You are the sum of what you focus on
Be careful about what you give attention to in your day.
If you are having a bad day, usually the stories that you tell yourself throughout the day have a lot of negativity.
The amygdala in our brain is fired up during this time.
As Winifred Gallagher said,
"Your life — who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on."
Stanford psychologists studied the fMRI scan to study the effect of positive and negative imagery on young and old people.
The hypothesis from the study was that the elderly subjects had trained their prefrontal cortex to inhibit the amygdala in the presence of negative stimuli and only react to the positive stimuli whereas the younger ones reacted to both the negative and positive stimuli.
This was mainly because the elderly had rewired their brain to ignore the negative and savour the positive.
It's easier said than done, but even in the negative situations there is always a silver lining that you can look forward to.
There is great power in letting go of the darkness and holding on to the light.