“What do you repeat to yourself on a daily basis? Is it helping you create the life you want?”

Sheri Salata asked this question and I bet your answer, just like mine, would leave you cringing. Chill. It means you’re human. We have a natural evolutionary bias towards spotting threats.

It’s called the negativity bias and Nick Ortner from The Tapping Solution explains it with a story of two cavemen:

Grog and Thor sit perched at the edge of their cave. They’ve been hearing some tiger sounds, not too far away.

Grog says, “It sounds as if the tiger is coming our way.”

Thor says, “Brother man, there is nothing to worry about! The sun is shining, we’ve discovered fire and some basic tools, and this cave is luxurious. Bask in gratitude and the joy of life!”

Grog says, “Thor, I’m leaving. We’re tiger meat in this spot.”

“Grog, you are so negative! Always talking about what could go wrong.”

Grog runs away at a full sprint while Thor continues his peaceful meditation and is killed by the tiger, along with his ‘happy’ genes. Grog and his DNA survive, partly because of his negative, pessimistic, cautious attitude.

So, Grog’s legacy leaves us spending our mental energy rehearsing everything that could go wrong. We have to train our brains to look for opportunities instead of threats. ‘Daily Motivation’ founder, Hardie Schmitt, says that choosing happiness isn’t about ignoring what’s hard or pretending everything is fine. It’s about deciding that, even alongside challenges, you will look for what feels good, steady, or meaningful. It’s a shift in attention; away from what drains you and towards what supports you.

“Over time, these choices shape your overall experience. You start to notice more lightness, more gratitude, and a greater sense of control over how you move through your day. Happiness becomes something you participate in, not something you wait for,” Hardie says.

Shifting your focus to deliberately, consciously and intentionally identify what’s-going-right is a potent, science-backed way to rewire your brain. When you focus on what is working or going right in your life, you process your circumstances differently, leading to proactive rather than reactive actions. The self-help gurus recommend keeping a ‘Three wins’ journal in which you write down three things that went well that day.

When you shift your perception, you reclaim your power. Apart from focusing on what’s-going-right, you can also try to be present in the moment. Instead of allowing catastrophic predictions to run like a freight train through your mind, switch your attention to what’s actually happening right now.

We have a tendency to constantly step out of the ‘nowness’ of our own experience. Hardie says that it happens like this: “You tell yourself you’ll relax once everything is handled. You think you’ll feel settled when things are fully in place, but that point never really arrives. There is always something else you could improve, fix, or prepare for.”

He says that he didn’t see the problem at first. It looked like being responsible, but over time he started noticing what he was actually doing. Even when things were good, he wasn’t fully there for them. “You move through your life, but you don’t quite settle into it. You keep thinking ahead, adjusting, preparing, without ever letting anything land.”

Hardie noticed that he never just allowed a moment to stay as it was. He then started trying something different. “When a moment feels steady, I stay with it a little longer. I notice the urge to move on, and I don’t follow it right away. I take a breath. I let the moment continue without improving it. You can do the same,” he says.

“When things are fine, let them be fine. You don’t need to add anything. You don’t need to make it more productive. You don’t need to prepare for what might come next.” Hardie says that your mind will still try to pull you forward, but that doesn’t mean you need to listen. “I’ve found that this is where things start to shift. You feel more present. You notice more.”

Girlfriend, we might not have inherited Thor’s ‘happy’ genes, but we can choose where we place our focus. Be intentional. Get into the habit of scanning for opportunities rather than dwelling on difficulties. It’s as dr Iris Vaughn says: “Reality bends where attention flows.”