Five Enthusiastic Yesses for Every No
Recently, more and more attention is being given to cognitive biases – psychological traits that have evolved in response to changing environments. A cognitive bias that gets a lot of attention, at least in meditation circles, is the negativity bias. Simply put, having a negative bias means we tend to give more weight to negative input, lousy news, challenging feelings, things about which we're worried than to positive information, good news, lighthearted feelings, things about which we're excited.
Scientists don't agree on how much good news it takes to balance out a single piece of bad news, but five positive inputs for every negative one is a ratio I've seen cited by several researchers. If we use a five-to-one ratio as our rule of thumb, that means let's give ourselves five enthusiastic “yesses,” for every "no!" Scientists don't agree on how much good news it takes to balance out a single piece of bad news, but five positive inputs for every negative one is a ratio I've seen cited by several researchers. If we use a five-to-one ratio as our rule of thumb, that means let's give ourselves five enthusiastic “yesses,” for every "no!"