11/30/2025
Your brain is wired to focus on what’s wrong, not what’s right.
For most of human history, noticing danger mattered more than noticing opportunity. Missing a good meal was inconvenient. Missing a threat could end your life. That ancient wiring is still with us today, which is why fear, resentment, and suspicion come more naturally than gratitude, trust, or delight.
This is the negativity bias at work.
But we’re not living in the Pleistocene anymore. When you make a deliberate effort to shift your attention toward what’s going well and what’s possible, you change your experience of your life. It takes practice, but focusing on opportunity over threat is one of the most reliable ways to become happier.
-Dr. Arthur Brooks, author, "The Happiness Files"
