Today’s passage, 

“When we focus on negative things, we actually reshape our perception into seeing negative things.” Arien Mack and Irvin Rock are psychologists who pioneered the concept of “inattentional blindness” noting the distinct difference between perception and awareness.

Now probably one of the best examples of perception vs awareness was the Selective Attention Test by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. Viewers were asked to count the number of times three people wearing a white t-shirt passed a basketball back and forth. Now there were three other people wearing black t-shirts that also passed a basketball back and forth.  Viewers were so focused on counting the passes from the white t-shirt squad that they failed to notice a person in a full-on Gorilla costume walk directly through the basketball tossing game.  They had visually seen the Gorilla but the information wasn’t processed in their conscious mind. They were too hyper focused on counting the basketball passes from the white t-shirt squad!

So in deconstructing this information in our everyday lives, if we focus on negative things, and continually synthesize negative information, it has this way of shaping the way we think and perceive what is happening to and around us.

Have you ever been in rush to get out the door and you can’t find your keys or wallet, some piece of material that is necessary for you to have in hand in order to leave? You are so focused on not finding that *thing* that that often times it might be right in front of you –just like the Gorilla—but you can’t see it. Maybe you ask your spouse or partner to help you search for it. And remember, they are not running the same incantation as you, meaning, “I can’t find it, I can’t find” or “I am going to be late.” They are not hyper-focused and they are more relaxed. Often the person who helps you find the missing item, locates it almost immediately---and sometimes it was right under your nose. 

Let’s talk about our brains. The amygdala is the part of our brain that helps us to emotionally regulate, it is responsible for the  perception of emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness, it also responds more to negativity than to positivity. Some researchers believe this to be the case because during paleolithic times, any sense of danger needed to send a significant brain charge in memory in order to keep us safe from predators.

But the good news is the amygdala also processes positive thinking and happiness, so we can “train our brains” to become more attuned to our negative thinking and reframe it.

Meditation is one great way to become more aware of negative thoughts but so is taking action to investigate the origin of negative thinking. For example, you can set a timer for every hour during your day.  When the timer goes off, write down what you’re thinking about, you will soon become more conscious of the thought patters that prevail

As Anthony De Mello, a spiritual teacher and Jesuit priest, once wrote, and I am paraphrasing, “negative thoughts are merely dark clouds in the sky of your consciousness, notice them, then let them pass by.”

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