You can feel the power of the strengths perspective if you're trying to drop a bad habit like smoking or eating entire pots of fondue cheese. Right now, think of times when you've indulged this habit. Berate yourself for being weak and wrong. Notice: In that mind-set, do you feel less like repeating your bad habit, or more? Now focus on bright spots—times when you did something right. You resisted a craving, ate well, worked out, whatever. List five of these bright spots, no matter how small:
1.___________________
2.___________________
3.___________________
4.___________________
5.___________________
While focusing on your successes, do you feel more or less able to resist your bad habit? If you don't feel more empowered, list five more bright spots. Your negativity bias will fight back .... but if you stubbornly persist until you begin to feel gladness, you'll get stronger.
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Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, a neuroscientist who rebuilt her brain after suffering a stroke describes approaching emotional suffering with the so-called 90-second rule.
Physiologically, Taylor says, it takes only 90 seconds of feeling the emotion caused by a negative event before the body finishes processing its stress hormones and returns to its baseline setting. "Unless you rerun that loop by rethinking the thoughts that restimulate the emotion that restimulates the physiological response," Taylor has explained, "the uncomfortable feelings will go away."
