3 Tips To Train Your Brain To Be More Positive
Near the end of a stressful day, you can end up with a lot of unhappy
chemicals in your quest to stimulate the happy ones.
There are a number of reasons why our brains go from positive to negative, sometimes very quickly. That bad feeling is a chemical by the name of cortisol and it has its own survival purpose. It actually alerts us we’ve found an obstacle so that we can navigate around it and back to our good feelings.
The problem is that once we do that, our brains are back on
the hunt for finding the next obstacle or problem. This is why a lot of
people feel bad more often than others, because they follow their
survival brain wherever it may lead them. The good news is that it’s
quite simple to rewire this natural negativity in our noggins. Here are 3
tips to train your brain to be more positive:
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1. Build Yourself A New Positivity Habit
Negativity can swallow
any of us whole, if we let it. To avoid that, build yourself a new
positivity habit. To do that, spend one minute, 3 times a day, looking
for positives that surround you. Try to do this for at least 45 days to
form the habit. This exercise will train your brain to look for positives the way it is already trained to look for the negatives.
It’s hard to go positive when everyone around you is going negative.
Your mammal brain wants to run when the rest of the herd runs. In the
state of nature, you’d end up in the jaws of a predator if you
ignored your group-mates’ threat signals and waited to see the threat
for yourself. Mammals bond around shared threats, and fighting the
common enemy raises a mammal’s status within its group. If you ignore
the perceived threats that animate your group mates, you will probably
pay the price in social rewards. Positivity has a cost, but the benefit
is greater.
2. Accept That Positivity Isn’t Popular
It’s really, really hard to remain positive when everyone around you
is going negative in a heartbeat. Our mammal brains want us to run when
the rest of the herd runs. Ever notice how us humans bond around shared
threats and fighting the common enemy? That’s the way we’re wired. So
yes, if you ignore the negatives your coworkers, business partner, or
friends are spewing at you, you will probably pay the price in social
rewards, because positivity does have a cost, but the benefit is greater
– like a clear head and a happy heart.
3. What To Do When Your Cortisol Spikes
Though it’s straight natural to have a survival-threat feeling when
your efforts fail to bring immediate visible rewards, you just have to
remind yourself that your survival is not actually being
threatened. As we know, a majority of the most amazing achievements came
from efforts that did not bring immediate, visible rewards and results.
When your results are disappointing, adjust your expectations and move
forward to take another step.
What do you do to stay positive? Let us know in the comments!
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