There are lots of reasons to feel negatively affected by the world around you. Personal struggles, mental, physical, financial, just to name a few, may be affecting you now more than ever. Psychology explains much of human behavior by looking at motivating factors. Some motivators are positive, like using the promise of a walk outside at the end of the work day to push through. Other motivators call you to action all the same, but have a dark side. For example, I’m guilty of telling my children that if they don’t behave according to expectations that I will take away their TV time. Most people, including my children, respond better with a positive motivators.
Like motivation, the way we view the world can be shrouded in positivity and negativity. The more I spend my working life online, the less I spend talking to students and colleagues face-to-face. This experience has shifted the amount of time I seem to be alone with my thoughts — SO MUCH MORE.
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I’m reminded that my memory reflects who I am and largely shapes my inner voice. The idea that our memory shapes our personality is one I never get tired of considering. Charles Fernyhough, author and psychologist, describes how memory forms identify in more detail here. If you too find yourself alone coping with our current world more than ever, emphasis on the following memory processes can make your LIFE MORE POSITIVE.
Positivity Bias, also called the Pollyanna principle (named after a book character similar to a modern-day Disney Princess – think Amy Adams as Giselle in Enchanted), is the human tendency to focus on the positive. Bias refers to a general cognitive term, not necessarily always with a negative connotation, in which we are more likely to think one way over the other. This is great news as life seems to be stacking on the difficulty. Just today alone I’ve chatted with two people about how easy it is to focus on negative aspects of life. Maybe it is a small mishap like spilling your morning coffee on a computer or something life-changing like losing a job. Either way, the cumulative effects of daily life can be draining. Those who believe good outweighs the bad are likely to be happier and more resilient in the face of life’s biggest challenges.
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Forgetting. Daniel L. Schacter’s groundbreaking work on memory suggests that the secret to a good memory may be forgetting. Consider being able to remember too many mundane details of your life: what you ate each day, the clothes you wear, and all the conversations you have. For a very small number of people this ability, known as hyperthymesia, or highly superior autobiographical memory, is more of a curse than a blessing. Remembering what you did each day may turn out to be a fun party trick; however, for many of these people remembering everything personal has led to depression. Think of it this way. When we have a bad breakup as a teen or suffer an embarrassment at the office most of us, overtime, consider the event less terrible. A dulling of the severity or negativity of the memory has occurred. This normal course of forgetting allows us to become wiser and learn from our experiences. It also gives us the opportunity to reshape our thinking and put negativity in the past. Not being able to forget details of extremely negative events, like a traumatic car accident or a violent act when remembered, can lead to Post-traumatic Stress and anxiety.
As much as we may wish for a better memory, forgetting has its advantages!
Reminiscence or discussing the past can also be a favorite way to live in the present reality. Psychologists have discovered a reminiscence bump for memory; individuals older than 40 tend to remember positive events from their teens and twenties more than self-knowledge for other time periods. I think my grandpa was right in how he thought of the past. As a small child I recall his monthly magazine called Reminisce, which I’m delighted to see is still in publication. I would eagerly crawl into his lap to help him with each edition’s notorious seek-and-find game, the where is “Hattie’s Hatpin Contest.” Chances are you may not even know what a hatpin is. As a child of the 1980’s I only saw the one “I found” within these magazines. I suspect what makes this publication so popular and timeless is that we can always relive the past. Through music, laughter, photographs, and video we now more than ever can relive a happy memory of the past.
Resources
Depression Basics. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved from: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/index.shtml
Fernyhough, C. (January 13, 2012). The story of the self. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/13/our-memories-tell-our-story
Josephson, B. (Producer), & Lima, K. (Director). (2007). Enchanted [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Studios.
Murray, B. (October, 2003). The seven sins of memory. Monitor, 34(4), 28. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct03/sins
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