Date post: | 14-Jan-2017 |
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Self Improvement |
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7 Reasons Why We Go Negative
Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhDInner Mammal Institute
And How To Go Positive Instead
Our brain sees the world through a negative lens
it zoomsin on bad and skims past good
Negativity is natural,but you can build a corrective lens that
lets in the positive
The Science of PositivityStop Negative Thought Patterns
By Changing Your Brain Chemistry
InnerMammalInstitute.org
The dog poop paradox
an oops makes people mad but the enormous progress never made people happy
Why does your brain go there?
1. Your brain is designed to learn from pain
Pain is a surge of
cortisol,the “stress
chemical.”
Cortisol connects all the neurons active at that momentThat wires you to turn it on fasterin the future.
Your ancestors survived because they anticipated pain and acted to avoid it.
2. Mammals evolved social pain
The mammal brain rewards you with oxytocin when you find safety in social support.
It alarms you with cortisol when you wander away from that social support.
The mammal brain constantly weighs the anticipated pain of
social isolation against the anticipated pain of lost opportunity
3. Cortisol feels awful because that works
The bad feeling commands your attention until you do what it takes to make it stop
If you relieved cortisol by climbing a tree, the good feeling of relief
wires you to scan for trees
If you make it stop byeating pizza, that wiresyou to scan for pizza.
Distraction doesn’t protect you from predators but it relieves the anticipation of pain temporarily. Then you seek another distraction.
4. Your brain is constantly filtering information because the world floods our senses with more detail than we could process
Your filter is not conscious:it’s the neural pathways built from pastrewards andpain
The electricity in your brainflows like water in a storm,
finding the paths of least resistance
5. Disappointment triggers cortisol
The mammal brain rewards you with the good feeling of dopamine when you expect a reward, but it alerts you with cortisol when the reward doesn’t come
6. Social comparison
The mammal brain rewards you with the good feeling of serotonin when you see yourself in the position of strength
It alerts you with cortisol when it sees you in the weaker position
7. Your brain builds its superhighways in youth
- We humans are more helpless & vulnerable at birth than other creatures
- Crying is a big cortisol surge; it’s one of our only pre-wired behaviors
- So the foundational circuit in your brain is a sense of urgent needs you are powerless to meet
A young brain is full of myelin, which coats neurons so they conduct
electricity at super speeds
Each brain sees the world through the lens of its myelinated neurons
our myelin years are before age 8 and during puberty
Our brain is not designed for happiness.It evolved to motivate survival
behaviors.
Negative experience builds big pathways, which is why your electricity tends to go there.
You can build a positive pathwayto give your electricity
a new place to flow
Spend 1 minute searching for good3 times a dayfor 45 days
You will build a new lens that lets in the positive
You may think“if all that goodwere there,I would have done this already”
That’s your natural negativity
Fortunately, you don’t have torescue orphans from burning buildings and perform in Carnegie Hall to create positivity
You can build a new pathway in your brain just by noticing the absence of dog poop on the path in front of you
New pathways build from repetition, emotion & youth
Youth is fleeting.Emotion leads to pizza.
Repetition is your friend
Carving a new trail through your jungle of neurons takes tremendous effort
And after all that effort, your new trail soon disappears into the undergrowth.
This is why old paths are so tempting.
But if you slash through the new trail every day,
a new pathway will build
It’s hard to go positive when everyone around you is going
negative
Going negative brings social rewards
You may think you’ll be weak or isolated if you go positive
But onceyou build your new positive lens,you’ll be glad you did!
You can PARE your negativity with Personal Agency & Realistic Expectations
Personal Agency
is taking pleasure in choosing your next step
Results are unpredictable,but you always get to choose your next step
Realistic Expectations
awareness that a cortisol surge is not a real survival threat
You will end up with cortisol because our efforts often fall short of our expectations
You can find the good without depending on immediate visible rewards. Most of human progress came from efforts that did not bring immediate visible rewards.
People like to find external positivesbecause it’s easier that finding
internal ones
So here are some external positives
on my website https://innermammalinstitute.org/positivity
Each of us sees the world through the lens we built without effort or intent from our unique individual past experience
You can build a new filter to let in the good that your old filter ignores
Free resources from the Inner Mammal Institute
Learn more aboutyour happy chemicals
podcastsvideosinfographicstraining certificationslide shows (incl this)5-day Happy-Chemical Jumpstart
www.InnerMammalInstitute.org
Books by L. Breuning, PhD
The Science of Positivity Stop Negative Thought PatternsBy Changing Your Brain Chemistry
Habits of a Happy BrainRetrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin
I, MammalHow to Make Peace WithThe Animal Urge for Social Power
one more thing
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others
Don’t compare yourself to others