We want to be happy.. but
We want to be happy but we are often alert and looking for trouble and strife. The function of the primitive parts of our brain is to keep us alert for danger and to react quickly. Changing our mindset is far from easy as we are more inclined to focus on the negative and to be reactive to situations. The negative attracts our attention as we are wired for self-protection and then we react from emotion rather than intellect.
Every second weekend my husband and I are child free. On a recent weekend we planned the perfect day. We took our dog Oscar out for a run in the morning, and stopped at the local cafe for coffee and a decadent chocolate, raspberry brownie for breakfast (yes I am a nutrition expert). We then arrived back at our beautiful country house and had a warm shower. Then, we headed off to a stunning trail, to do what we both love to do: run and hike in nature. Perfect. We then went to another cafe for a smoothie and some lunch in a lovely little local town near the water. That night we ate at a restaurant that we both really enjoy, where we had awesome wine, mulled cider, and the most delicious meal. To top off a perfect day we watched a program on Netflix that we had been waiting for all month. Have I mentioned the day was perfect?
Later in the evening my husband said something that hit a nerve. He didn’t mean to, but in response I replied with something that also hit his nerve (nerve ping pong). Before long it was on. I was yelling, he had stormed off, I was crying on the sofa and the whole day was ruined. I have identified that most times what presents as anger for me is actually fear. I exploded as I was scared; perhaps that I would lose his love, scared that he didn’t care about me, and my ego was threatened. Anyway this incident felt like a devastating event and ruined the day. In fact, even when asked how my weekend was, long after my love and I had kissed and made up, I responded with ‘it was alright’. I had forgotten all that perfection in a matter of minutes.
In the moment I had reacted from fear, feeling that a thoughtless comment had the power to ruin a relationship. This is just one example that I can recall; there are many more.
We are very quick to focus on the negative, or perhaps as Julia Roberts’ character Vivian, in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’ sums up: ‘The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?’ This is correct in most cases: bad is stronger than good, because the bad takes longer to process than the good, and so stays present with us for longer: and is therefore easier to believe.
A study was conducted at Harvard Business School by Teresa M Amabile, Professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven J Kramer, psychologist and researcher. It involved over 200 professionals, working on different projects, keeping a daily journal over six months.[i] The analysis was designed to tease out the effects of a setback on the employee’s day. This research highlighted that the negative effect of a setback really screwed up the rest of the working day. Any bad thing that occurred in the employee’s day, which decreased their progress, affected their happiness more than twice the amount than a positive event did. We lean into negative, which has many implications for our emotional wellbeing.
Alison Ledgerwood [ii] – social psychologist and professor from University of California, Davis – tested the hypothesis that humans find it harder to travel from a negative situation, or loss, to a positive situation or gain. Ledgerwood’s research included a study where participants were asked to imagine that an outbreak of a disease had occurred and told that 600 lives were at stake. In one group participants were asked to calculate if 100 lives were saved, so how many were lost. The other group had to calculate the lives lost, if 100 lives were saved. The answer for both is of course 500. However, the group that had to calculate losses to gains (the second group), took much longer to calculate than the group that had to figure out the gains to losses.
The researchers concluded that this, in addition to similar studies, shows that once we think of something as a loss it takes work to change it to a gain. [iii]
We have to work to see the upside – it doesn’t come naturally to any of us.
[i] TM Amabile, SJ Kramer (2011). The progress principle; using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Harvard Business Review Press.
[ii] Alison Ledgerwood’s Ted talk on how to reframe setbacks in a positive light is well worth listening to:
[iii] A Ledgerwood and AE Boydstun (2014). Sticky Prospects: Loss Frames are Cognitively Stickier Than Gain Frames. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Genera, doi:10.1037/a0032310.