Looking on the Bright Side

There are optimistic people and there are negative people. Sometimes, the negative people are really hard to be around. They can change your mood from happy to sad in a matter of minutes. Moods really do rub off on people. So if you show up to meet your group of friends and you’re in a bad mood, you may just ruin their night as well as yours.

Science has now proven that those negative and positive people actually have different brain wiring. Scientists conducted a series of tests to explore the idea. In the tests, scientists flashed a negative or positive image in front of subjects so quickly that the subjects couldn’t consciously perceive it. What they gathered was that pessimistic people were drawn to negative images, while optimistic people were drawn to positive images.

Translated into layman’s terms, this means that positive people are a magnet for positive experiences, since they perceive life in this way. While being negative means you will surround yourself with negative experiences, since that’s what you mostly perceive the world as being.

But the good news is that our brain is a very malleable organ. We can train ourselves to start thinking in different ways. So if you are one of those people who has a pessimistic mind, you can start recruiting your brain to think more positively.

You can start by taking any experience you have during the day, negative or not, and thinking of it in a positive way. Even if it really is a negative situation, seeing any positive aspects of it will help you see the world in a brighter and happier way. If you made an unfortunate mistake, then consider it a learning experience: you know what not to do in this situation in the future. It’s not so much turning an entirely negative experience into a positive one so much as it is realizing that you can find positive elements in almost everything. Focus on those and you’ll be on your way.

It’s unrealistic to think we can be happy-go-lucky all of the time, but we can get a lot more enjoyment out of our lives if we keep the negative thoughts from affecting how we view the world.