How to Overcome Negative Bias that Tricked Your Mind
When you turn on the news channel, it is most likely filled with negative headlines. Emotion-provoking messages trigger our reactions, whether they are joyful, compassionate or gloomy and disheartening. But have we asked ourselves, why we tend to pay greater emphasis to the sad news and why news are predominantly negative? Scientific evidence suggests that the average human is more physiologically activated by negative than by positive news stories, and this is related to a mind tendency called Negative Bias. The media is knowingly deliberately chasing the stories or toning the stories in a non-neutral way, all thanks to the human nature of paying more attention to alarming information.
Beyond the news world, most of us often find ourselves tend to dwell on a past misfortune and cannot let go of the emotions. We often remember the traumatic experience better than positive moments. We tend to focus on our partner’s flaws after a silly argument. Most likely, you let negative bias took control of how you react to different life events.
It can be hard to overcome the negative bias but strategies can be taken to improve.
Realize that you have not given yourself enough time to evaluate the situation.
Take a break and breathe before the negative emotions wind up in your head. Simply get up and get some water before you let the negativity consumes you. Distance from the current environment often helps too. Take a walk outside and distract yourselves from focusing on the event.
Reframe the thoughts and feelings.
What kind of disturbing emotion are you experiencing? Ashamed? Guilty? Angry? Anxious? Insecure? Define and describe your feelings will be the first step to understand and trace your feeling back to the source.
Practice positive thinking.
Keep a gratitude journal and document the joyful things that can lift you up. Positive thinking is a habit that can be developed through training. Now that we know negative bias impacts how we memorize life events, we can take proactive actions to remind ourselves of the positivity that we should be focusing on.
Originally published at https://2minutesgrowth.com on April 10, 2021.
