You See What You Look For

What do you look for as you go about your day?

• Do you focus on what is wrong? The ugly, broken, rude, or unfair?
• Do you pay attention to moments of kindness, beauty or courage?
• Do you see everything through a lens of how-this-helps-me-achieve-my-agenda?
• Do you look for things that give you fodder for complaints and rants, or for gratitude and laughter?

Have you considered how what you look for affects your attitude?

What you LOOK FOR is what you NOTICE.
What you NOTICE affects your ATTITUDE.
Your ATTITUDE colors your EMOTIONS.
Your EMOTIONS affect your BEHAVIOR. (Yours and those around you.)
Your EMOTIONS also play a role in what you store in your MEMORY.

In other words, what you look for in the world around you makes a huge impact on your quality of life.

Our brains and negative bias

Unfortunately, human brains naturally have a negative bias. In any situation, we tend to notice and remember the one bad thing instead of the many nice things. This explains the common saying that it takes ten positive comments to outweigh one negative comment.

Does this mean we are doomed to a life of negative thoughts and attitudes? NO.

The good news

The human brain is reprogrammable. No matter how old we are. No matter what environment we grew up in. No matter how entrenched our negative bias.

We cannot erase our old thinking habits all at once. (Wouldn’t that be nice? Sigh.) We can slowly reprogram our brains to alter our focus. It will take time, patience, and effort, but I think it’s worth it. Don’t you?

Reprogramming our brains to see the good

Rebuilding the mental pathways to focus on more positive outlook takes:

• We must remind ourselves to look beyond what we naturally notice and make a point of looking for the positive. No matter where we are on the spectrum, we can work to improve our habit to notice the positive and be practice gratitude for what we see around us.
• All habits require consistent repetition. It will take long-term practice to get better as seeing the world through more positive eyes. But every little success is a step in the right direction.
• All changes are made one small step after another. It will take time to create a habit of looking for beauty amidst the ugly and kindness amidst cruelty and corruption.
• We will have bad days where everything looks rotten. We will fall back into old patterns. It’s OK. Forgive yourself and try again.

Where do you struggle when it comes to seeing the positive instead of the negative? What small step can you make today towards a more positive focus?

Image by pixel2013 from pixabay