Understanding your brain's negativity bias

The negativity bias is this. It means that we focus more on negative experiences or information

than

we do positive ones.

And the trait is really, really deeply ingrained into our brains. It's deeply ingrained into your behavior.

And it basically influences everything from our relationships to our decision-making and everything that's in between.

But the crazy part about it is that most of the time you never notice it.

It just tends to happen.

And if you're not conscious of it, you're probably not going to have the life that you want because you're going to have this negativity bias come in often.

You're going to stay inside of your comfort zone. If you never leave your comfort zone, you're never going to create your dreams.

Because essentially, your dreams go to die in your comfort zone.

And today we're going to break it down.

I'm going to talk about how, first off, like why it exists.

How it exists in our brain, how it manifests in our daily lives, and then also how it will affect your mental health if you're not paying attention and, you know, how your overall well-being changes as well.

And then I'm going to talk to you guys about how to change it.

Sound good?

Okay, first thing.

Where does this whole thing come from?

Why why are people negative? Why are people more negative than positive most of the times?

And um, if we have it, it's got to have its benefits.

It's got to have its evolutionary benefits.

And so the negativity bias comes from our ancestors' need for survival.

And if you look at the life that you have now, the life that we all have now,

even if you have like the worst life alive right now, is probably way better

than all of our ancestors a million years ago, two million years ago.

Because in the the prehistoric world, danger was everywhere.

You could be killed at any moment by something.

So, there's that where you got to protect yourself.

There's also food scarcity where you're constantly looking for food

all the time, every day to stay alive.

There's water that you have to find. There's clean water that you have to find because your friend died yesterday because he had dirty water.

You know, there's natural disasters that could strike without warning because they didn't have weather apps.

Oh, well, it's going to rain today.

So early humans had to be hyper hyper aware of potential dangers

as a matter of life and death at any moment.

And so, even if you think to a couple hundred years ago,

things were extremely dangerous.

If you think back to like, you know, 1700s,

1500s, all of that.

Why did people have to live behind walls and castles? Because some random person would just come in and try to kill all of them and take over their castle.

So it's like, we've have a pretty soft life compared to the way that it used to be.

And so like, you know, if you say there's two early humans walking a million years ago.

They're walking through a dense forest or something like that.

And they hear a rustling in the bushes.

One of them might be like, oh, it's no big deal, it's the wind.

The other one, who is much more hyper aware and much more quote unquote negative, but looking for the negative,

assumes that, hey, it's a predator.

And it takes the right action to protect themselves and pays attention.

And a lion comes out of anywhere of just some random bush and it kills the one that's less cautious and not paying attention.

The one that's more cautious is more likely to survive.

And if they're more cautious, they're likely to pass on those genes to the next person that's going to be coming.

Their children, their offspring, and their offspring, and their offspring.

So when you look at humans and who we are right now, like I was thinking about this as I was creating this episode, we're probably the offspring of the most worried

and cautious ancestors that existed, because the ones that were less worried and less cautious,

probably got eaten by something or ate something they weren't supposed to, and they died.

And so, our, we're like, why are people so negative? Why are people always focusing on the bad?

Because we're probably the offspring of the most worried and cautious ancestors that existed.

And that's why they lived.

And that's why we're tortured with negative thoughts nowadays.

Well, yippee do da, that's the way that it goes.

Right? And after two million years, it turns into dumb things that we worry about.

Oh, well, what if they don't like me?

What if they say no to me?

What if this person rejects my business proposal?

Did I just act weird at the social event that I was at?

What if my boss hated my presentation?

If I start this business, I could go broke and it was a big waste of my time and I'd be homeless and I live on the side of the road.

Right? So it's like, it goes from, hey, we need to be hyper aware so we can survive to, I wonder if those people liked me.

And we focus on all of the negative and the way that we, you know, showed up.

Oh my gosh, we went to an incredible social event.

We had so much fun, but we said that one thing that

after we leave, did somebody think that I might have said that in a different way because I didn't mean it that way?

And then we focus on that thing and that thing tortures us.

And so it started as a protection mechanism and now it's turned into what is keeping you from getting the life that you want and getting out of your comfort zone.

So just know before we go any further, your brain is wired for negativity.

That is okay.

And the way that it shows up in your normal everyday life is, you know, while the dangers of our ancestors

have mostly disappeared, the negativity bias has not.

It's in our brain.

So instead, it manifests in a bunch of different ways in our modern lives.

And there's a couple different ways and I'll go through them.

The first one is your attention and your memory are really important to know.

One of the most apparent ways that negativity bias tends to affect us is how we pay attention to and remember events.

So negative events tend to stand out in our lives way more than positive events.

And so if you're a person who had a, you know, an okay childhood, but it wasn't the best,

if you were to think back to your childhood, you could probably think a lot about the negative things that popped up, the one time that your mom yelled at you,

the time that your dad forgot about you, the time that you were bullied.

But the positive ones are kind of, you know that they were there, but you can't really remember all of them.

Maybe it's like, oh, I remember Disney when I was a kid.

You know, another example of that is like, so that's your your past and your memory.

But also like when you think about like what you're focusing on.

Like you could go out today and you could wear a a new jacket.

Right? And you could receive 10 compliments on that jacket and one criticism on that jacket.

And it's more likely that you're going to remember and you'll be kind of stuck on the criticism

way longer than the other compliments, even though you got 10 times more compliments.

I remember when this really started when I first started putting content on Instagram.

Uh and you know, I've posted over 8,000 times on Instagram now in the past

eight, nine years at this point.

But I remember when I first started posting on Instagram,

and I would get positive comments and I would get a couple negative comments.

I remember one time I put up a video that went kind of viral.

Like I've had quite a few viral videos at this point.

Um, just on social media alone, I've have over have over two billion views with a B.

And so at the very beginning, I didn't know what to do with the negative attention that I was getting.

And it was like 1% of the attention and the comments were negative.

But what I noticed was I was focusing on the negative one.

There was one video that I had that

got like a couple million views, right?

And it was like all of these positive comments, I agree, I agree.

And then there's one of them that was just this really negative.

And it's probably like a hundred positive comments and one negative one.

And a few hours later, I was literally about to go and I was I was about to leave my house and I noticed myself ruminating and thinking about this one negative comment.

And I was like, what are you doing?

You're thinking about one negative comment and you had like over a hundred positive comments.

And it was just a little reminder of me of like, yeah, we're going to focus on the negative.

It's a protection mechanism in some sort of way.

So, um,

so for those of you guys that don't follow me on Instagram, go follow me.

Rob Dial Jr., R O B D I A L J R.

Um, and so this is the the reason why our brains tend to prioritize negative information

is to basically ensure that we're going to remember potential threats

or mistakes that could affect our survival.

And it's crazy when you think about it.

But you know and I know that a negative comment on Instagram has nothing to do with our survival.

Our brain pays attention to the negative anyways.

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So, it's also when you look at the attention as well.

It's why the news is negative.

It's why I do not watch the news at all.

I have no idea what's happening in the world because I try to protect my mental health.

Because I know with me, like I protect my mental health

over pretty much everything.

And so over years, I've stopped getting rid, I've got rid of all of the the negative things in my life.

And so this is the reason why the news outlets don't really show the positive stuff.

Is because they know that our brains are wired towards the negative.

So they show the crime, they show the disasters, they show the the people who got killed,

the conflicts, the wars, the murders.

Very rarely is it like, hey, look at this cute dog that's duck that's taking its babies across the the road.

It's like, no, look at all of the negative stuff.

Because they know that that's what our attention goes towards.

And if if we look at too many of these things and we're not paying attention to it, it can really

really distort our view of the world.

And it makes it seem way more dangerous and way more negative than it actually is.

The other thing you have to realize is there's way more cameras in this world than there ever have been.

And so, even though the world, you know, obviously there's a lot of shit that's happening in the world, that's very obvious, even though the world, you know, is getting more safe, and that's statistically proven, you can look it up.

Even though it's statistically getting safer across the entire world, we have more cameras to show us the negative.

And we also have the news outlets that are pushing those out as much as possible.

And so it definitely makes a big, uh, the negativity bias pops up in our memory, but also our attention.

Another place that it pops up is our decision-making.

So the negativity bias plays a massive, massive role in decision-making processes.

So when we're faced with choices, we tend to base off of our brain, weigh the potential losses way more than we do the potential gains in something.

And so we tend to think about all of the things that could go wrong, and we rarely think about the things that could go right.

And so like I coach a lot and work with a lot of business owners, and I have for years.

Because 95% of the reason why a business fails, it's usually not the market.

It's usually not the product.

It's usually the mindset of the business owner.

And so if you're like, oh, I want to go start a business,

well, then the immediate thoughts are like, oh my God, it's going to be so much hard work.

What if it fails?

What if I get rejected on a sales call?

I don't like rejections.

What if I waste all of this time trying to build it?

I put two years into it and it still fails and then I wasted time and I wasted money.

What if I disappoint my family and my wife and then two years from now, I'm actually further behind that I am right now?

You start focusing on all the negative.

Really do we take into account all of the upsides

of starting a business?

The personal growth that we have to go through in order to do this.

The growth that we have to have as a human to be able to to grow a successful business.

The money that could come in that could change your life.

That could change your family's life, that could change the trajectory of your entire lineage.

And the trajectory of your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren.

We don't really pay, we know that those are there.

Like we're aware that it's there, but we don't tend to focus on it.

You know, at events, I do meditations and visualizations.

I'll have business owners come in and I'll do a a quick 15-minute meditation visualization practice

where I take them through the future that they want to create and what it would look like and what it would feel like and how proud of themselves that they would be.

And everyone always talks about how freaking powerful that is, and it's so powerful because they never do it.

Because they're always focusing on what could go wrong.

You know, like a couple times in this podcast recently I've told you guys that like I'm buying a house.

Well, I just bought a house.

When I was going through the process of buying the house, all of the negative came in my head.

Because I'm a freaking human and that's what happens.

And I was thinking, well, what if this and what if that and what if this and what if that?

And I have to rent out my, you know, I'm going to be taking my my actual house that I live in

and the office and studio house, which is another house that that we have, which I'm recording in right now.

And then we're going to consolidate them into my new house.

So I'm going to have my office and my studio inside of my new house.

But also, I'm going to have these two other mortgages that I have to pay for.

So I'm going to have three mortgages.

What if nobody rents it?

What if I end up losing money on them?

And then it's like negative, negative, negative, and I just have to become aware of it.

And then get start focusing, if I'm going to focus on the bad,

I'm also going to need to focus on the good.

I need to see both sides of the coin.

And so that brings us to the second thing that you need to pay attention to, which is this thing called positive cognitive reframing.

It's a psychological technique.

Positive cognitive reframing involves intentionally shifting our focus from a negative aspect when we're aware that we're concentrating on the negative, and then also focusing on the positive.

It's not going, hey, just ignore everything in your life.

It's going, hey, if you're going to see the negative, you're going to also need to see the positive.

And it allows you to kind of look at these challenges that come up in life, not as like pitfalls,

but opportunities for you to grow.

Any setbacks that pop up is like, oh, hey, this is temporary.

I'm going to take these failures, I'm going to take these setbacks, and I'm going to learn from them so I can get better.

You know, so it's like, let's say you get some criticism at work.

Rather than dwelling on that criticism, you can reframe it and go, okay, I appreciate this criticism.

It's given me an opportunity to improve myself, to learn, to grow.

And it's showing me just a couple things that I need to tweak to get better.

And so by focusing on that versus how much you suck, which most people do,

you focus on the boys where you can improve, you can learn, you can grow, you can get better.

And then therefore you're not going to be negative, but you're going to go, hey, you know what? I actually took this thing that wasn't necessarily a good thing about my presentation.

And I made it into a strength and I've actually become better.

And that builds your confidence within yourself.

Another thing that's really important to do,

that I recommend for everybody on this, and I used to think like having a gratitude journal

was like kind of corny, if I'm being honest with you.

I was like,

well,

okay,

dude.

You know, just write down the things you're positive for.

You know, what you're great.

Oh, I'm grateful for this.

The sunshine.

But one thing that I've been doing for basically the past, probably almost a year now, is when I wake up in the morning

and I do my breath work and meditation, which I do every single morning,

I focus on things that I'm grateful for.

And I'm basically setting my reticular activating system, which I talked about a few episodes ago, you can go back and listen to it, the filtering part of my brain to pay attention to the things that I'm grateful for.

And when I do that in the morning, what ends up happening is throughout the rest of the day,

I start noticing more things that I'm grateful for, which naturally takes me out of my negativity bias

and kind of sets me up to have a positivity bias where I'm starting to search for things that I'm grateful for and search for things that are great in my life.

There's always two sides of the coin.

You can't just look at one side of the coin.

You've got to also look at the positive side as well.

The other thing that would really help you as well is start surrounding yourself with positivity.

Start noticing how your environment affects the way that you feel.

How the people that you surround yourself affects the way that you feel.

How the place that you live affects the way that you feel.

The car that you drive, the way that you dress, all of that stuff affects the way that you feel.

Can you start surrounding yourself with things that make you happier, things that make you feel more positive?

Whatever that means for you.

And then really the last thing is is just be kinder to yourself.

You know, now that you know this exists, you can know that you're not a flawed individual.

I have this inside of my brain.

Everybody has this inside of their brain.

We're all going to go to negative first most of the time.

And so it's about it going, okay, I'm noticing I'm being negative.

Let me go ahead and positively cognitive reframe this whole thing.

I'm going to start focusing on the positive.

I'm going to start focusing on gratitude.

The benefits, how this could become good.

And just have some compassion for yourself.

Don't beat yourself up.

Because it's natural for you to be this way.

And you will not get this part of your brain, like you can't go in there and take a spoon and get this part of your brain and like scoop it out.

It's there.

It's going to be there until the day you die.

And so just understand, okay, yeah, it's a protection mechanism.

But I don't need to focus on the negative right now.

You know, it is possible to be scared of something

and do it anyways.

It's possible to take action that's different than how you feel.

And so really what it comes down to is like, I can be scared.

I can think of the negative.

And I can still take action.

But I can think of the negative and I can also go, you know what?

I'm going to think of the positive.

And I'm going to take action towards that as well.

Because ultimately, this isn't something that should hold you back.

It's just something we should all be aware of, and when we're aware of it, we can start to shift it and mold it to be something a little bit different.

But it'll never go away.

So it's just something that you need to become more skilled at working with.

So, that's what I got for you for today's episode.

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R O B D I A L J R.

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And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you

every single episode.

Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better.

I appreciate you,

and I hope that you have an amazing day.