The Ministry of Happiness

Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown. ~ Ross Perot

Learn to Live in Your Wins

Humans are funny creatures, we have a tendency to focus on the negative. Bad news stories get more views and reposts than positive stories. The old newspaper industry adage of if it bleeds it leads was very accurate. A newspaper that had bad news and violence on it’s cover sold more copies than ones with good news. I remember this most vividly when I was working on my master’s thesis, I would get chapters back with really positive comments, but it was the red ink and negatives that I would focus and obsess over, the things that would cause me not to sleep. We’ve all experienced it, someone tells you how nice you look, how great your outfit is, but one little negative comment about any of it and that’s the comment you get lost in. It’s an odd bit of wiring in all of our brains or our society that leaves us thinking this way.

The problem with this of course is that if nine comments don’t outweigh one negative one you can never really win. You’d have to massively outnumber the negatives all the time and that’s just not possible, none of us live in an everlasting bubble of positivity. So we have to learn to let those positive things in life have equal or at least closer weight than the negative ones. So how do you do that?

This is something I’ve really just started thinking about, so I certainly don’t have all of the answers. But I think the very first thing is to make sure we notice the positive as much as we notice the negative. Pay attention to the positive little things that happen every day. If someone pays you a compliment, stop for a second, focus on it, think about it, roll it around in your brain like you roll around a hard candy in your mouth. If you journal, make a point of recounting the positives each day in your journal and even consider leaving the negative out, so that when you read back over the days the positivity outweighs the negativity.

I think it’s also really important to acknowledge the positivity in the moment. Thank people for the comments they give you, repeat them to yourself and try and hold on to them throughout the day. Also, give the positive comments the weight they deserve, so force yourself to dwell on the fact that someone thanked your for having a positive impact on their life. And to dwell on it more than the person the same day who told you that your blouse was ugly. Those two things are not equivalent, and you should absolutely spend more time and energy on the deeper comment.

The biggest trick to all of this is that it’s not our natural tendency. This is not something where you can say, neat idea, and then it will just happen, not at first. You need to develop the focus change as a habit and habits take like twenty-one days to be established. I’m not sure how scientific that is, but I do know, that it takes practice, persistence and effort to develop a habit. Let’s roll on this journey together, I’m starting today, and I’ll report back in three weeks on my progress. So take some time to focus on living in your wins and I believe you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane