Why your brain is wired for negative thoughts and how to change it!

0:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. Again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to talk to you about why your brain is wired for negative thoughts so that you can understand it and step-by-step how to change your negative thoughts to be more positive and to have more of a positive outlook in your life. And, you know, human beings, when you look at us as an actual species, we are extremely complex creatures and we've been around for millions of years. Our ancestors were around for at least 2 million years ago is when it was. And so when you look at that, that's a lot of different evolution and changes that have happened over the course of time.

1:05And one of the most fascinating aspects of human psychology and neurology is a thing that's called the negativity bias. And the negativity bias is this. It means that we focus more on negative experiences or information than we do positive ones. and the trait is really, really deeply ingrained into our brains. It's deeply ingrained into your behavior and it basically influences everything from our relationships to our decision-making and everything that's in between. But the crazy part about it is that most of the time you never notice it. It just tends to happen and if you're not conscious of it, you're probably not going to have the life that you want because you're going to have this negativity bias come in often.

1:50You're going to stay inside of your comfort zone If you never leave your comfort zone, you're never going to create your dreams because essentially your dreams go to die in your comfort zone. And today we're going to break it down. I'm going to talk about how, first off, like why it exists, how it exists in our brain, how it manifests in our daily lives, and then also how it will affect your mental health if you're not paying attention and, you know, how your overall well-being changes as well. And then I'm going to talk to you guys about how to change it. Sound good? Okay, first thing, where does this whole thing come from?

2:19Why are people negative? Why are people more negative than positive most of the times? And if we have it, it's got to have its benefits. It's got to have its evolutionary benefits. So the negativity bias comes from our ancestors' need for survival. And if you look at the life that you have now, the life that we all have now, even if you have the worst life alive right now, is probably way better than all of our ancestors a million years ago, two million years ago. because in the prehistoric world, danger was everywhere. You could be killed at any moment by something. So there's that where you got to protect yourself.

2:58There's also food scarcity where you're constantly looking for food all the time, every day to stay alive. There's water that you have to find. There's clean water that you have to find because your friend died yesterday because he had dirty water. You know, there's natural disasters that could strike without warning because they didn't have weather apps. But, oh, well, it's going to rain today. So early humans had to be hyper, hyper aware of potential dangers as a matter of life and death at any moment. And so even if you think to a couple hundred years ago, things were extremely dangerous. If you think back to like, you know, 1700s, 1500s, all of that, why did people have to live behind walls and castles?

3:36Because some random person would just come in and try to kill all of them and take over their castle. So it's like we have a pretty soft life compared to the way that it used to be. And so like, you know, if you say there's two early humans walking a million years ago, they're walking through a dense forest or something like that, and they hear a rustling in the bushes, one of them might be like, oh, it's no big deal. It's the wind. The other one who is much more hyper aware and much more quote unquote negative, but looking for the negative assumes that, hey, it's a predator and it takes the right action to protect themselves and pays attention.

4:11And a lion comes out of anywhere of just some random bush and it kills the one that's less cautious and not paying attention. The one that's more cautious is more likely to survive. And if they're more cautious, they're likely to pass on those genes to the next person that's going to be coming, their children, their offspring, and their offspring, and their offspring. So when you look at humans and who we are right now, like I was thinking about this as I was creating this episode, we're probably the offspring of the most worried and cautious ancestors that existed. Because the ones that were less worried and less cautious probably got eaten by something or ate something they weren't supposed to and they died.

4:51And so we're like, why are people so negative? Why are people always focusing on the bad? Because we're probably the offspring of the most worried and cautious ancestors that existed. And that's why they lived. And that's why we're tortured with negative thoughts nowadays. Well, yippity-doo-dah, that's the way that it goes, right? And after two million years, it turns into dumb things that we worry about. Oh, well, what if they don't like me? What if they say no to me? What if this person rejects my business proposal? What if there's something wrong with me? Did I just act weird at the social event that I was at?

5:23What if my boss hated my presentation? If I start this business, I could go broke and it was a big waste of my time and I'd be homeless and I live on the side of the road, right? So it's like, it goes from, hey, we need to be hyper aware so we can survive to, I wonder if those people liked me. And we focus on all of the negative and the way that we, You showed up. Oh my gosh, we went to an incredible social event. We had so much fun, but we said that one thing that after we leave, did somebody think that I might've said that in a different way? Because I didn't mean it that way. And then we focus on that thing and that thing tortures us.

5:56And so it started as a protection mechanism and now it's turned into what is keeping you from getting the life that you want and getting out of your comfort zone. So just know before we go any further, your brain is wired for negativity. That is okay. And the way that it shows up in your normal everyday life is, you know, while the dangers of our ancestors have mostly disappeared, the negativity bias has not. It's in our brain. So instead, it manifests in a bunch of different ways in our modern lives. And there's a couple different ways, and I'll go through them. The first one is your attention and your memory are really important to know.

6:32One of the most apparent ways that negativity bias tends to affect us is how we pay attention to and remember events. So negative events tend to stand out in our lives way more than positive events. And so if you're a person who had an okay childhood, but it wasn't the best, if you were to think back to your childhood, you could probably think a lot about the negative things that popped up, the one time that your mom yelled at you, the time that your dad forgot about you, the time that you were bullied. But the positive ones are kind of, you know that they were there, but you can't really remember all of them.

7:05Maybe it's like, oh, I remember Disney when I was a kid. You know, another example of that is like, so that's your past and your memory. But also like when you think about like what you're focusing on, like you could go out today and you could wear a new jacket, right? And you could receive 10 compliments on that jacket and one criticism on that jacket. And it's more likely that you're going to remember and you'll be kind of stuck on the criticism way longer than the other compliments, even though you got 10 times more compliments. I remember when this really started when I first started putting content on Instagram And you know i've posted over 8 000 times on Instagram now in the past Eight nine years at this point But I remember when I first started posting on Instagram And I would get positive comments and I would get a couple negative comments I remember one time I put up a video that went kind of viral like i've had quite a few viral videos at this point Just on social media alone.

7:59I have over 2 billion views with a b and so at the very beginning I didn't know what to do with the negative attention that I was getting and it was like one percent of the attention and the comments were negative but what I noticed was I was focusing on the negative one there was one video that I had that got like a couple million views right and it was like all of these positive comments I agree I agree and then there's one of them that was just this really negative and it's probably like a hundred positive comments and one negative one and a few hours later I was literally about to go and I was about to leave my house and I noticed myself ruminating and thinking about this one negative comment.

8:37And I was like, what are you doing? You're thinking about one negative comment and you had like over a hundred positive comments. And it was just a little reminder of me of like, yeah, we're going to focus on the negative. It's a protection mechanism in some sort of way. And so, you know, now that I've posted so much on Instagram, if I get a hater or a negative thing, it's like, all right, no big deal. So, um, so for those of you guys that don't follow me on Instagram, go follow me, Rob Dial Jr., R-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And so this is the reason why our brains tend to prioritize negative information is to basically ensure that we're going to remember potential threats or mistakes that could affect our survival.

9:13And it's crazy when you think about it, but you know, and I know that a negative comment on Instagram has nothing to do with our survival. Our brain pays attention to the negative anyways. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. So it's also when you look at the attention as well, it's why the news is negative. It's why I do not watch the news at all. I have no idea what's happening in the world because I try to protect my mental health. Because I know with me, like I protect my mental health over pretty much everything. And so over years, I've stopped getting rid. I've got rid of all of the negative things in my life.

9:52And so this is the reason why the news outlets don't really show the positive stuff is because they know that our brains are wired towards the negative. So they show the crime. They show the disasters. They show the people who got killed, the conflicts, the wars, the murders. Very rarely is it like, hey, look at this cute duck, this duck that's taking its babies across the road. It's like, no, look at all of the negative stuff because they know that that's what our attention goes towards. And if we look at too many of these things and we're not paying attention to it, it can really, really distort our view of the world.

10:23And it makes it seem way more dangerous and way more negative than it actually is. The other thing you have to realize is there's way more cameras in this world than there ever have been. And so even though the world, you know, obviously there's a lot of shit that's happening in the world. That's very obvious. Even though the world, you know, is getting more safe and that's statistically proven, you can look it up. Even though it's statistically getting safer across the entire world, we have more cameras to show us the negative and we also have the news outlets that are pushing those out as much as possible.

10:53And so it definitely makes a big, the negativity bias pops up in our memory, but also our attention. Another place that it pops up is our decision making. So the negativity bias plays a massive, massive role in decision making processes. So when we're faced with choices, we tend to, based off of our brain, weigh the potential losses way more than we do the potential gains in something. And so we tend to think about all of the things that could go wrong and we rarely think about the things that could go right. And so like I coach a lot and work with a lot of business owners and I have for years because 95 % of the reason why a business fails, it's usually not the market.

11:29It's usually not the product. It's usually the mindset of the business owner. And so if you're like, oh, I want to go start a business. Well, then the immediate thoughts are like, oh my God, it's going to be so much hard work. What if it fails? What if I get rejected on a sales call? I don't like rejections. What if I waste all of this time trying to build it? I put two years into it and it still fails. And then I wasted time and I wasted money. What if I disappoint my family and my wife? And then two years from now, I'm actually further behind than I am right now. You start focusing on all the negative.

11:57Really, do we take into account all of the upsides of starting a business? The personal growth that we have to go through in order to do this. The growth that we have to have as a human to be able to grow a successful business. The money that could come in, that could change your life, that could change your family's life that could change the trajectory of your entire lineage and the trajectory of your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, we don't really pay it. We know that those are there. Like we're aware that it's there, but we don't tend to focus on it. You know, at events, I do meditations and visualizations.

12:29I'll have business owners come in and I'll do a quick 15 minute meditation visualization practice where I take them through the future that they want to create and what it would look like and what it would feel like and how proud of themselves that they would be. And everyone always talks about how freaking powerful that is. And it's so powerful because they never do it because they're always focusing on what could go wrong. You know, like a couple of times in this podcast recently, I've told you guys that like I'm buying a house or I just bought a house. When I was going through the process of buying the house, all of the negative came in my head because I'm a freaking human and that's what happens.

13:01And I was thinking, well, what if this and what if that and what if this and what if that and I have to rent out my, you know, going to be taking my actual house that I live in and the office and studio house, which is another house that we have, which I'm recording in right now. And then we're going to consolidate them into my new house. So I'm going to have my office and my studio inside of my new house. But also, I'm going to have these two other mortgages that I have to pay for. So I'm going to have three mortgages. What if nobody rents it? What if I end up losing money on them? And it's like negative, negative, negative, negative.

13:30And I just have to become aware of it and start focusing. If I'm going to focus on the bad, I'm also going to need to focus on the good. I need to see both sides of the coin. So it pops up in our decision-making. It pops up in our relationships a lot too. Negativity bias affects our relationships more than you would know. A negative comment or a negative action that somebody does in a relationship with you is way more impactful than the positive ones. Like a single argument can overshadow years of beautiful moments in a relationship with somebody. And it's even more true in close emotional relationships where those emotional wounds tend to linger a whole lot longer.

14:11So it pops up there as well. It pops up in our own self-esteem and our mental health. Negativity bias has a really big impact on self-esteem and mental health because you're tuning into the negative about you more than you're turning into the positive about you. And so we tend to, you know, internalize criticisms and what we're doing wrong. And we dwell on our failures and we, we feel like we're not good enough. We're not smart enough. We're not, we're, we're so inadequate. We have low self-worth, all of that. All of those things contribute to mental health issues. And so people tend to focus on more of their negative aspects than their positive ones.

14:48And believe me, there's 10 times more positive aspects to you than negative ones, but we tend to focus on the negative. And I've, I can actually tell you this from speaking at so many events over years and years. One of the things I used to do years ago is I would sit in front of a group of people and I would say, hey, I'm going to give you 60 seconds. I want you to write down everything that you don't like about yourself, everything negative, ready, set, go. And people would just be like writing and writing and they'd get like 40, 50, 60 things that they don't like about themselves. I'd say, okay, I'm going to give you 60 more seconds.

15:16I want you to write down everything positive about yourself. And people will come up with like four things because they can't think of them because they're not paying attention to them all the time. Not because they don't exist. They definitely have a whole lot of positive. It's because most of the time people tend to view themselves in a negative light. You know, like an example, like think about being a student, right? Then you go into work and you are going to work, go into school and you fail a test. And then you start having negative self-talk. I can't believe I tried so hard at this. And because you're negative self-talk, you're like, I'm terrible at math.

15:45I'm not good at this. Well, the next time you have a test that's going to be coming up, you have less motivation to study for it because why even try? You already suck at math. So why would you put time into your tests? And then because of that, you have more bad tests. And you end up failing the class after that. And you're like, see, I knew I was terrible at math. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so how do we overcome this thing? How do we work with it? Right? Because it's there and it doesn't have to control our life. But if we're not paying attention to it, a lot of times it will control our life.

16:16So the first thing we need to become, more than anything else, and this is pretty much my first tip for almost everything I talk about, is your awareness. you need to become aware of when it does pop up. And if you're going to be, if you notice yourself not feeling really good, it's like, okay, what am I thinking about? Well, I'm thinking about all the negative aspects of starting a business. Okay. Well, if I'm going to look at the negative aspects of it, I'm going to at least need to look at the positive aspects of it as well. It's only fair to look at both sides. And so that brings us to the second thing that you need to pay attention to, which is this thing called positive cognitive reframing.

16:49It's a psychological technique, Like positive cognitive reframing involves intentionally shifting our focus from a negative aspect when we're aware that we're concentrating on the negative and then also focusing on the positive. It's not going, hey, just ignore everything in your life. It's going, hey, if you're going to see the negative, you're going to also need to see the positive. And it allows you to kind of look at these challenges that come up in life, not as like pitfalls, but opportunities for you to grow. Any setbacks that pop up is like, oh, hey this is temporary I'm going to take these failures I'm going to take these setbacks and I'm going to learn from them so I can get better you know so it's like let's say you get some criticism at work rather than dwelling on that criticism you can reframe it and go okay I appreciate this criticism it's given me an opportunity to improve myself to learn to grow and it's showing me just a couple things that I need to tweak to get better and so by focusing on that versus how much you suck which most people do you focus on the ways where you can improve, you can learn, you can grow, you can get better.

17:50And then therefore you're not gonna be negative, but you're going to go, Hey, you know what? I actually took this thing that wasn't necessarily a good thing about my presentation. And I made it into a strength that I've actually become better and that builds your confidence within yourself. Another thing that's really important to do that I recommend for everybody on this. And I used to think like having a gratitude journal was like kind of corny. If I'm being honest with you, I was like, well, okay, dude, you know, just write down the things you're positive for, you know, what you're right. Oh, I'm grateful for this, the sunshine.

18:17But one thing that I've been doing for basically the past probably almost a year now is when I wake up in the morning and I do my breath work and meditation, which I do every single morning, I focus on things that I'm grateful for. And I'm basically setting my reticular activating system, which I talked about a few episodes ago. You can go back and listen to it. The filtering part of my brain to pay attention to the things that I'm grateful for. And when I do that in the morning, what ends up happening throughout the rest of the day, I start noticing more things that I'm grateful for, which naturally takes me out of my negativity bias and kind of sets me up to have a positivity bias where I'm starting to search for things that I'm grateful for and search for things that are great in my life.

18:55There's always two sides of the coin. You can't just look at one side of the coin. You've got to also look at the positive side as well. The other thing that would really help you as well is start surrounding yourself with positivity. Start noticing how your environment affects the way that you feel, how the people that you surround yourself affects the way that you feel, how the place that you live affects the way that you feel, the car that you drive, the way that you dress, all of that stuff affects the way that you feel. Can you start surrounding yourself with things that make you happier, things that make you feel more positive, whatever that means for you.

19:24And then really the last thing is, is just be kinder to yourself. You know, now that you know this exists, you can know that you're not a flawed individual. I have this inside of my brain. Everybody has this inside of their brain. we're all going to go to negative first most of the time and so it's about going okay i'm noticing i'm being negative let me go ahead and positively cognitive reframe this whole thing i'm going to start focusing on the positive i'm gonna start focusing on gratitude the benefits how this could become good and just have some compassion for yourself don't beat yourself up because it's natural for you to be this way and you will not get this part of your brain like you can't go in there and take a spoon and get this part of your brain and let's like scoop it out it's there it's going to be there until the day you die.

20:03And so just understand, okay, yeah, it's a protection mechanism, but I don't need to focus on the negative right now. You know, it is possible to be scared of something and do it anyways. It's possible to take action that's different than how you feel. And so really what it comes down to is like, I can be scared. I can think of the negative and I can still take action, but I can think of the negative and I can also go, you know what? I'm going to think of the positive and I'm going to take action towards that as well. because ultimately this isn't something that should hold you back. It's just something we should all be aware of.

20:34And when we're aware of it, we can start to shift it and mold it to be something a little bit different, but it'll never go away. So it's just something that you need to become more skilled at working with. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And also if you love this podcast, you will definitely love Mindset Mentor Plus. Mindset Mentor Plus is kind of like the podcast on steroids for every single episode that comes out of this podcast mindset mentor plus listeners get a whole lot more and so you'll get detailed worksheets multiple page four five six page worksheets that go even more in depth than this podcast does about each individual topic and so therefore you can go deeper into it you can underline you can highlight you can print it out there's journaling questions so you can fit it into your life and see how you can start making positive changes in your life so that you can learn and grow quicker and create the life that you want, hopefully quicker as well.

21:27Also, this is where I do my Q &A sessions and a whole lot of other bonuses as well. So if you want to learn more about it, there's a video on the website to tell you all about it. Just go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And the best part about it, hey, it's less than a dollar a day. So if you want to learn more, just go to that website. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.