Have you ever found yourself dwelling on an insult or fixating on your mistakes? Why past traumas can have such a lingering effect in our lives? Why a bad first impression of someone can be hard to shake? Or why a critique from someone tends to stick while a compliment just comes and goes?

In this article we’ll explore why our mind can be our greatest obstacle to our happiness, our brain’s innate tendency to focus on the negative, how to train your mind to be ally of your happiness (and not always against it,) and four key principles on living a happier and more fulfilling life.

There’s something very important you should know about your mind…

Your mind is not designed to make you happy. Your mind is designed to keep you safe.

The mind is a powerful and essential force in our lives with one primal objective— survival.

It is wired in such a way to constantly pick up any signals of threat or danger and is designed on a fight or flight basis to keep you alive.

It is constantly alert and sensitive towards anything that can endanger your life and it can act automatically to protect you when necessary.

The mind’s survival circuitry is important— it keeps us safe from potential dangers or threats. (We want that!)

BUT! The mind isn’t just about keeping your physical existence alive. It also strives to keep your perceptions of the past, your difficult memories, your sense of identity, your limiting beliefs, your ego… alive.

Not because these things are in support of your happiness, but because they are familiar.

According to the mind, familiar equals safe.

The mind is more likely to stick with what is familiar (even if it doesn’t serve our happiness and wellbeing,) than to explore something that has the possibility of enhancing our happiness, that is unknown.

Ancient wisdom says that happiness is our natural state of being. Your true self is eternally joyous and peaceful. An untrained mind, however, obstructs our ability to experience this happiness within us.

THE NEGATIVITY BIAS

Modern psychology and ancient wisdom agree, that the mind has a natural “negativity bias.”

This is essentially the brain’s tendency to focus on the negative over the positive.

We have a greater tendency to notice what’s wrong in a situation over what’s right, or what we don’t like over what we do.

This bias toward the negative leads us to pay much more attention to bad things that happen, making them seem much more important than they really are and more significant in our memory than they need to be.

Our brains survival circuitry is designed to keep us safe. It’s programmed to scan for threats. So it’s natural to pay more attention to the negative!

This negativity bias is why we’re more likely to:

  • Remember a criticism over a compliment.
  • Read negative news headlines over positive ones.
  • Recall insults better than we can praise.
  • React emotionally to a negative event than a positive one.
  • Remember traumatic memories more than positive ones.
  • Think about what worries us more than what brings us happiness.

TRANSFORMING THE MIND

The struggles we face are very real… But let’s be honest! Much of what we stress about in our minds isn’t based on fact, reality or even likelihood.

Minds have a way of magnifying problems and making it harder to find solutions.

With the mind always trying to keep us safe, it can keep also keep us stuck with negative beliefs, limiting thoughts, distorted or incomplete memories and habitual patterns that ultimately don’t serve our happiness.

But fortunately! While the brain may be hardwired in this way, we have the power to upgrade its software…

We have the ability to change, rewire and train our minds to be less of an obstacle to our happiness and to become an ally of it.
 
True growth and cultivating happiness is about…

1) Understanding the nature of our mind.
2) Strengthening our relationship to our mind.
3) Training our mind to be in support of our happiness (and not always against it!)

We can change our brains. Through training and practice, we can shape how we experience ourselves, our minds and our lives and find greater happiness and peace (that’s often hidden beneath the surface of our brain’s negativity bias!)

4 KEY PRINCIPLES FOR A HAPPIER MIND

Here are 4 key principles to start to transform your mind for the happier.

1) PRESENCE:

Being present naturally calms the mind and improves our mood. A distracted mind is an agitated mind. Staying present helps us to navigate negative experiences with more ease and enjoy positive experiences more deeply.

2) AWARENESS:

Become a sort of observer of your mind. Notice your thoughts throughout the day and how situations make you feel.

Our mind’s negativity bias has a powerful impact on how we experience the world (and naturally takes a toll on our happiness!)

Simply being aware of it empowers you to understand your mind more clearly, recognize your mind’s natural tendency towards negativity, and not take everything you think too seriously so you can consciously elevate your happiness.

3) REFRAME:

The way you talk to yourself about situations, experiences and even other people has a massive impact on how you interpret and remember these events.

If you notice yourself ruminating over something in a negative way or only remembering the challenging aspects of a situation, see if you could reframe that event in a more realistic light.

For example… Say you had a great day at work. But a co-worker made a comment that you found irritating. You find yourself replaying that moment in your mind the rest of the day.

You get home from work and someone asks how your day was— you reply “terrible.” Even though your day was overall great despite that one incident.

It’s not about bypassing things that disturb us, ignoring potential dangers or living in an unrealistic positivity bubble all the time (don’t do that!)

Since unhappy moments naturally stick more deeply with us, it’s about refocusing to give fair and equal weight to genuinely happy moments to give a greater perspective on your life.
 
4) AMPLIFY:

Knowing that it simply takes more to remember positive experiences, pay extra attention to good things that happen.

Perceived negative experiences are quickly transferred and stored into your long-term memory. Positive ones require more active effort to remember clearly.

So take a few more seconds to fully enjoy that hug. Really savor that sunset. Really take in that loving compliment.

Focus on the feeling of happiness, joy or peace in beautiful moments throughout the day to amplify them in your mind.

It’s not about how long you enjoy that experience, but how deeply you enjoy it that matters.


If you’re ready to deepen your self-love, step into your power, transform your mind, tune into your inner wisdom, live your purpose and embody your highest self…

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