Accentuate THE POSITIVE

It’s easy for bad days to get us down and trap us in a cycle of negative thinking – but we can break out and bounce back

You’re going about your day when you get a parking ticket, or don’t reach a work target, and your mood shifts for the worse. Negative thoughts flood your mind and your day feels ruined. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

It’s completely normal to get hung up on negative experiences. According to clinical psychologist Josh Klapow, we tend to associate them with situations in which “we lose something, are rejected, are threatened or have our vulnerabilities exposed”. Due to evolution, many of us are hardwired to seek out negativity so we can protect ourselves from it. But the more we focus on how to avoid negative events, the more we seek out the negative side of a situation first and the positive side second. This is known as a “negativity bias”.