High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 537: Our Brain's Negativity Bias

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

We all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain’s role is to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. To reduce our automatic negative thinking, we first must notice our thoughts. An important part of reaching your greater potential is recognizing that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear—you want to recognize the ANT, label the ANTs, and then question your ANT.  Quote of the Week: Rick Hanson, PhD said: "Our brain is like Velcro for bad experiences and like Teflon for good ones.”  This Week's Power Phrase:  "I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think!”    

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Checking in with Cinder Kampoff this morning, we talk a little bit about our brain's negativity

bias. Cinder, start us off with a quote. I like this quote by Rick Hansen. He said, our brains like Velcro for bad experiences and they're like Teflon for good experiences. So those bad experiences stick with us and the Teflon ones seem to slide right off, right? What inspired the topic today? Well, of all the questions I get, the most people ask me questions about negativity, like how do I reduce the negativity in my own mind? And I think what's important is that we don't always choose everything that we think.

These are called automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs for short. And I first read this concept, Lisa, in a book by Daniel Amen called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. And these ANTs reflect today what we're going to call is your negativity bias. And we're going to talk a little bit about that and share some automatic negative thoughts and what those actually mean. So let's talk a little bit about this negativity bias that we all seem to have. Exactly. So it includes two things. First, negative experiences are quickly stored in our memory.

And so, in fact, for our brains to really store positive experiences long term, we actually have to hold them into our awareness for about 12 seconds. So that just means we have to notice the good. And the second thing is that the negative experiences linger longer than the positive memories. And so we're more likely to remember something that didn't go well, a rejection or someone saying no, than the things that have gone well. And so is negativity always bad? It's not always bad. I think that's a really good question because negative thoughts,

you know, can prevent us from making poor career decisions, and they can help us not be overconfident in our own skills. But generally, I would say negative thoughts really do disempower us, and they're more likely often to hinder us than help us in building our career or being successful in our life or our activities like sports and believing in our potential in general. So you have shared with us in the past when we've talked about negative thoughts a few ants. Can you tell us a few more? Sure. So what ants are is automatic negative thoughts. And they create a story in our mind that often isn't really actually true. So our automatic negative thoughts are usually irrational, and we can experience them more when we're under stress. And ultimately, they diminish our confidence and our ability.

So one example of an automatic negative thought, Lisa, is something called always or never thinking. And this happens when we think things will always happen the way they've happened before or that things never happened because they once didn't. So we use words in our mind like like everyone, or every time or everything, or no one or never. So for example, let's say in sports, a coach yells at you once in a while, and then you know, our brain can automatically think, you know, he yells at me all the time. And so what is another example of an ant? Another example is called guilt tripping. And this can happen when we use words like should or must or have or ought to. And it can happen when we use words like should or must or have or ought to. And it can happen when we tell ourselves, for example, like, I should spend more time on my

homework or I ought to spend more time, you know, at home or in the office. And guilt really is counterproductive because it creates a resistance to what we actually need to do. Do you have another example for us? Yeah, this is called blaming. And I call this the most dangerous red fire ant. This happens when we blame someone or blame someone else for our problems or our situation. And so we say things like, you know, this is your fault that or this wouldn't have happened if and we can do this in our mind, but also out loud. And we can blame others for our situation. And when we do that, we become powerless to change it.

So how would you summarize today? I would summarize that we all experience automatic negative thoughts because our brain's real role is to keep us safe, not to help us perform well or be happy. And so to reduce these automatic negative thoughts or just the thinking in general, the negativity, we have to first notice our thoughts. And so an important part of reaching your potential in general is you shouldn't believe everything you think. And we want to recognize those automatic negative thoughts

and really question them. And you're going to leave us with a power phrase this week. You usually do. And I love these. I love this too. It says, I am not my thoughts. I will not believe everything I think. That should be a bumper sticker on our desks or something all over the place. Sindra, let's talk about how we get in touch with you, how we follow along with your work. Absolutely. So my books, Beyond Grit and Beyond Grit for Business cover this topic of negativity. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A, to find out more information about those books. No negative thoughts today. Thank you, Sindra.

Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community

for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.