Mind & Brain 6 min read
How to Rewire Your Brain: Working with the Negativity Bias
Why the mind clings to the difficult and lets the good slip past — and a simple daily practice for redressing the balance.
Have you ever felt caught in a whirl of pessimistic thoughts — where a single criticism outweighs a dozen kind words, or one small mistake seems to colour the whole day? It is one of the most common experiences I see in the therapy room, and it is not a flaw in your character. It is the negativity bias: the brain’s hardwired tendency to register the difficult more readily, and hold it more tightly, than the good.
Most of us know the feeling well. A cutting remark can sting for days, while genuine praise seems to evaporate within minutes. A small setback can feel disproportionately large. This is not over-sensitivity, and it is not weakness. It is the way the human brain has been built — and once we understand it, we can begin to work with it rather than against it.
Why we are wired for the negative
From an evolutionary point of view, our bias towards the negative was a matter of survival. For our ancestors, spotting a predator or a poisonous plant mattered far more than pausing to admire a beautiful flower. Missing the good carried little cost; missing the threat could cost a life. Over time, the brain became finely tuned to register danger quickly and to store it for next time. Researchers have since shown that negative information produces greater neural activity than equally intense positive information, even at the earliest stage of processing.1
The difficulty is that this ancient wiring has not caught up with modern life. We are rarely facing genuine danger now, yet the same threat response can fire over a traffic jam, a spilt coffee, or a terse email. The system that once kept us alive can leave us perceiving ordinary moments as problems to brace against.
Left unchecked, this slowly accumulates. When we are forever scanning for what is wrong and overlooking what is right, our view of things narrows. Confidence erodes, resilience thins, and low mood and anxiety find more room to take hold. It is often this very stuckness — the sense of being caught in a loop of negative thinking — that brings people to the door of counselling.
Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones.
Rick Hanson · Neuropsychologist
The good news — the brain can change
We are not, however, prisoners of this bias. One of the most hopeful discoveries in modern neuroscience is neuroplasticity: the brain’s capacity to change its own structure and function across the whole of life. As psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes, the brain is “a plastic, living organ that can actually change its own structure and function.” What we do with our attention, repeated over time, gradually shapes the brain itself.
This is what allows us to shift the balance — to move from habitually fixating on the negative towards actively noticing, and keeping, the good. It asks for no grand effort, only awareness and gentle, consistent practice. Where we place our attention, day after day, is quietly building the brain we will live inside tomorrow.
Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.
Dan Siegel · Psychiatrist and author
Taking in the good
Here is the catch. Because positive experiences were never critical to immediate survival, the brain does not register them in the same sticky way it registers threat. A good moment tends to pass through us, pleasant but unrecorded. For a positive experience to leave a lasting trace, we need to hold it in awareness a little longer than feels natural — allowing it the time to consolidate into memory rather than slipping straight past.2
This is the heart of what Rick Hanson calls taking in the good: not putting a bright face over the hard things in life, but deliberately giving the good moments enough time to register. He offers a simple, evidence-informed sequence for doing exactly that, captured in the acronym HEAL.
The HEAL Practice
- H
Have
Notice a small good moment.
- E
Enrich
Stay with it, ten to twenty seconds.
- A
Absorb
Let it sink in and settle.
- L
Link
Hold it alongside something hard, to soothe it.
with practice
A small experiment, right now
You can begin in this very moment. What is pleasant, ordinary or quietly good in your surroundings as you read this — the sound of birds, the warmth of your chair, the taste of your coffee? Let yourself turn towards it with a little curiosity. Stay with it. Allow it to become vivid, and let it settle into your body. If you feel ready, you might even hold it alongside something less comfortable, like the hum of traffic outside.
This is the practice I return to in my own life, and one I often share with clients — the linking step in particular, which helps us hold life’s paradoxes without sinking under them. It does not deny what is hard. It simply makes room for the whole of our experience.
When we learn to take in the good, every experience — even the difficult ones — can become part of the rich tapestry of a life.
References
- Ito, T. A., Larsen, J. T., Smith, N. K., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1998). Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: The negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(4), 887–900. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.4.887
- Hanson, R., Shapiro, S., Hutton-Thamm, E., Hagerty, M. R., & Sullivan, K. P. (2023). Learning to learn from positive experiences. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 18(1), 142–153. doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2021.2006759
Common questions
What is the negativity bias?
The negativity bias is the brain’s tendency to notice, react to, and remember negative experiences more strongly than positive ones. It is thought to have evolved because, for our ancestors, attending to threats was more important for survival than savouring pleasant moments. In modern life it can leave us dwelling on criticism, setbacks, and worry, even when much of our experience is neutral or good.
Can you really rewire your brain, or is that just a figure of speech?
It is more than a figure of speech. The brain’s capacity to change its structure and function in response to experience is called neuroplasticity, and it continues throughout life. By repeatedly directing attention in a particular way — such as deliberately taking in positive experiences — we gradually strengthen the neural pathways that support those states.
What is Rick Hanson’s HEAL practice?
HEAL is a four-step practice for taking in the good: Have a positive experience, Enrich it by staying with it, Absorb it so it settles into memory, and (with practice) Link it with difficult material to soothe the harder feeling. It is a simple, repeatable way to help good moments register, rather than slipping past unnoticed.
How long do I need to stay with a positive experience for it to stick?
A good guide is around ten to twenty seconds, or longer if you can. Holding a positive experience in awareness for a sustained moment gives the brain time to begin consolidating it into lasting memory, rather than letting it pass straight through. The aim is not duration for its own sake, but allowing the experience to become vivid and felt.
Does focusing on the positive mean ignoring difficult emotions?
No. Taking in the good is not about denying or pushing away what is hard — that would be its own kind of avoidance. It is about giving positive experiences the attention they are usually denied, so that our inner life becomes more balanced. The linking step works directly with difficult feelings, holding them alongside something soothing rather than turning away from them.
Working together
If your mind feels caught in the difficult, you don’t have to untangle it alone.
If you find yourself dwelling on what is wrong, struggling with low mood or anxiety, or feeling worn down by stress, therapy can help you build steadier ground and a kinder relationship with your own mind. I’m a counsellor and psychotherapist in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast, offering individual and couples therapy in person and online across Australia.
