Our minds are wonderful, not just in the way they even work in the first place. More precisely how they prioritize remembering bad memories before the good ones.
When was the last time you emotionally constantly bathed in success? The last time you randomly thought, “Hell, I’m amazing” and you were not caught in a delusion? It seems way easier to think of the failures and drag yourself down, than remembering the good.
It’s easy for us to remember our worst. Bad stuff happened eons ago and some unknown trigger brings our mind to it again. Out of thin air, negative thoughts just arise. Time to give your good side a soft nudge.
Apes in funny clothes
I’m sure there are evolutionary reasons why our brain works that way. It’s easy to focus on the bad. If you look hard enough, you can poke holes into everything. After all, you better remember where that predator almost killed you or why you shouldn’t eat that smelly food again. Our modern and “safe” times are mostly a new thing – yes, I know there are many unsafe regions still. We’re getting too comfy while our firmware still works at the same basic level it worked thousands of years ago. At a time where it primarily aided us in our survival in the first place.
“When was the last time you had to evade a lion while grocery shopping?”
A lion
Could be a problem for me, but as I’m not a special snowflake and made of the same flesh and neurons like many other people, chances are I’m not alone. Way to comfy and therefore thinking about all the unnecessary stuff.
Document the positive
Not in a wooo wooo way. This is not about emotions and how you hugged your best friend and felt all warm and fuzzy inside. As someone who likes to actively do stuff, I’ll aim this more at the productivity crowd, the builders, the hustlers, the creators of this world. Using my leisure time to learn and create something instead of consuming wasting away fulfills me, so that’s the crowd I can speak to.
I started an achievement log focused on my own productivity, not merely out of spite towards negative thoughts, but to give the positive things one actually achieves the same mental space or even a fledgling chance to be seen and remembered by the most important person in this process … me. Journaling you say? Not really, but if journaling helps you do the same, more power to you.
Which app to download? Whatever works for you … pen & paper and your mind — the most MVP ever, Excel, your calendar, go for it and work with what you got. In all seriousness, I didn’t install an app. I thought about making one [and eventually did in May 2024] … because I can’t help myself. Probably because it would have postponed working on the actual thing in favor of creating something first. For the sake of just starting and keeping it simple I grabbed a notes app. Less friction, available on all my devices, makes it easy to create a table with two columns, one for the date and another for what I achieved that day. Reflection towards the “what” is handled in short notes similar to tags, instead of overly complex descriptions. Otherwise I could start journaling too and for longform therapeutic content for the mind I’ll have my blog now. Tags are more than enough input to help my brain remember “yeah, you actually did that”.
If I had to previously reflect on the achievements of a year or even last week, it was hard to come up with 10 or even 5 things worth mentioning. Painstakingly trying to remember anything, something. If I start scrolling through two boring weeks of my achievement log, I’m filled with joy and momentum which keeps me going. “I did that? Wow, let’s tackle the next thing. Can’t be hard if I manage that.”
Days off won’t matter, sooner or later everyone needs some form of recreation to gain some fuel to keep going. Bonus: Why wouldn’t you want to better remember what you did last time? “Oh this? Let’s progress on it some more.” Reflecting on the last part, this could be the same basic principle where I intentionally leave some easy to finish tasks open to do for the next day on a project. What’s better than starting your day with a guaranteed victory and setting yourself up for more success? Most of the time, momentum is all you need.
Start bringing the small, positive things to the front.