Balancing Negative Bias

Hello there, this is Dheeraj today’s theme is going to be on the negativity bias oo what is that mean.
Well have you ever have the experience you wake up in the morning roll out the bed and take a nice warm shower put a new pair of jeans new shirt, look at the mirror you look sharp you have a nice breakfast in the peace read the paper drive to work there is no traffic listen to your favorite music get into work high-five to your best friend and sit down to your chair and open your email box and there is an email from your boss and it says see me in 10 min and immediately your mind goes into panic attack you start saying oh my god I am going to lose my job, I am not able to pay the bills, how I’m going to pay the rent, how can I provide for my family and all the matter of 5 sec you got fired you lose your house and you family going to hate you.
Meanwhile, you have no idea what actually going to happen your mind is created this elaborate stories based on what it thinks
and you have also forgotten all the other positive thinks where happening in the morning.

Have you ever experienced this?

One negative thing completely high jack our mind and of course, the boss wasn’t going to fire us they just want to review some other report from last quarter bla bla bla….

But it’s amazing that mind can do this that it can get into high jack way that it can create a negative story and also completely going to forgot the good thing going on the life and the actual reason for this a neurological reason for this its called NEGATIVITY BIAS.
meaning that our brain is actually more predisposed to focus on what could go wrong in our life what is negative in our lives what could go right then positive and you might think.

Well, why would the brain do something ridiculous like that especially it makes me anxious all the time that another really good question and in fact, we have another really good answer.

If we look at the evolutionary psychology we can learn why this is happening.
Just imagine 2 of your ancestors let say 200 yrs ago and they are hunting for food and they are going to forest they come across the really dark cave and one of the people goes wow look at that dark cave we should go in there I bet there are unicorn rainbow and a lot of fun thing we can do and another one just look at it in her eyes and say are you serious??

It is a dark cave we have no idea what is there could be a lion, bears there is no way you getting me to go in there and if you do I am leaving anyway you are looser.

I am going in anyway so they go into a cave and of course what happened there is bear they get chopped they get eaten and they die. and the other one being a paranoid and anxious they go back to camp and they survived and then they procreate and pass down the anxious genes to all of us several 100 thousand years later.

So natural selection we are literally wired to scan your environment for could potentially go wrong we are wired to more anxious because those of your ancestors that were more anxious that were more focusing on what can go wrong were the ones that survived. Its the whole carrot vs stick thing.

If you did not get carrot one day well you have another chance to get it tomorrow. If you miss the stick one day you are not around to get the carrot. So it makes sense from the revolutionary point of view that we focus what could go wrong and this is why we have a great morning with everything is flowing beautifully and then we get it into work a couple of hours later and 1 email completely raddled our world. and so ever being told by someone that you are a negative person or why you are focusing on the negative side, well you can just tell them my ancestors were just better than your ancestors then surviving.

Everyone has a Negative bias to some extent. So you don’t have to argue with them.

We all better focusing negative than we are the positive and with the neuroscientist who studies the fact of mediation on the brain and the negativity bias in the brain says that the brain is actually like the Velcro for negative and Teflon for the positive but fortunate he provides hope and we can shift the negativity bias to be more positivity bias we just need to train that capacity.

One of the ways we can do that just by savoring positive events while there are here and not letting them slip on by like water on Teflon paint.

So focus on the Gratitude and think what you are grateful for the life

when you feel that sensation just sense into it more deeply.

This is why body enhancement is more important it enhances its capacity well we sit with that positive experience and feel that positive experience starts firing the different neurons on the brain that essentially tells the brain this is something worth paying attention to and this is something worth appreciating.

Just make the meditation practice and bring up the positive thread in your mind and it may heal you through the day.

It just shifts the negativity bias to the positivity bias.

Have a nice day.