Hi guys! Welcome to episode 182 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast!
Are you having a good week? Are you having face to face connections with people again? I hope so! That’s where the real connection is…never forget that!
So, A friend of mine, well I feel like he’s a friend. I interviewed him early on in my podcast. His name is Ed Latimore, you should follow him. Anyway this week he posted this tweet and it said arguing with people on the internet is the equivalent of being out for a walk seeing a pile of dog shit, and choosing to step in it. I loved this because you know what? It’s true! You’re choosing to specifically bring negativity into your life. So that dog poop can be negative comments, negative news, social media that makes you feel bad, anything you allow into your mind that makes you feel bad. And guess what?
That poop is going to stay in your shoe and then you’re dealing with it the rest of the day and so is anyone you come close to. You’ll track it wherever you go. That’s how negative interactions are. They stick with you. We are hardwired for negative bias because it was useful to our ancestors but it simply isn’t helpful in our current social media, 24 hour news life that we’re living. It’s easy to focus on the negative but it actually takes effort and awareness and energy to focus on the positive, which you would think would be the opposite. But it’s not.
My sister in law and I were talking at dinner and we were remembering times when someone was mean to us when we were young. You don’t ever forget it. We both had an event that we remembered very well that was a negative interaction for us. My sister in law said you know people being mean to me didn’t happen much but when they were I remember them. I do too and odds are you do as well. Which is interesting because there are way more times that someone was nice but those don’t stay with us like the negative interactions.
So we are naturally drawn to negative events and we give them more weight, this is inherent. It’s built into our brain but do we have to just accept that and live with it?
I’m not going to sugar coat it. Studies have shown it is very hard to overcome negative bias but there are a lot of hard things in life and we find a way to do those. Doing the hard thing is usually better for you in the long run…Eating healthy, Working out, Setting boundaries and oh yeah avoiding our desire to focus on negative things.
But look. There’s a lot out there right now to make us question our sanity. To make us think the world is an awful place, to make us think humanity has been lost. And if you sit and focus on the bad stuff it feels really awful. The times when I’m not looking at social media or twitter or anywhere I get news, those are the times that I am the most creative, the happiest, the most at peace.
We owe it to ourselves to give our brains a chance to create, to think new thoughts, to come up with new ideas and that doesn’t happen when it’s being filled 24/7 with someone else’s agenda driven by bad news that we seem to want to lap it up like a thirsty dog. I mean we are so influenced and focused on our screens anymore.
And so much of that is because the world literally stopped and had everyone at attention and locked down during COVID. Our connection to the outside world was our phones, our computer, the news, Social media. So maybe we can give our self a little grace and say, ok for a minute it was useful to be constantly paying attention, but now we have to really look at is it still useful?
I don’t think so.
You know what is useful? Getting back in touch with our intuition, our inner guidance system so that when someone does hit us with news that doesn’t feel right, we can say I don’t believe that. We can say this is what I know to be true in my community and this is how we will live.
We are individually strong but when we stand together as a group, we’re unstoppable. Find a group of people that are being a force for good and be part of that. There’s so much out there that’s good right now too, look for it and you’ll find it.
And I know some of you think it’s cheesy but keeping a daily journal of things you are grateful for has been proven to make us happier and less negative because you’re actively thinking about things that are good in your life.
Your brain may be hardwired for negative bias but your brain also doesn’t want you to work out but you override that because that’s what is good for your mental and physical health, well so is overcoming negative bias. You control your brain unless you’re living on autopilot.
So, The next time your brain wants you to go step in the pile of dog poop….tell it no. You have better things to do, things that create a life filled with feeling alive, inspired and joyous…things that lead to your wildly successful lifestyle…I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
