Did you know that 80% of human thoughts are negative?
This is according to a landmark National Science Foundation study on human thoughts.
This is the underlying fact behind the idea of a negative bias. A negative bias is the tendency to think negatively.
According to Google, the human brain is naturally hardwired to prioritize, react to, and remember negative experiences more intensely than positive ones.
Did you also know that 95% of your thoughts are repetitive — the same thoughts from the day before?
So, if 80% is negative and you repeat most of that thinking the next day, you can see how one compounds negative thinking upon negative thinking consistently.
What’s even more interesting is that 100% of the population naturally possesses a negativity bias.
In other words: your thinking has been hardwired for you to fail rather than to succeed. However, the good news is that:
I just finished the book The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor and — I don’t say this lightly — it may have changed my life.
This book is much more spiritual and esoteric than a business help book, and given that the author studied Christian and Buddhist ethics at Harvard, I can see why.
This goes back to a theme I’ve written about that I don’t think many thinkers have discussed: the impact of magical, mystical, and spiritual forces in our daily lives.
A good self-help book will provide you with insights into how you see the world — and can very much help you change the course of your life — if you’re looking for it.
The book on the happiness advantage was about why we must look at the world through a positive lens.
In my book, I trace this force of magic through history and show how we’re exposed to spiritual and esoteric practices in everyday life — in the form of self-help books. And humanity just learned how to read not long ago.
The leaders of humanity have been reading for ages. They’ve built the old world using a principle of magic — but since we just learned how to read, we don’t know when someone is telling us magic or simply the latest business report.
On a high level, it makes sense and is simple enough: look at the bright side. But how many people really do it? How many actually actively look and think every single thought from a positive outcome?
Sounds ludicrous, but what happens when you actually do so? What happens when you level-set all probability of outcomes and then decide to actually focus and work on the most positive outcomes?
This is the value of the positive advantage, and it ties very deeply into an esoteric level when we look at the spiritual and real-world impacts.
Why our natural negativity bias can quietly shape the reality we experience.
How separating your awareness from your thoughts gives you more control over your perspective.
Why positivity is more than optimism and how it can expand your ability to see opportunities, solve problems, and “profit” from difficult situations.
How prayer, reflection, journaling, and reducing negative inputs can help retrain what your mind searches for in everyday life.
Yesterday I saw the following comment on Covid and Coffee’s post from Clara about how negative things appear.
While this is true, I commented that we can still look at the bright side.
Easier said than done, but the idea is that a lot of these things may have been happening forever; we didn’t know about it.
And we are now being exposed to it, plus, it may be broadcasted more to the point that there is so much negativity on the airwaves that we don’t know or see the positivity that’s happening all around us.
A few comments agreed.
As a practicing consultant, the question I ask is: why?
Why do we always see the negative of things when we can easily see the positive as well? Why is it that in any situation that occurs, our immediate output is to seek out the negative?
Well, for one, this is our current world. In this world, it is more financially rewarding to speak about the negative than the positive, which is why 80% of stories are negative. It makes financial sense but bombards the individual with negativity.
This is simply the norm in society — and we call it being informed — but it’s more negative than positive.
The truth of the matter is that things are quite frankly the way they are. I don’t see things “getting better” as in a savior will right every wrong — or yet — waiting for a Jesus to come, as I’ve written about the harms of that perspective as well and how it dociles the population into taking action.
But you — the person reading this article — can be the savior of your story. You can change your outcome. You’ve done it before, and you can do it again. And the good news is that simply being positive in a negative world strengthens your chance of success.
PS: Some good news is that young men are going back to church, which can lead to morals, values in our families, and traditions.
Earlier this week, I talked about how I was traveling for work, got stuck in traffic, and began to view things negatively.
But after a while, I was able to change my perspective and my mood — not changing the fact that I was still late — but using it to my advantage.
This tendency to view things negatively is known as a negative bias, and it’s one we have defaulted to today.
A bias is a perspective we have on things, and when we develop a negative one, we see negativity everywhere.
Worse, this eventually turns into our thoughts. When our thoughts are automatically negative, the societal trap is complete.
An insight I learned this week was regarding thoughts. To understand thoughts, you need to understand who you are at the deepest level.
At the deepest level of your being, you are your awareness. This can be seen as your consciousness. Some call it soul, but ultimately awareness.
The idea is that we have thoughts that we become aware of. However, that does not mean these thoughts are ours or universal truths. Thoughts are simply cognitive impressions that enter our awareness. When you’re able to understand the inner space like this, you’re able to examine all the cognitive impressions that make themselves on your awareness.
When you do this, as I did, you realize that whatever happens to you — e.g., being late — you have multiple options:
You can be aware of all the negative things that can be inferred from that scenario.
Or you can also be aware of all the things that can be positive from that scenario.
This shift in awareness can turn a negative perspective on reality into a positive one.
A positive perspective of reality means that you’re always scanning the environment for what is positive and focusing on that.
From the book, we’ve seen multiple studies showing that when one has a negative perspective, they become tunnel-visioned; but a positive perspective expands one’s view to see more potential opportunities, paths, etc.— ones that never would’ve been seen through a negative lens.
Whatever occurs in life, looking at the scenario from all possible angles helps you see more paths forward.
This perspective isn’t just spiritual, where you have more gratitude, uplifted, etc.; it also has real-world applications.
Think back throughout your life to what problems you’ve solved, what accomplishments you’ve got, etc. The idea is that in your life you’ve clearly shown the ability to move through life, so the skill is there, but if you aren’t aware of it, you forget how to apply it.
However, problem-solving, thinking critically — these are positive attributes that must be cultivated — and they’re only cultivated when one has a positive perspective on things.
This is why prayer is important. This is why meditation, reflection, journaling, and practices that can elevate your spirit and mind, no matter what is occurring, are critical. From miracles to the placebo effect to religious practices, in such an increasingly negative world, a positive perspective is a surefire way to begin solving the problems of daily life we find ourselves in today.
Worship while you wait — praying and using faith — can help solve the problems you’re facing. A positive perspective — the ability to access positive spiritual characteristics — is needed in our current world.
One surefire way to get rid of negativity in your life is to stop watching the news.
News — as in anything that is informing you about the larger world — should be eliminated. The goal is to stop paying attention to anything that doesn’t have a direct, immediate impact on your life.
The biggest things that affect you are your health, your income, your residence, your family, your spirituality, etc. — the 7 pillars. These are the areas that you should be concerned with, and in fact, you should know and learn more about these than anything that occurs in the world.
This dramatically decreases the negativity entering your awareness and immediately ensures that only positivity enters your awareness via cognitive impressions. Negative cognitive impressions will still come, but praying, reflecting, and worshiping while you wait activates faith and allows you —on a spiritual level — to transform those negative impressions into positive ones.
And as you do this, your world begins to change.
You begin to scan your environment — and instead of seeing negativity everywhere — you begin to see the positive. You begin to see what you can do to change your situation. You begin to think of potential solutions to problems that you’re facing.
The comment to start was about income and residence, and I’ve written about how I grew a business because of Federal Reserve policies. These are perfect examples of how we can activate the latent problem-solving, profiting system that we have within us.
I’ll look to close here, but there is much more to come on this topic. These are just some of my initial thoughts and reflections upon finishing this book.
“Keeping a positive attitude despite the prevailing challenges is associated with eventual success or goal achievement.”
Be realistic and be positive. It will literally transform your world and make it more successful.
Your mind naturally pays disproportionate attention to threats, problems, and negative outcomes, which means negativity can become your default perspective without you realizing it.
You are not identical to every thought that enters your awareness. Learning to observe your thoughts gives you the ability to choose which cognitive impressions you reinforce.
A positive bias does not require denying reality. It means deliberately searching reality for opportunities, lessons, solutions, and paths forward that a negative perspective can conceal.
Prayer, meditation, reflection, journaling, and worship are not merely spiritual rituals. They can also become practices for protecting your awareness and redirecting your attention.
Reducing unnecessary negative information — particularly information with little bearing on your immediate life — creates more mental space to focus on the areas you can actually influence.
Pay attention to your first interpretation whenever something frustrating happens. Before accepting that interpretation, deliberately ask yourself what else could be true and what positive outcome might still be available.
Reduce the amount of news and commentary entering your awareness, particularly information that has no immediate relationship to your health, income, family, residence, spirituality, or other core pillars.
Create a daily practice that allows you to examine your cognitive impressions rather than automatically reacting to them. Prayer, journaling, meditation, reflection, or quiet time can all accomplish this.
When you encounter a problem, practice asking one question before anything else: How can I profit from this? What can you learn? What can you build? What opportunity can you see? What skill can you develop? What path forward becomes possible because this happened?
As always, thanks for the time and attention. Have a great and wonderful day.
— Ashe,
Franklin O’Kanu
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