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An easy first step is to recognize and mindfully attend to positive emotional experiences in your classroom and at home. Evolution selected for a negative attribution bias that makes us tend to dwell on the negative and ignore the positive. During a typical day, 10 great things may have happened and one horrible thing. When we get home and our partner asks us how our day went, typically we focus on the one horrible thing, forgetting about the 10 great things.
From a Stone Age perspective the negativity bias was important for our survival: The ancient human walking down a path who saw something that looked like a snake would be more likely to survive if he jumped back quickly, assuming the worst. If another kept walking, curious as to whether or not it actually was a snake, he might get bitten and die, taking himself out of the gene pool. Because natural selection favored hypervigilance, we need to make a concerted effort to notice and focus on the positive—and even savor it.
