A Bouquet for Your Negativity Bias: Random Access Wellness Generator 008

On a liminal stretch of pavement between a hay field and an office park near Louisville, Colorado is an adopt-a-highway sign that reads “Think Happy Thoughts.” A local employer has dedicated it to a late gentleman named Jeff. By remarkable coincidence, I know his story.

Each day when Jeff arrived at his cubicle, he hit the Play button on the same song: “Ring of Fire.” Then Jeffy would do a little dance. Every morning it was the same thing—Johnny Cash, a little shuffle, down to work.

Jeff got hit by a truck once. He hired a good lawyer. At the end of their calls, Jeff signed off by saying “Think happy thoughts!” Reportedly, he always said good-bye this way.

Jeff is gone now. I didn't know him, but I have received his message. His habit of calling out happiness lives on not only in the memories of his friends and colleagues, but in reflective, enamel-coated steel.

Maybe you are skeptical of the pursuit of happiness and our cultural obsession with feeling better than good. Maybe you have been shamed with the label “optimist,” as I have been. But did you hear the one about the saber-toothed tiger? In order to survive, this self-help trope goes, humans have developed a strong negativity bias that keeps our brains on red alert for predators that have been extinct for 10,000 years. Negativity bias has been described as 4 to 1 against happy thoughts—that is, we are four times more likely to notice a problem than a possibility, a danger than a delight. We can counter this source of unnecessary stress any number of ways, perhaps through polyvagal theory, pleasure activism, or turning off notifications.

I am fond of a practice I learned from Christopher Willard Psy. D. 's book How We Grow Through What We Go Through. You might try it at the dinner table or at the end of a meeting. Each person in turn names four roses, one thorn, and a bud. The hope is to outwit negativity bias by outnumbering the thorns with roses. If you’re doing this by yourself, think of four things from the day or week you are thankful for, happy about, or in wonder of. Now, name one thorny thing—just one! Then, and this is important, name something you are looking forward to, a rose that has not yet bloomed.

We face plenty of existential threats these days—they just aren’t in the form of saber-toothed tigers. When we counter our fearful evolutionary habits and quiet the animal brain that wants to flee, fight, freeze, or flop, we access our ability to reason, and to love. We bring intelligence and compassion to our challenges rather than our most fear-based instincts. We feel safe enough to make plans for a better future. “Think happy thoughts,” then, is not about pretending nothing is wrong; It is about noticing what is right and then doing more of it.

Kinda makes me want to do a little dance.

Until next week, may you be well and very well.