One can become a positive person with the snap of the fingers. Decide. Decide that all the negative people will disappear from your life and that only positive people will appear. Decide. We cannot abandon the rest of the world - all the terrible wrongs taking place. But personally, we can be at a higher place looking for the good in people...not participating in slander of anyone including yourself.

I love. I love you as my sister/brother in my human family, I love you as the unique person that you are, I love you as a friend. It is difficult to have negativity in your life when you love. It works well for me.

Specific Incidents of Neg Bias

1. Active sweep: "Am I doing it?"
2. Recognize/admit: "Yes; I'm doing it."
3. Evaluate: "How much am I doing it?"
4. Checks and Balances:
   a. "Have I done this before? Is it a pattern?"
   b. "How would most people see this?"
   c. "Why am I doing this? What could I do differently do affect my perception?"
   d. "How does this impact me? What are the consequences if I don't make a change?"
5. Set Goal(s): "What do I want? How would I like to handle this in the future? What's a better outcome for me?"
6. Plan:. "What am I going to do to change the way I respond?"

   ---

   Neg Bias in General

• Reflect on it from time to time; remind myself that I do it; keep it in my awareness
• Maintain awareness of and take care of my over all attitudes and emotional health
• Reasearch
• Pay attention to how others experience and process it

Boobs in any context seems to work for me. I'm a guy, I'm simple and not very introspective. Hey it works for me.

I practice mindfulness. I try and allow myself to feel whatever it is my mind is on and attempt to do so without judgment. Ratcheting back my news intake in the era of Trump was necessary. Diaphragmatic breathing has been helpful when things get tense. Music is very important to me. I too dance alone or on rare occasions with my cat.
I'll move and sing along in the car and, since my bag of fucks is empty, I care not who's watching.

When it comes to politics I need to take breaks if it gets too depressing. Will flip the channel to an old sitcom or movie. Trumpty Dumpty was just speaking live on economics in Ohio and I changed the channel. Then the stock market started fluctuating wildly.

I log onto agnostic.com

The rest of my life is so potentially depressing, even the little semi converted garage I live in has tiny windows and a cold floor and could be depressing,

so I just don't watch the news, no TV no newspaper no unnecessary grief,

I mostly do stuff that's fun, and get out in the sun.

I have found some people who are toxic to me. And when I get that figured out, then just stay away from them. Of course it is much easier now that I am semi-retired. Had mostly good bosses, a few were average, and a couple of bad ones. For the bad ones, found for a way to transfer out. I do a little engineering consulting, and there are some jobs I won't take. I do limit the amount of time I spend catching up on the news. Stay off of facebook. Found this site instead for a little daily activity.

My Atheism is 100% positive and religion is hopelessly negative ....as long as I am critically thinking I see my vistas in balance factually. ...any time I am asked to believe to feel alleged ghostHoles or baby gawds or magic alleged creators my postitive Atheism kicks in

I talk to myself.

I don't do negative vibes. It is a technique I have developed over the years.
It's kind of a mix of stuff I have read about, seen others do and stuff that I found works for me.
I use positive language (almost) always. What can I change to improve... How can I... (make it work/avoid it etc) I try never to use 'I can't' though I will use 'I won't'

I don't have long on this planet, so I fully intend to make the most of my time here being happy. I really don't want to waste time on anger or sadness. After years of practice, not always successful initially, I can talk my self out of being angry, sad or negative and talk myself into being happy and positive.

Could I teach it to someone else? I doubt it, if I could I would probably patent it and become a life coach!!!

I simply stay away from negative people. I'm in sales and attitude is everything and as you said, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to someone else's negative state. I just avoid them like the plague.

Mainly I quit cable/satellite TV and stop watching the news (I have one escape, when I get a weather alert I am able to receive a few of the big stations to give me updates, but I don't watch them normally) I have prescriptions for streaming Smithsonian Earth, PBS, Hulu and Netflix, but I don't watch drama series because most of them are special developed to activate those negative basses and raise emotional tension. I twitter and talk a lot with people in real life (not on internet, that's the other kind of twitter) about light subjects and all day communication.
It works for me. Recently I got insulted on this site for sharing my thoughts. Though the person probably meant that to be negative, I did not want to see it that way and I turned it around in my reply.
But still there are periods that I'm not as positive as I would like to be. It helps me feeling more happy at other moments. I never let my darker moments beat me up for a long time.

You always ask questions that take a lot of thought. Good that is what I will give it. (be careful what you wish for). But my views are from my experience/perspective. It is harder and harder in today’s world to see the positive especially what is going on in this country. One thing I started doing a long time ago (and Parvin did it as well) was to pay attention to all the horrors of the world. That gave us an appreciation of how good we have it. We felt we were on the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

For example, political smear campaigns out-poll positive ones. Nastiness seems to make a bigger impact on our brains I am well aware of the negative attack ads and avoid those like the plague. Funny, you should mention this. A couple of years ago we had 2 people running for a port position. One was a rabid property right person and ran a total negative campaign against the other, who I didn’t know. The other one ran a campaign touting what he has done and there were no negative comments and he didn’t even mention the other one. So I wrote a letter to the editor and mentioned this. My guy not only won but he came by the house, introduced himself and invited us to a party. At the party he talked about how down he felt due to the other guy’s comments and even felt like withdrawing but my letter gave him courage to go on. He read my letter to the crowd (and there were a lot) and thanked me. Negativity promoting positive results!

Negativity bias can have a significant impact on our relationships, too. That affects some more than others. Often one gets more motivated with negative things as positive. For example, we have the usual ills here and one is domestic violence. When we learned that there was an attempt to get an awareness group started it motivated us to get involved and we did. Through our work we were able to get funding to hire a part time staff person on the island. We made silhouettes to signify the number of deaths in the state and help find and promote ‘safe houses’. As far as my relationship went it actually motivated us to keep what we had positive. Frustrations, sometimes, arguments, not once (in 16 years). Negative comments were turned into silly ones. For us it was about being grounded.

It takes a lot of mental energy and discipline to not succumb to the default setting.
I am a huge believer in geography. I have traveled all over the world and have chosen to live in the best place for me (luck also has a big part of this). The geography here, especially in the warm season is beyond stunning and highly motivating. Plus, being an island we don’t have to deal with the urban crap. I too reduce some news especially when I feel I can’t do anything about it. I don’t listen to NPR mornings (at 9 the programming changes to music). I only read the paper a section each day. I go for walks and drive along some of our more picturesque routes. I force myself to get motivated to take action on a variety of issues with a variety of means (I am working on one right now). I visit friends and, one of the most important is to work out. Go to the gym several times a week for a vigorous session and have a daily program at home.
Funny, but Parvin has accused me of being Mr. Negative (and it can SEEM that way sometimes). The funny thing is, sometimes she would wake up yelling from a bad dream and require comforting. I can’t remember ever having a nightmare in my life!

I think to some degree it comes down to "the luck of the draw". Some people are born positive and some are born negative and most are a mix of somewhere in-between the 2.

Personally, I feel I am lucky. I tend towards the positive most of the time. And it's not because I have had a privileged life. No way... far from it. Something that really works for me is being able to appreciate the fact that there are always others much worse off than me. I see this all around me in my day to to day life. I just need to visit my local supermarket and look around me. And I can see how lucky I really am.

I almost feel this ability to appreciate my self and see “the glass half full” all the time is a gift or a talent in itself. I appreciate it. But I don’t necessarily think it is an ability one can learn if one isn’t born with it? I don’t know. I am grateful for it anyway.

Avoid my wife.

Actually I do try to avoid the negative. That often means avoiding the local tv news. Doing something positive, whether it is a walk or reaching out to an old friend, making a donation.

I know you are supposed to take time and think of the things you are grateful for, but I don't always remember that one.

how about the researchers tilt the scales of their tests more towards the positive impact. the result might be very different, i.e. more equal between negative & positive responses. in the tune of: how long is a string?

I have read some studies that suggest that positive or negative personalities are respectively correlated with liberal or conservative political dispositions. Also, this may not be entirely learn't behavior, these dispositions may be inherited traits.

So then what, especially in US where liberals are out numbered by conservatives by a 25/36% respective margin based on a Gallup 1/3/2017 poll, are we to do. The issue seems to be that most people concentrate on negative events, which they continually rerun through their minds as if by doing so they could undo and thereby remedy the event.

I think the lady in the Ted talk is right, the best way past a negative event is to talk about it with some one you trust. Talk therapy works. Of course if you are liberally inclined it might make more sense to talk to someone similarly inclined and not someone conservatively inclined...ha, ha...been there and done that.

I’m dysthymic-negativity bias is a way of life.

So I live in a bubble were very few are allowed. Aside of my gibberish here. You see what I am here but there is something else inside my bubble. That positive state of mind and spirit inside my bubble is pretty cool and as long negative is checked at the door. I live in my bubble free of disturbance. Not watching tv and keeping a distance from the everyday usual negative is part of the modus operandis. I am disappointed here of how much negative a day like "saint valentine" brings were the spending money in gifts come front center and become an issue. I go back to my days of school and only people with complaint of st valentine were the only people without a date. I saw the same thing while in the military. And still are the same people that can't understand why they don't have a date since they are so amazingly adapted members of society. It is simply a day to play sweethearts so those of you who don't know how... You Missed Out so far and will Miss Out again. When I need a pick me up... there is music for every occasion even for loneliness. Party On Dudes and Duderinas why the negative? What negative is going to accomplish for you?

I do try to look for what is beautiful in the world, or create it myself. So I look for something to take pictures of daily, if only from the camera on my phone and post them to instagram. I make mixed media art and play with colors and only allow positive thoughts when I do my art journaling. I get outside as much as I can out in the local nature preserves to do some hiking. I was writing poetry for a while, too. Both making mixed art and writing poetry would often still the internal chatter and focus my thinking on creating, not analyzing or worrying or my PTSD responses. So peaceful. Even if I started out in a bad frame of mind, playing with colors often made me really, really happy.

Just notice what lens you are using to filter

Normally i am a happy go lucky kind of guy. People that know me understand my love for my country, flag, and anthem. You can bet money that I will defend its honor, because it has to do with fallen soldiers, their families and crippled wounded warriors that gave part of themself to support America.

I remember a video on the news of a bad dog getting ready to attack a toddler (don't remember the breed), and a crazy cat ran out and attacked the dog, and saved the toddler. That was great inspirational news. Many people don't like cats, but I do, and this was an unusual cat, but a dammed good one.

By the way, thanks for for your encouraging words. I like to walk and breath in the fresh air, and I find watching some older movies will sometimes elevate my mood. I also like watching surfers, and extreme down hill skiing shows. But nature always is my most dependable cure for negativity.