We are wired for the Negative
Our body’s response to stress is just the beginning of the challenges we face. Our minds have also evolved with a negativity bias.
- A tendency to live in a state of vigilance and anxiety
- Running negative simulations of past regret or future harm and remembering the bad instead of the good.
Have you ever notice how peak moments such as a great dinner, romantic walks, and profound insights are easily forgotten; whereas, intense anxiety, grief, and emotional traumas stay with us for years.
In evolutionary terms, this focus on the negative makes sense.
- It is much more important for long term survival to remember that a deadly snake lives behind that rock, than to remember the lovely flowers it lives amongst.
Yet in the current world, this bias toward the negative leaves us largely thinking about the things that went wrong, and makes us less likely to pay attention to the sunrise, the joy in a child’s laughter, or the feeling of gratitude for the many good things in our lives.
Re-source: Re-embellish
Negative simulations of the future
In addition to impacting memories, our brains negativity bias shapes our projections of the future.
- Our brain is constantly running simulations about what might happen to help us anticipate future dangers that might threaten our survival.
- It is what keeps us awake at 3am, running through future worse case scenarios
- In prehistoric times, it may have been helpful to think about how best to escape from predators, but in modern life, this biological driven tendency can leave us worrying about a disagreement about a co-worker or imagining even increasingly far-fetched, worst case scenarios about life’s challenges.
- Money, job, spouse, reputation, etc.
craving and resource from “Start Here” master the lifelong habit of well-being – by Eric Langshur and Nate Klemp