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How to Beat the Negativity Bias
And become a lovely person . . . or at least a person who doesn’t completely suck
Do you want to be a lovely person?
Then entertain lovely thoughts.
I think it’s that simple. You don’t need to try to be a lovely person. You just need to train your brain to think lovely things.
I say it’s “simple,” not “easy.”
We come equipped with a strong negativity bias: negative thoughts are more powerful than positive ones, so we naturally gravitate toward them.
You need to train your brain not to do that. “Weave a little nosegay” is how St. Francis de Sales phrased it. That’s a little too effeminate for me, but the great saint was spot on: think beautiful thoughts, smell lovely ideas.
You may or may not be what you eat, but you do become what you think.
It’s nothing you even notice. You’ll just find yourself being a better person if you continually (relentlessly, ruthlessly, aggressively) rip your mind away from negative thoughts and put it on positive ones.
That’s what I believe, anyway. It’s consistent with cutting-edge psychology and is a staple of Winifred Gallagher’s Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life.
