In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about a concept he calls “what you see is all there is”. This involves overestimating the importance or prevalence of whatever is occupying a lot of your attention. When this occurs, your brain creates a narrative based on what you’re focusing on and then reinforces that narrative by finding other things that seemed to prove its validity while ignoring things that seem to disprove it.
You can try this out for yourself whenever you like. If you spend a half an hour or so researching upsetting things, then the world will seem like a horrible place. After you give yourself some time to feel better, spend the same amount of time researching uplifting things and watch how the world now seems like a wonderful place. Even though the world didn’t change when you went from looking at the negative to seeing the positive, your perception of it changed dramatically. The way you see the world varies greatly depending on what you focus on and, equally important, what you ignore.
I find this helpful for reframing myself whenever I’m stuck in a bad mood. Rather than continue dwelling on whatever is dragging me down, I’ll instead focus on things that I find funny, inspirational, calming, or otherwise uplifting. Sometimes this approach takes a while to cheer me up if I’m in a particularly deep funk but it always makes me feel better. Even though I knew hardly anything about psychology until the past few years, I’ve still reframed myself in this manner for most of my life, which is probably why I stayed generally upbeat through some pretty upsetting times. I’m glad to have this life hack available whenever I need it and I hope it helps you if you decide to try it out.
