Bad is More Powerful than Good: Use it to your advantage
I started thinking about the power of bad because even the positive media articles tend to have a slightly negative title as in doing so they sell more. Sensationalist bad is particularly captivating and attracts more readers and ultimately makes the news and journalists more money. It is also perceived as being more truthful than positive or neutral news.
I have been analyzing the power of bad to help the people I work with pursue strategies that can help them convert bad into good. A lot of these inputs and lessons have been inspired by the great many neuro-science studies as well as the book authored by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It”.
Your brain is your enemy
Your own mind can be your best friend or worst enemy, depending upon how you relate to it. Just be aware that “our brain is very skilled at suppressing good news when it does not matter that much, but the brain is not very good at suppressing irrelevant bad news” (The Power of Bad). This is for the most part, the work of the amygdala, the part of the brain primarily involved in emotion, memory, and the fight-or-flight response. At times, amygdala goes into emergency mode perceiving subtle threats like timer, a text message or phone rings as if these mundane…
