“If you want good things to happen in your life, focus on the good.” You’ve probably come across different variations of this quote, all urging you to ignore the bad and negative things and pay attention to the good stuff. I’m all in for this mentality, though recently I discovered a new aspect of it which made me understand and appreciate this attitude even deeper.

Once again, my “investigation” began with the time spent scrolling through social media. My Instagram explore page is usually filled with either memes or beautiful and artistic content. But you know how the algorithm works: once you accidentally watch one single video in a different sphere, it keeps showing similar content. So, every now and then I find myself in this endless stream of either politics or conspiracy theories, and they both have a negative undertone. The politics are usually about the domestic and foreign conflicts, claiming that soon there’ll be more wars everywhere, hence a huge crisis in the world. The conspiracies, on the other hand, tell about all the things our governments are hiding from us, the truth about celebrities and their satanic rituals and cults. You know, all those Epstein files, illuminati and mason kind of things. And I just kept watching these videos because they were an interesting subject to explore. But after spending a decent couple of hours online I suddenly realized that my perception of the world has changed to the worse.

And I started pondering: my life hasn’t changed a bit in this time, so how come now I think I live in this bad and manipulative world full of danger? That’s when I once again realized how our attention actually affects us and our whole mindset even if physically nothing changes. And I think people often misunderstand the point of this attitude. They mistakenly think that if you keep thinking about a, let’s say, Lamborghini, it will magically appear in your garage one day. Or that all your problems will disappear in a heartbeat and you’ll start living in a fairytale with unicorns and fairies. But that’s not how it works. We live in a dual world, so no matter what we do and how we think we are still going to experience both good and bad things because they both have their value. The trick here is to pay as less attention to the bad things as possible, kind of devaluing them and giving your inner preferences to the positive side.

And this applies not only to your thoughts but the content you consume as well. If you start your every day with watching news – which, we all know always consist of tragedies – you’ll never be able to look at this world without fear. If you keep listening to those conspiracists or politicians who promise a soon catastrophe, you won’t be able to consider this world a safe and good place to live in. You’ll keep waiting for something bad to happen because that’s what you were told. And the ironic part is that those things may never actually happen but you’ll end up wasting your life on this destructive attitude anyway.

The thing is that our brain works in an interesting way: it doesn’t really differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. You see a scary monster on screen and it makes you feel afraid as if the monster is real. You see a lovely romantic story, and you feel butterflies in your stomach, as if the same is happening to you. When I, for instance, watch creative videos of people painting or doing DIY projects, it makes me feel creative myself, even if I haven’t painted in months. When I see a beautiful sight, I often feel inspired, as if I saw it in real life. Even if I have barely left my house in days. But watching that type of content makes me internally happy and wholesome. And vice versa, the negative content always leaves its impact as well, making me feel anxious about the future.

Same happens when you read, think or talk about positive and negative things. If you pay attention to how your brain reacts, you’ll notice the difference, because it is huge and it does affect your life. So, the final advice would be to try to focus more on the positive. The good news is that if it’s actually hard to get rid of destructive thoughts, it’s much easier to ignore the destructive content – you simply don’t consume it. Of course, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t check the news ever again. It’s no good staying completely ignorant and not knowing what happens at all. But it’s one thing to read the most important news every now and them to stay on track, and a whole other thing to live in the world of news and negativity, making it the preponderant part of your life.