Catch Yourself Doing Something Right.
I SAW WHAT YOU DID. And it was great.
My default mindset is very negative.
I focus on what I get wrong, what I’m not doing, all the ways I could have been better.
This isn’t unique to me, obviously.
Negativity bias is part of our programming as a species, probably because it helped our frail, big-brained-but-small-muscled ancestors avoid being eaten by tigers (assume the worst, stay twitchy, stay alive).
That’s why I was struck by this quote from mindfulness and performance expert George Mumford, which I heard during a guided meditation on the Ten Percent app:
“As long as you’re still breathing there’s more right than wrong with you…
Catch yourself doing something right.”
While I don’t want to be eaten by a tiger, I really like this idea.
Imagine channelling some of the energy I currently use to track my deficiencies into noticing what’s good about me instead.
Maybe I’d be kinder to myself. Maybe I’d be calmer. Maybe I’d be happier.
It’s a simple idea in theory, but it’s hard to do because our conditioning — and maybe our nature — tells us to do the opposite, to focus on areas of weakness where we could be vulnerable.
Here are a few ways to flip the “notice the good” switch in your brain.
Write down what you actually did.
When I think back on my day/week/life in my head, most of what comes to mind is stuff that makes me shudder: mistakes, failures, bad decisions.
That can’t be the whole story, though. If you made it through the week as a living person, you must have done some stuff right. Same with me.
One way to see things more objectively is to simply list what’s happened.
Grab a pen and paper. Write down all the things you did today. If you like, you can sort them into two columns, one for “good stuff” and one for “oops.”
“Good” doesn’t have to mean “big and bold.” You can catch yourself doing tiny things right and it still counts.
Were you kind to someone, even in a small way? Did you do a good job in any part of your day? Did you do something for yourself?
Your “oops” column might feel easier to fill.
That’s okay. The action of writing out the things you’re torturing yourself with (and thus taking time to externalize your internal stuff) belongs in the “good stuff” column.
Once you’ve got the two lists, take the paper and fold it in half so that you can only see the “good stuff" side.
Read it. Out loud.
You just caught yourself doing something right.
See yourself through someone else’s eyes.
The stories we tell about ourselves usually don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Remember those Dove ads where they had a police sketch artist draw women based first on their self-description and then on descriptions from people who had just met them?
The women’s self-descriptions were overwhelmingly negative. They saw themselves as flawed and ugly.
The people who had just met and spent a little time with them? They saw these women as beautiful and radiant and good.
And which image was more accurate? Which one looked like the person that the camera showed?
The one based on someone else’s description. Always.
If you want to notice your goodness, imagine how other people see you.
Or, if you’re willing to, ask somebody who knows you.
You might be surprised how often others catch you doing something right — being kind, clever, thoughtful, talented, inherently beautiful — while you only see your shortcomings.
Ask the right questions.
“What have I done now?” is probably the wrong question.
“Why am I like this?” is a leading question if I’ve ever heard one.
How about this one instead: “what’s really happening right now?”
And then, when you answer that question in whatever way you choose to, you might follow up with another question for yourself — “can I be certain that’s true?”
I’m working my way through Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie at the moment, and it’s a great reminder that so much of what we believe and tell ourselves is made up of stories that we’re telling.
We tend to be great at catching people, ourselves and others, doing something “wrong.” But when you look into those stories, they often don’t hold up.
These are Katie’s four questions, as paraphrased by me:
Is this thought that I am believing really true?
How do I behave and feel when I think this thought?
How does thinking this thought benefit me?
Who would I be without this thought?
If you work through your thought (Katie calls the process of doing so “The Work”), you might discover that things are not wrong.
In fact, they just are what they are, and that’s the right thing for them to be.
As the Buddhist monk Charlotte Joko Beck puts it, “joy is exactly what is happening, minus our opinion of it.”
Flip the script.
You might think that focusing on what you’re doing right will lead you to become complacent or lazy.
That’s a story I tell myself sometimes: it’s important to focus on my failings so that I’ll be forced to improve myself.
I don’t think it works that way.
Telling yourself, constantly, that you’re a fool and a failure, that you always get things wrong, and then seeking the proof in whatever you recently did, isn’t a recipe for self improvement.
It’s a recipe for misery.
Catching yourself doing something right has the opposite effect.
When you see what you’re doing well, where you’re strong, how you’re making a positive difference in the world, that fuels your ability and resolve to do more of it.
It’s energizing. It’s a way of offering yourself validation, which I think everyone (maybe especially me) craves.
So next time you think you’re keeping yourself honest by focusing on the bad, see how it feels to look only at the good. You might be surprised.
A challenge.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. As a reward, I’m going to give you some homework.
Can you tell me in the comments about something (or some things) you did right recently?
Even writing that made me uncomfortable. I imagine someone else asking me to do that and I don’t want to. And that’s precisely why you should.
Admit it: you’re good. You’re a caring person who is doing their best. You make the world a little better by being in it.
Sorry, but it’s true.
Since I’m the sadist who’s asking for it, I’ll go first.
This past weekend, I made space for my son to talk with me. He told me about the voice in his head, and how it’s always sending tons and tons of words his way. He explained that sometimes it’s exhausting and sometimes it’s helpful.
I don’t even know exactly what I did right to make that possible; my theory is that I’ve been less stuck in my own stuff and that he sensed, as a result, that I was present and listening.
Phew. There. I caught myself doing something right. How about you?