The Brain Has A Negativity Bias. Here's How To Be Happy Anyway

This is your brain’s negativity bias in action, which makes it like Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good ones. This built-in bias is no one’s fault. It’s the result of the 600-million-year evolution of the nervous system.

As a result, our brain naturally:

While the negativity bias made sense back on the Serengeti plains, today it causes needless stress and suffering, unnecessary wear and tear on the body, and many pointless conflicts with others. It also reduces the healing and growth we gain from everyday beneficial experiences. This bias is a kind of well-intended universal learning disability in a brain designed for peak performance...in Stone Age conditions.

In effect, Mother Nature is tilted toward raw survival but against long-term health and well-being. To level the playing field, we need to tilt toward authentic positive experiences and actively to help them change the brain for the better. In my new book, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness, I explain exactly how to do this for a lifetime of happiness. Here's where to start:

Suppressing or resisting unpleasant, stressful experiences just makes them worse. Instead, let them be while you observe them mindfully, with acceptance and self-compassion. Label them softly to yourself, such as "feeling hurt" or "wanting revenge." This will help calm down the amygdala, which is like the alarm bell of the brain, and stop reinforcing negative experiences. Breathe so that your exhalations are as long as or longer than your inhalations, which will naturally increase the activity of the calming and centering parasympathetic branch of your nervous system1. Recall times you felt determined and capable, and focus on the sense of strength and endurance.

Since the negativity bias narrows the field of attention, we need to make a habit of widening awareness to recognize more of the beneficial things in our lives. We’re actually surrounded by good facts: Someone was friendly, a light switch worked, a child laughed, a flower bloomed. Even in the hardest moments, there are still hopeful, beautiful, interesting, useful things—if only the good intentions and virtues inside one’s own mind. In fact, the positive emotions that come with recognizing what is good help us face, cope with, and recover from adversity, loss, and trauma2.

When you are having a beneficial experience, perhaps thankfulness, feeling cared about, a sense of determination, or realizing there’s a more skillful way to interact with someone, try to:

Looking for more brain tips? Here are an integrative psychiatrist's best tips for improving focus, productivity, and mental clarity.