by Ariana Newcomer
The news is almost uniformly bad. We feel like there’s never enough time. Traffic is terrible. We worry about money and our health. We worry about work and family. We worry about the planet.
We feel stressed. It feels like the world is stressful.
In truth, the world is just happening. The stress we feel comes from the inside. In an earlier article, Perspective Is Everything, I wrote about how we can shift the stories we tell ourselves (our perspective) about what happened so we can get out of the negative loop and move forward.
Perspective is key. But there is also a neurological reason for our tendency to focus on the negative.
Our brains are wired to pay more attention to things that are threatening, or MIGHT be threatening. It’s a survival mechanism that was very important to early humans.
These days, this brain function can be less than helpful, since many of the things we perceive as threats are not really life-threatening at all. Yet our brains and bodies react as though they were.
The good news is, we can change our brains! Neuroscience has realized that our brains are capable of learning and growing all throughout life. We can create new habits and pathways in our brains with the right input, delivered consistently over time.Continue Reading
