Creating better positive mental health in a world full of negativity

4 Mar 2022 · 3 min

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3:17

In this short monologue, the speaker addresses how constant exposure to negative news and social media can trap people in a doom‑and‑gloom mindset. To illustrate how selective attention shapes our perception of reality, she guides listeners through a simple exercise: counting the blue objects in a room and then noticing how few green objects are seen unless deliberately looked for. The exercise demonstrates that we often miss positive or neutral aspects of our environment because we focus on the negative. She extends the metaphor to mental health, describing a "negative muscle" that strengthens when we repeatedly focus on bad news, while a "positive muscle" weakens. By consciously choosing to focus on positive or neutral stimuli, we can strengthen the positive muscle, achieve a more balanced outlook, and reduce anxiety. The speaker encourages listeners to practice this shift in attention over the next few hours, observe the change in their perception, and report back on the experience.

Chapters

With all the things going on in the news at the moment, it can be really easy to get stuck in a path of doom and gloom, focusing on all the difficult and often tragic things that are going on in the world. But when we do that, we often tend to miss all of the good things as well, and it doesn't help that the social media doesn't balance up that negative and the positive, but you can. There's a little exercise that I used to do with kids when I went in and ran assemblies at secondary school. It's very simple, but it's really good at helping you to really understand how things are all around us that we often don't see. So let's just play this game. I want you, as I count from 1 to 5, to just look around wherever you are and focus on all the blue things in the room. Okay, here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I don't know how many things you saw, but undoubtedly you saw blue things in the room. How many green things did you see? 0. And when I used to do this in schools, the kids would go, oh, Miss, you didn't tell us to look at green things! And then the penny would start to drop. When you look for blue things, you see them because they're all around, but so are the green things. You just don't see them. And so the purpose of really sharing this is we do genuinely create our own reality. There are good things, there are bad things in the world all the time. You can choose to focus your attention on the bad things, and yes, you will find them in abundance at the moment. But when you do that, you miss seeing all of the good things that are around. So perhaps take this on board, even for the next few hours. Look for the good things. You will find them. And what this then tends to do is psychologically If you think about having a negative muscle and a positive muscle, if you're constantly flexing the negative one, it gets stronger and the positive one gets weaker. This is about now stretching that positive one so it also gets stronger and creates more of a balance. The world is full of blue and green and red, yellow, and many other colours, but we choose what we focus on. And when you have a choice, you are in a position of control. And if anyone that's worked with me, you know it's one of my common phrases: where there is control, there isn't room for anxiety. Have control of what you focus on now and create your own reality, building a stronger positive muscle. And just see— How that changes your world. Let me know how you get on.