Look for the Good

Not so much a bookish post today...but maybe it is, since we learn from books. I’m a yoga instructor and I also teach 200 RYT teacher trainings (I train and certify people to be yoga instructors).

One of the books I require my trainees to read is 𝘽𝙪𝙙𝙙𝙝𝙖’𝙨 𝘽𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙉𝙚𝙪𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙃𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨, 𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙒𝙞𝙨𝙙𝙤𝙢, and I’m going to reference it in this post. I’ll promise to keep it short. Right now I know that we are, as a country, going through a lot of animosity, stress and leaning towards negative thoughts.

Did you know that our brains are actually wired to retain negative thoughts and experiences rather than positive ones?

“Your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls, and reacts to unpleasant experiences, it’s like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. Consequently, even when positive experiences outnumber negative ones, the pile of negative implicit memories naturally grows faster. Then the background feeling of what it feels like to be you can become undeservedly glum and pessimistic.” - From Buddha’s Brain

Then, it takes four or more positive memories to override one negative. So let’s start working on the positive - Let’s override the negative.