Get ready for an attitude adjustment.
Being a “negative person” or a “positive person” isn’t set in stone—and using one really simple trick that anyone can learn can change your mood, your outlook, and even your entire life, according to a brain training specialist.
It was certainly a game changer for Emilie Leyes, who shared how she turns to an “installing” habit to remove negative thoughts on TikTok.
“My life completely changed and my mind was completely blown when I learned that it was possible to use this little brain trick to stop my mind from thinking so negatively all the time,” said Leyes, who is also a certified hypnotherapist. .
To understand why it works, it’s first important to know that people have a negativity bias, which means they’re more likely to put more weight and focus on the negative than the positive.
This should make perfect sense to anyone who’s ever fixated on a critical bit in an otherwise positive review at work, or can’t stop replaying an awkward moment in their head despite countless non-awkward interactions since then .
From an evolutionary point of view, focusing on the negative seems logical – it’s how we’ve learned to avoid risks. But in the modern world, it often means big reactions to small concerns, which can lead to general pessimism and unhappiness.
“If you find yourself thinking negatively, it’s not your fault — your brain is wired that way,” Leyes said. “The good news is that you can challenge this negative bias and change the way your brain works.”
Her main trick is called “installation” and was developed by neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
According to Dr. Hanson, there are two stages of the learning process: activation and installation. During activation, we are experiencing something, either good or bad. Then there is the installation stage, where we install the memory of that experience in our brain.
“Without this installation—without the transfer of experience from short-term memory buffers to long-term storage—useful experiences like feeling cared for are momentarily pleasurable but have no lasting value,” Hanson explained. “There is no learning, no growth, no change for the better.”
Meanwhile, those negative experiences are being automatically “installed” thanks to evolution—so if you want to install positive ones, you have to work at it.
You can do this by really reinforcing those positive experiences, properly savoring them when they happen. First, pause to notice what is good about the experience in the moment, whether that is the taste of a delicious meal, the peaceful feeling of taking a walk on a pleasant day, or the joy of laughter with a friend.
Hanson says it takes five to 10 seconds—or more—to stay with the good feelings of that experience.
“The longer and more intensely these neurons fire together, the more they will bind this internal force into your brain,” he said.
When you do this, you’re not just absorbing more positivity at that moment in time—with practice, you’re teaching your brain to focus more on positive things in the future.
“You’re actually increasing that emotional response to that positive experience, which over time can balance out that negative bias,” Leyes said on TikTok. “And it’s actually preparing the brain to receive more good experiences as they come.”
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Image Source : nypost.com