Forget About Being Fair and Seeing Both Sides of the Coin. To Live Your Best Life, You Want to Favor Only One Side.
This realization turned my life around.
I met a friend of mine yesterday after a long while, and we talked about life. Classic scenario — we both were sort of jealous, in a good way, of the life situation that the other one was in. And we’re in very different corners of life: she just bought a house, and I’m a nomad, she has a 9–5, while I … am a nomad. Money’s tight on my end, money’s tight on hers, but we both assumed ‘if she can afford that (house/nomad lifestyle), she must be making a killing.’
We’ve done the nice thing and tried to show each other what we love about the other one’s life. But, anytime there was a compliment in the air, the complimented party said: ‘yes, but!’
And I see that everywhere. We know what nice things we have; we worked hard for them, so of course, they’re there. But there’s so much more that we’re still lacking. And it gets scary, stressful, and annoying.
The thing is, though, nobody — and I do mean nobody — will be happy IF they always focus on what they don’t have.
If 50% or more of your thoughts are about what you do NOT currently have, your life will be 50% or more sad, stressful, tiresome, and just not fun. Remember that not even the richest man alive can buy himself a bunch of stuff that hasn’t been invented yet — like instantaneous travel or immortality for his children. So even he has plenty of topics to cover when it comes to the ‘I lack’ area.
A well-researched phenomenon called ‘negative bias’ suggests that negative experiences, emotions, and thoughts are simply considered more impactful to our brain than positive ones.
Why would we remember a beautiful day in the sun more vividly than a storm that nearly killed us — how would that protect our lives in the future?
So, let’s not be worried about not giving ‘enough’ thought to worrisome parts; the brain has us covered.
To finally get my point across — let’s be biased back; let’s prefer whatever positive thoughts we can find in our brains and expand on those. Let’s dig very, very deep for any ray of sunshine, any possibility to play, any compliment we can pay to ourselves, anything that makes us feel proud.
Almost anything we’ve ever done in life has something ugly to it; there’s regret, something missing, some way we over-shot or missed out. And that’s OK. We are completely free to just not focus on that part now that the moment is in the past; free to turn a blind eye and just see the pretty parts. No one is looking; no one can tell what we’re up to in our head anyway (luckily, there’s no tech for that yet).
We are entirely free to choose our thoughts. And choose we should. We don’t want to be at the mercy of the random algorithms in the brain that decide what we suddenly get to remember — at least not when it comes to the negatives, the things that ruin our flow.
This is an acquired skill but surprisingly quick to pick up. It’s all about noticing the thoughts. When we learn this power to choose the good, and the pretty — we are up to no shortage of magical and beautiful moments; no shortage of fun and play that we all deserve.
No, life is not going to be butterflies and rainbows all the time — but it sure as hell can be a LOT of the time. When there are no stakes, when you are alone — what memories, thoughts, and emotions do you choose? Because you CAN get to choose, 100%.
Thanks for reading! Have a lovely time with your brain! ❤
