Be Your Own News Director!

We forget when we’re watching a newscast that what we’re seeing is not everything that happened. It’s a selection of stories. Decided upon by whom? The news director! The media has figured out that they get the best engagement with stories that either scare or enrage us. Likewise, our brains have a natural negativity bias.

This is why your brain is much more interested in reviewing and replaying the stories of your daily setbacks. Speculating on the meaning of the odd facial expression someone shot your way. The snide comment a coworker or client uttered. A message you think could have been delivered better. Pondering on who you might have let down. We tend to be hardest on ourselves and excel at self-created stress and regurgitating things that aren’t even rational or logical. Complete nonsense.

We need to start being our own spin master, PR rep, and news director. We need more balanced coverage. Take control of which lines of thinking you give your attention to, which stories you re-play, and how long your news cycle is. There are a multitude of awesome occurrences that happen to you daily, that need to show up more on your radar screen. We need to move these stories to the front page of our lives and focus.

It’s unfortunate that in our country that a school shooting with less than a couple of fatalities will barley be a blip on the national news radar screen. But it’s reality. Likewise, we have to minimize our setbacks and generalize our successes. Push the negativity to the back pages or the end of the newscast. Your brain is the creator of the thoughts. But you are the director. You decide. It’s not about controlling your thoughts. That’s an exhausting concept. It’s about deciding which thoughts are worthy to be in your story!