Two atoms are walking down the street. One turns to the other and says, “I think I’ve lost an electron.” The second one says, “Are you sure?” The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive.”
I was having a cup of coffee outside this morning, and started to think about positivity. (It’s funny how often coffee in the morning leads to positivity…) A while back Lisa had me watch a TED talk by Shawn Achor. There are a lot of entertaining TED talks, but I have to say Shawn’s was one of the funniest I’ve seen. He barely touched on the subjects of his research, but it intrigued me enough to get his book, The Happiness Advantage, where he delves into all the actions he discussed in much more detail.
Unlike getting distracted by a 12 minute video online, it’s been over a year since I read his book, so this isn’t a typical book review where I have it at my finger tips and am quoting passages from it. I almost think this is better. Rather than just relaying the highlights that grab you at the time, this is what has stuck with me over the long haul. Top of the list deals with perception. We’ve been conditioned by the entire evolutionary process to focus on threats. Ancient people who focused on the pretty bush and failed to see the wild animal hiding behind it ended up as dinner, not as our ancestor. Nowadays our threats are different, but we still focus on the negative.