How and why you should learn to see positive patterns
The other day I was in the car with my brother and we were listening to the original version of a song from a show he's auditioning for and comparing it to its modern revised version. When the song ended I told him how I did not like the original and listed three specific reasons why. He, on the other hand, exclaimed how much he enjoyed this version and was impressed with the arrangement. I didn't realize this at the time, but my brain had scanned the entire song and picked out what I considered to be it's flaws or areas that could use improvement rather than letting me enjoy the positive characteristics. Have you ever had a similar experience?
If so, according to Shawn Achor you have been a victim of the "Tetris Effect." In his book, The Happiness Advantage, he talks about a study that required participants to play Tetris for several hours over a period of three days. After the study, participants continued to see geometric shapes in all aspects of life; such as the cereal boxes at the grocery store. Achor explains that this is also seen in many other situations such as when an accountant, who is excellent at finding mistakes in budget reports, also has a tendency to point out mistakes with the people in his personal life. I’m not saying that you can’t dislike certain things, but when you often find yourself stuck seeing only negative patterns, you might be experiencing some version of this phenomenon.
How does that apply to me you ask? Well my job as a Quality Assurance Analyst entails me finding bugs and areas of improvement in software. You give me a mobile app to test and my brain immediately begins to scan for anything that may not be working as it should. This skill can come in handy in other areas, like proofreading a blog post or helping my brother rehearse lines before an audition, but it's not so great when I'm watching a movie and am mostly focused on highlighting mistakes in the plot.
However, just like you can train yourself to see Tetris shapes or computer bugs, you can also retrain yourself to see the positives around you. This is important because, as Achor says, “What we’re finding that it’s not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens not only can we change your happiness, but we change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.” Essentially you can change your life by changing the way you see the world.
He suggests a few practical steps you can take to change the way you think. These include elements like gratitude, journaling, exercise, meditation, and random acts of kindness. Take a look at his very entertaining TED Talk:
Now that I have you totally convinced that you can change the way you think and rewire your brain for positivity, naturally it’s time to throw one caveat at you. As you probably know, it’s easy to sometimes get stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts. We all have bad days here and there which can definitely create a domino effect in our routine. Allison Ledgerwood explains in the following video that it’s a lot more difficult to alter one’s thinking from negative to positive, than it is to go from positive to negative. This means that we may have the best intentions of creating a positive mindset, but one negative thought can alter our plans and keep us stuck in negativity for some time unless we _actively work_ to change our thinking to positive.
Positively retrain your brain using gratitude:
Shawn mentions several steps that one can take to retrain the brain to see positive patterns. However, I’m personally choosing to focus on a single one at the moment: gratitude. Shawn says that simply writing 3 things for which you’re grateful for every day can essentially retrain your brain in as little as a few days. With this in mind, I’ve started keeping a gratitude journal in which I write three things that I'm grateful for each day. However, I've also decided to apply my own version of the “3 gratitudes” technique whenever I catch myself seeing only negative patterns in a situation. Once I hear the negative chatter going on in my head I stop myself and actively begin listing at least 3 things that I'm grateful for about the thing I’m focusing on. When I first began doing this I felt a bit sluggish when coming up with positives, but after a few days of practice I began to feel that I’m able to notice more of the good more quickly. I’m looking forward to seeing what effect this has on other areas of my life.
