Highlighting  

The Statesman

The statesman neared the bustling mining town. He took a quick inventory of what was around him. He wanted to be honest. People could always smell a phony. He also wanted to be complimentary. People are endeared with kindness.

The statesman learned early in his career that he would be ingratiated by others if he got into the habit of expressing honest compliments. This required the statesman to create an attitude of thankfulness. He trained his mind to notice the good things that others do. Then he trained himself to express thankfulness whenever he noticed them.

These positive habits impacted the statesman in multiple ways. He became happier because he noticed the positives in life. He became appreciative because he noticed the kindness in others. He also became well liked. Everyone that met him walked away feeling that they were of value.

The statesman stood on the podium, getting ready for his speech. He had spent the day visiting the places that made the mining town unique. He had taken the time to meet the people of the town that worked hard every day to provide services for others. He carefully reviewed the people and places in his mind. As he thought about those things, he felt a heartwarming appreciation for the town.

When the statesman spoke, it was clear that he honestly appreciated the people of the mining town. He talked about the grocer that responded to him with kindness. He presented stories about the miners, the policeman, the mayor, and the teachers. The statesman was honestly appreciative of the community and their contribution to the state as a whole. The people beamed with pride. They were recognized for their efforts. They felt valued and appreciated.

Highlighting the Positives

Jacob believed in journaling. He spent time every night purging all his negative thoughts about his wife onto the pages of his journal. He felt that if he wrote it in his journal, he wouldn’t say it to his wife’s face.

Jacob also purged to his friends. He disemboweled himself of all the undesirable emotions that filled up his gut, by pouring the list of his wife’s shortcomings into his friend’s ears. His friend’s sympathetic listening always helped him feel validated.

Jacob always felt better after purging. He felt like a bulimic. Only instead of throwing up food, he discarded his annoyances. Like a bulimic, he felt his anxiety and annoyances drop after every purge.  Also like a bulimic, the negative feelings resurfaced and had to be purged again.

One day Jacob wanted to purchase a jeep. He was a careful buyer and he spent a lot of time researching which jeep to buy. He studied all the different types of jeeps for at least two hours every day.

The more time Jacob spent studying jeeps, the more he started noticing them around town. He saw them on the highway and in the parking lot. He recognized the various types. Jacob wondered why he hadn’t really noticed the jeeps before. Strangely, the other makes and models of vehicles didn’t stand out to him. It was like those cars were part of the background and his mind barely registered them.

This experience impacted Jacob a lot. He started wondering if his daily purging was having the same effect on his mind that researching jeeps did. Could his daily purging be the very thing that made his wife’s shortcomings so noticeable?

Jacob tried an experiment. Instead of writing about the things he didn’t like about his wife, he started writing about her qualities. Jacob started talking about her positive qualities to his friends and family. Jacob wanted to see if studying his wife’s positive attributes would make those actions stand out to him when he saw them in everyday situations.

It was difficult for Jacob to change this habit. At first, he didn’t notice many things about his wife that he did like. Over time, it became easier to find things to write about. His conversations with his friends became more lighthearted. Jacob always loved the sense of relief he felt after purging negativity, now he started feeling something different. Jacob noticed that he had developed a sense of peace that lasted the entire day.

Jacob saw his wife in a different light. The negative things she did faded into the background. The positives became highlighted in his mind. Jacob used to grit his teeth a lot as he tolerated her annoying habits. His muscles used to constantly be tight. Now he felt relaxed and appreciative.

Highlighting Logistics

The brain is bombarded with constant stimulation. A person would be overstimulated and mentally exhausted if they paid attention to every little detail that they experienced. The brain automatically filters out what it thinks is unimportant and focuses in on what it thinks is important. This is not a conscious decision instead, it has more to do with frequency. When you are in the habit of paying attention to a specific thing, the brain will oblige you by not filtering that out. Also known as the frequency illusion, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (Mullen, 1994) is the process of the brain being attentive to whatever it is that you most frequently look for. It operates a lot like search engines do. Once we start looking for something, our brain will bring those items to the front page and bury the other ones.

We have a lot of control over what we want our brain to focus on. All we have to do is start purposefully paying attention to those things and our minds will start to follow suit. It is usually not effective enough to simply tell our mind what to focus on. It is easier to retrain the mind when we physically keep track of the things we want to notice.

Michael White (2007) wrote that our lives are like novels. Whatever we write, talk, and think about becomes the dominant storyline in our lives. He suggested that if we want something to become the dominant story we should write about it, talk about it with friends, and ask other people about it. If we put effort into journaling about how the story appeared in our past, how it is currently playing out, and how it will likely appear in the future, our mind will certainly look for the daily events that will confirm the story.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is always highlighting and underlining specific actions our spouse is doing. Our brain will do this on its own; and like a paddleless canoe, the stream will take it wherever it desires. We can consciously pick up the paddle and steer the mind in the direction that we desire. Multiple stories are constantly being displayed before our eyes. It is our choice which ones become highlighted.