Dr. Hanson notes "we pay a lot of attention to threats, losses, and mistreatment in our environment--and to our emotional reactions, such as worry, sadness, resentment, disappointment, and anger" for reasons that promote our survival as individuals, as groups, and as a species. The risk is that we can go overboard, and end up paying attention to nothing else.
To compensate for the brain's negativity bias, we need to make a deliberate effort to seek out good news and things to be glad about. Then we need to really let it sink in and share the good news.
So in the wake of events in Boston and West, Texas last week what can we find? Close to home, maybe it was a personal event--baby's first steps, the first glimpse of spring flowers, a hearty laugh with a loved one. In fact, my daughter made me laugh so hard last week, I snorted like a donkey and laughed even harder at myself. Over the weekend, the high school students completed a service project. A phone call to someone recovering from an illness was answered with a hearty hello, revealing at least for a moment a little reprieve. Even market news can be heartening with real estate markets picking up in some locales.So here are ten pieces of good news from around the world for the week of April 22:
- from http://www.globalgoodnews.com/ April 22 is International Mother Earth Day
- from http://www.happynews.com/, the winner of the London Marathon wheelchair race dedicates his race to Boston
- from http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/, a college athlete gives up his shot put career to become a bone marrow donor
- from http://goodnewsdaily.com/, a 13-year old from California won the grand prize in the Lions International Peace Poster Contest
- from http://www.cnn.com/2013/, a woman from Kenya opened the first school for girls in her home village (yes, even CNN can have a positive story once in a while)
- from http://www.dailygood.org/, a review of a new book by Leonard Koren, The beauty of wabi sabi, the Japanese idea that imperfection can be beautiful
- from http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/good_news/Good-news.asp, Nandini Sarkar explores the phenomenon of kindness from strangers
- from http://goodworldnews.org/, an NBA fan nails a half court shot to win $20,000 for his wife's cancer treatment
- from http://positivenews.org.uk/, the President of Uruguay donates his salary to charity and lives on income from his simple farm
- and from close to home http://www.leadertelegram.com/news/daily_updates/article_f313d236-ac0f-11e2-9d9b-0019bb2963f4.html, gradual warmup to replace wintry conditions (finally!)
