7 Ways to Notice What is Positive
Why should we notice what is good?
Noticing what is good with the world and positive in our lives is critical to our mental health and physical well-being. Fortunately, we no longer see taking a positive perspective on life as a luxury at best and being overly sentimental at worst. Today we recognise that perceiving positivity and being optimistic about what the future has in store for us, allows us to enjoy meaningful and exciting lives. Happiness and success are often by-products of this process.
We notice there are problems when our solutions don’t work
Every minute of the day, we are finding solutions to the challenges we encounter. However, we don’t notice the problems that present. We are unaware that our minds are frantically devising and applying solutions. Most of the time our solutions work (e.g. turning the stove off to cool it down, locking the door to keep safe) and we don’t need to think about the problem. We only notice problems when our solutions don’t work (e.g. the lock on the door is broken).
Sometimes our circumstances are challenging
Sometimes it may feel as if everything is going wrong for us. Certainly, difficult or atypical circumstances can stretch us to the limit, particularly if we experience traumatic events and have multiple challenges occur at the same time or one after the other. A positive perspective does not trivialise or question the presence or depth of our pain in such circumstances. It encompasses all of our emotions, helps us understand them. It supports us to move forward by building on the positive moments when the time is right.
Why is it so hard to notice good things?
We all experience times when we feel as if everything, the big stuff and the small stuff, is overwhelmingly negative and we overlook any satisfying, even pleasurable, moments in our lives. We can thank our cautious brains for focusing more on what we don’t like than what we do like. Our brains train us to see the negative aspects of a situation before the positive ones for a good reason, to ensure our survival. The brain’s number one priority is to keep us safe, to ensure that we survive. It wants to avoid danger at any cost.
We are fortunate to be equipped with this ability to fast track our responses to unfamiliar and unwelcome occurrences. Imagine if we were unaware of the dangers in front of us; we could get ourselves into all sorts of difficulty. We may unintentionally put ourselves in physical danger or enter a situation that allows us to be humiliated or excluded. By adulthood, we have generally become familiar with the level of risk posed by everyday hazards as well as those that are extraordinary. Even as young people, we are wary of unfamiliar things, although the dangers may be obscured at times. This can pose challenges, particularly during adolescence while the brain is reorganising in preparation for adulthood.
What is wrong with focusing on what is wrong?
A sense of well-being requires that we experience mostly positive emotions, feel safe and engage in pleasurable and meaningful activity for a good portion of our time. While the negative view may serve to keep us safe, there are times when it is over-active. We can get so caught up in ruminating about negative events that we find it hard to see the positive side of life. Furthermore, the more we think negative thoughts, the stronger they become.
The brain, when we perseverate on negative events, is continually up-regulated (survival and protective systems are switched on high and the thinking systems dulled). Our bodies and brains are guided by the stress response. In this upregulated state, the brain obstructs clear, solution-focused thinking, side-lines positive emotions, narrows our range of actions and can affect our interactions with other people. If the survival and protective responses are sustained with ubiquitous up-regulation, we can experience ‘toxic stress’ as the brain maintains high levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine. These impact our physical and mental health in the short and long term.
7 ways to focus on what is right
The good news is that we can train our brains to see what is ‘good’ and ‘what is’, even if we feel so stuck we doubt we can budge. Naturally, it takes deliberate effort and practice to apply the positive perspective in challenging situations. Working with a psychologist or counsellor can help you through this process. In the meantime, here are 7 things to help you train your brain to take a positive outlook.
1. Sparkling moments: Even when there are stressors in our lives and things are not going well, we can find times when something good happens. These ‘sparkling moments’ may be very small in difficult circumstances but they provide the key to finding new solutions. Naming sparkling moments makes them even more powerful and helps us to manage our emotions.
2. Gratitude notes: Write down three things that happened in the day for which you are grateful. Similarly, you may choose to note three positive events that occurred during the day. There will always be positive events, even though they take deliberate effort to find in pressured situations. Sometimes positive events are substantial, like chatting with a friend. At other times they are smaller, like enjoying the taste of your morning coffee. Remember that big things have small beginnings.
3. Self-compassion. Try to notice the good things about you as a person. Start with little things and then build up a self-narrative that covers a wider range of aspects of yourself. Do things you genuinely enjoy rather than being swayed by what you think others want you to do.
4. Compassion for others: Thinking about others and helping other people helps us to feel better about ourselves. When we focus on other people we soften our self-view and find that we are less harsh on ourselves. Our well-being is strengthened when we contribute to the world around us.
5. Physical exercise. This may not be what you feel like doing when under pressure but stopping work for half an hour and getting exercise allows the mind to clear and lowers high levels of stress neurochemicals. Also important is a good diet to make sure you are getting sufficient nutrients as is enough sleep to allow your mind to do its filing.
6. Smile and laugh: Find opportunities to smile or laugh with someone, watch a video or read a book that allows you to enjoy moments of humour. Humour helps to calm the mind by releasing endorphins. Smiling, even when fake, can help us to feel calm.
7. Mindfulness: Mindfulness exercises help you focus on the present and let go of regrets from the past and worries about the future. The mind and body respond by down-regulating or calming. When we are calm, we can achieve more and the positive aspects of life come into the foreground of our mind. Mindfulness can also be coupled with other strategies to keep us on track. There are many apps and websites to guide you through mindfulness exercises.
The key to turning around negative thinking is repeated experience of positive thinking. You will be rewarded for your patience as you allow new patterns to become your preferred way of thinking. Remember that it may have taken years to build up strong negative pathways. When repeatedly bypassed by deliberate positive thinking, with time, these pathways weaken.
What happens when we focus on what is right?
When we take a positive perspective, we nurture our own sense of physical and emotional well-being as well as that of those around us. We learn better, we like ourselves more and are healthier through our lives. With a spark of focused activity and commitment, it is not difficult to adopt a more positive perspective.