sheer volume of information you have to contend with in modern daily life.

The brain is, first and foremost, a survival tool, and the way that it has found to be most effective at guaranteeing survival is through the threat and reward response. Put simply, your brain will cause you to move away from threats and move toward rewards. —Dr. David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work

This may not seem particularly problematic until you realize that, in additional to actual survival needs (food, water, shelter, etc.) and actual physical threats, each of us has personalized our threat-detection system to include situations we have defined as threatening. And once your brain gets the idea that something is a threat, it responds as if it is facing a literal threat to your physical survival.

Your brain automatically looks for what isn’t working: the threats, the slights, the hurts, the things that fall apart or don’t go your way. And because the unconscious part of your brain uses associative thinking, it is all too easy to get on a negative track and stay there. One thing leads to another, or one similar thought reminds you of another similar thought, and before you know it, your mood and your attitude have soured, and your ability to refocus your attention has evaporated.

Count Your Yesses

You can’t stop your brain from noticing the negative, and it wouldn’t even be a good idea to try. But neither do you have to give in to it. The advice to count your blessings comes to mind, but I find blessings to be a loaded word on several levels. I prefer to count my yesses. It’s an effective way to turn the tide when I notice I’ve mentally starting traveling along that road to nowhere.

Although I tend to be pretty optimistic and upbeat, the first thing I noticed when I began this practice was how much easier it is to count my nos. Because the nos are brought to our attention by System 1, the part of the brain that is always on and processes 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, they come to mind immediately and automatically. Counting yesses, on the other hand, requires intention, which is a function of System 2, the conscious part of the brain that is slow, lazy, and easily depleted.

That’s why when you’re tired, stressed, or sick—or when life has dealt you some kind of blow—you simply have less System 2 attention available. It’s easy, then, for the nos to get the upper hand. I remember when I experienced a bout of food poisoning. For several days, the nos were abundant. While I observed the downward trend in my thoughts, I understood what was happening. I was pretty sure my perspective would shift once I got better (which it did), so I didn’t let the nos carry me too far downstream.

It’s easy for one no to outweigh many yesses, so much so that we may not even notice the yesses when they occur. A Facebook friend used to post what she called “The Daily Yes.” It was a good prompt for me because it was my cue to pay attention to what’s juicy and zesty and working in my life—to who and what has said yes to me and who and what I’ve said yes to.

Don’t Let the Nos Foil Your Plans

The negativity bias can really wreak havoc on your attempts to meet your goals, master a challenge, or change an unwanted habit. Your brain is more likely to point out all the things you don’t do—or don’t do as well as you could or should—while ignoring your successes. Along with repetition and perseverance, change requires a cheerleader, not a critic scolding you from the peanut gallery.

If you allow the negativity bias to run unchecked, you’re likely to believe there are more nos than there actually are—and that they mean something. You’re likely to perceive anything that doesn’t work or turn out the way you planned as evidence that something is wrong with you or with your plan instead of using it as feedback to help you adjust your course.

Any time you’re trying to change the status quo is a good time to be intentional about counting your yesses. 

Note: Counting your yesses isn’t the same as positive thinking. Although positive thinking sounds like a good idea, it may be more of a hindrance to success than a help. Nor is positive thinking the same as optimism, which is a character trait. Positivity and optimism are desirable, but not to the point where your glasses become so rose-colored you’re unable to see through them.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

Count your Yesses

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YesAs Rick Hanson famously says, “Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” That’s because your brain’s primary concern is your survival, so it’s primed to pay more attention to the negative. Positive things may indeed help you survive. But negative things can kill you. As far as your brain is concerned, it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to expect and prepare for a possible threat (there might be a tiger behind that bush) than to be surprised (and wounded or eaten) by that tiger.

It’s easy to forget that we’re operating with essentially the same brain our ancestors on the savanna had. But if you want to overcome your brain’s negativity bias, it’s important to remember that System 1, the unconscious part of your brain that runs you most of the time, doesn’t always deal effectively with the stimulation, stressors, and sheer volume of information you have to contend with in your daily life.

It’s easier for all of us to pay attention to the negative: the threats, the slights, the hurts, the things that fall apart or don’t go our way. We don’t have to make a point of looking for what isn’t working in order to find it. Our brain does that automatically.  Another aspect of our survival-based brain—its associative method of “thinking”—makes it easy to get on a negative track and stay there. One darn thing leads to another, meaning one similar thought reminds you of another similar thought. Before you know it, your mood and your attitude have soured, and your ability to refocus your attention has evaporated.

You can’t stop your brain from noticing the negative, and it wouldn’t even be a good idea to try. But neither do you have to give in to it. The advice to count your blessings comes to mind, but I find blessings to be a loaded word on several levels. I prefer to count my yesses. It’s a great way to turn the tide when I notice I’ve mentally starting traveling along that road to nowhere.

Although I tend to be pretty optimistic and upbeat, the first thing I noticed when I began this practice was how much easier it is to count my nos. Because the nos are brought to our attention by System 1, the unconscious part of our brain that is always on and processes 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, they come to mind immediately and automatically without any effort on our part. Counting yesses, on the other hand, requires intention, which is a function of System 2, the conscious part of the brain that is slow, lazy, and easily depleted.

The process of shifting my attention doesn’t just change the mental track I’m on; it also causes me to be aware of how influential my mental model of the world is at any given moment.

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

That quote has been attributed to several different people, but regardless of who said it, it’s true.

When you’re tired, stressed, or sick—or when life has dealt you some kind of blow—you simply have less System 2 attention available. So it’s easy for the nos to get the upper hand. A couple of weeks ago I went through a bout of food poisoning. During the illness itself and the two days that followed, the nos were abundant. I observed the downward trend in my thoughts, but I also understood what was happening. I was pretty sure my perspective would change once I got better (which it did), so I didn’t let the nos carry me too far downstream.

Someone I know regularly posts what she calls “The Daily Yes” on Facebook. It’s a prompt that works well for me because I don’t have a regular schedule for accessing Facebook, so I don’t always see it at the same time of day. But every time I do see it, I stop to read it. It doesn’t matter what the specific content is. It’s the word yes that’s my cue to pay attention to what’s juicy and zesty and working in my life—to who and what has said yes to me and who and what I’ve said yes to.

It’s easy for one no to outweigh many yesses, so much so that we may not even notice the yesses when they occur. That’s why I’ve found it helpful to make a list, whether it’s on paper or just a mental list. It reminds me that my brain does have a negativity bias—but that I don’t have to agree with it or go along for that particular ride.

Why All the News Is Bad: Our Negativity Bias

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negativity-bias

Our brain’s own hardwiring for survival makes us vulnerable to stress and anxiety. It evolved to quickly detect threats in the environment and sound the alarm: time to fight or flee now! When we were facing multiple life-or-death threats a million years ago, it was definitely better to err on the safe side. If we reacted to something that didn’t turn out to be a real threat, no significant harm was done. But if we failed to react to something that did turn out to be a serious threat, it could mean the end of us.

The unconscious part of our brain was all about survival a million years ago, and it’s still all about survival today. Although the world we live in has changed radically, our brain has a ways to go to catch up. Operating at a much faster speed that we can consciously keep up with, making connections and seeing patterns that might or might not be there, the unconscious brain signals red alert at the slightest indication of trouble, setting into motion a cascade of physiological effects.

Sometimes this works for us, keeping us safe from actual harm; however, there are far more false alarms than real ones. And we pay a heavy price when this threat-detection system runs unchecked. It’s at the root of what is called the negativity bias. It’s why we notice, react to, and remember negative events to a much greater degree than we do positive ones.

The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones. –Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

System 1: Danger, Danger, Will Robinson

Our unconscious shrugs off neutral or positive news or experiences, sometimes barely registering them, and hones in on the negative stuff. We have a stronger emotional reaction to negative stimuli, which increases the likelihood we’ll remember it. It takes less time for negative experiences to get stored in memory than for the positive experiences, which means our unconscious has more negative memories to draw on than positive ones when it’s evaluating information. And negative experiences affect us longer.

As a result, we are extremely sensitive to perceived or apparent threats. These days, those threats are less likely to be to our immediate survival. But that doesn’t make any difference to our brain. We react just the same whether the threat is to our ideas and beliefs, to our physical or emotional well-being, to our self-esteem, or to a freedom we hold dear.

We all have the same hardwiring. We are all primed to pay attention to the negative. At this point in time, the danger we’re facing is less a result of threats from the environment and more directly a result of our negativity bias. Whether in our intimate relationships, our international relations, or our personal health and well-being, the actual and potential costs of operating from the negativity bias are enormous.

So what can we do?

System 2: Belay that Order

One thing we can’t do is eliminate the negativity bias. It’s up to evolution to modify our perception of and reaction to threats. Hopefully that will happen before it becomes a moot point.

What we can do is develop an awareness of our predisposition to pay attention to and accentuate the negative. We can use System 2—our conscious attention—to:

  1. Notice the negativity bias in ourselves. It’s not easy to be aware of a cognitive bias in the moment, so often the noticing occurs after the fact. But that’s OK. If we continue paying attention, we’ll get faster at spotting the negativity bias in action. We’ll be less at the effect of it.
  2. Notice the negativity bias in others. The point isn’t to call other people out on it. We’re all operating on autopilot most of the time, and when we’re on autopilot we don’t think things through. If we’re aware that someone else is operating from the negativity bias, we don’t have to get caught up in the fear. We don’t have to react.
  3. Ask: Is there a real threat here or only a perceived threat? Once we become familiar with how the negativity bias works, we can develop the habit of evaluating our reactions and calming ourselves.
  4. Intend to pay attention to positive events and experiences. Yes, our attention naturally goes to the negative, but we can train ourselves to focus on positive things. We can intentionally include more pleasure, joy, and laughter in our lives.

Just because we have a negativity bias doesn’t mean we have to give into and continue feeding it. Let’s keep reminding ourselves that more often than not the threat really is all in our head.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
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