There’s a great song by Wilco called “Love is Everywhere.”
“Love, love is everywhere; If, if you want it there.”
Whenever I hear it, I find myself doing a gratitude list and thinking about all the people and things in my life that bring me joy, and all the ever-present worries just fade away.
Reverse the Curse
Our negativity-biased brains are on high alert for anything we can find to focus our worries and anxieties on, but when we reverse that energy in a positive direction, we can find ourselves overwhelmed, realizing all the truly wonderful things that are also in our lives.
We can, after all, acknowledge that we are contradictory beings that can love and not love aspects of the very same thing. As Walt Whitman said: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes).”
Positivity Bias
Of course, sometimes we do this at work too. We spend so much time brooding on the aspects of work we may not like, we crowd out all the parts of our jobs we truly like–the collegiality, the challenges, the impacts and connections we make, the healthy flow states, the people and causes we help, not to mention the role work likely plays in our probable core purpose–to provide.
Work can really be a vast refuge for an array of joys.
Sure, objective achievements, raises, and accolades are part of that.
But I’m talking more about the LITTLE things. The things you don’t SEE unless you open your eyes and ears and LOOK and HEAR.
Science
The thing is–and this makes sense when you stop to think about it–the brain can only focus on one thing at a time. So, if you are focused on the negative, you are literally blocking the positive. It’s like only being able to see a weed and not the flower right next to it.
“The problem is that your brain is not hardwired to focus simultaneously on specific, day-to-day activities and more collective, long-term objectives,” wrote Morela Hernandez in “The Impossibility of Focusing on Two Things at Once” (MIT Sloan Management Review; April 9, 2018). “Neurological science has demonstrated that the human brain is incapable of focusing on two things at once.”
The Big Finish
So this all comes back to our good friend Mindfulness. You are what you think and on what you focus.
Like a sticker on a parking pole at a coffee shop I have probably overlooked a hundred times, instead of pausing to notice and read.
Happy IS everywhere, if you are brave and aware enough to RISK noticing it.