Remembering the Good

When life feels heavy, our minds naturally zoom in on what’s wrong. Loss, disappointment, and stress can create a negative filter where everything feels harder than it really is. But here’s the hopeful truth: your brain can change.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about the power of remembering the good—not in a shallow, “just think positive” way, but in a grounded, science-backed way. Research on neuroplasticity shows that when we intentionally focus on what’s good in our lives, our brains literally rewire themselves to notice more good.

This isn’t about ignoring pain. It’s about training your mind to hold both the hard and the hopeful.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast, Working on Amazing. This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

Now in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about remembering the good, which kinda sounds odd when you consider this podcast is geared towards women who are starting over in the middle of their life, and we don't start over because we just decide

we want something different. Generally, most women in the middle of their life start over because something happened externally, that they didn't plan on. There was a divorce, there was betrayal, maybe there was even the death of a spouse.

Something major and unexpected happened. It could have been job loss or a devastating medical diagnosis. The bottom line is we don't generally start over just because it feels good that day.

We start over because we have to, and it's hard. It can feel overwhelming. So why am I talking about remembering the good in this backdrop?

1:09

Brainʼs Memory Bias

Well, I found this recent study, and I found it fascinating.

And it says that when there is a harsh, just comment, okay, like an insult that you perceive as like something negative, do you know that research has found that your brain holds on to that for 20 years? I mean, that just blew my mind.

In contrast, when you get a compliment, your brain holds on to it for 30 days. And that's just a harsh insult that we hold on to for 20 years, okay? That our brain just latches on to and doesn't forget.

So when you've gone through something major and traumatic, your brain latches on to that. And I kind of want to talk a little bit about why. You're not just a negative person.

You're not just, oh, she only sees things through a negative lens. That's not it. Your brain handles emotional threats differently.

So negative experiences like criticism or humiliation or something as traumatic as what led you to needing to start over in the middle of your life. Those situations, they activate the part of your brain that's your emotional alarm system, okay?

So these moments, it flags as important for survival. So even if it was just something negative that was said or something as traumatic as death or divorce or betrayal, your brain flags that totally differently than maybe a compliment.

So it locks it in your long-term memory because it feels like it's important to survival. Like you have to always scan for future harm, like I don't want this to happen again kind of thing, right?

So our body, our brain, we see that as necessary for survival. We hold on to it. I mean, think about maybe hunter gatherer days, like way back in prehistoric times, right?

If you ate a berry that was a bright color and it made you sick, your brain locks that in, like don't eat this color berry again.

If you eat a berry that was just good, you remember it, but not the same as you remember avoiding harm and potential death or something that is going to cause pain, right?

So, it's a self-defense mechanism to remember the really, really negative things. But compliments are something positive that happens.

On the other hand, do not trigger that urgent response, and they feel good in the moment and positive remarks, but they just don't produce that same emotional intensity, and it makes them easier for the brain to overlook and forget.

And so, I just want to talk about how it explains why people can dwell on negative feedback despite receiving so much praise. I have fallen into this trap. I feel like a lot of people have, and now you have research that explains why.

Yes, somebody said something positive. Ten people said something positive, but we hold on to that one negative event, that one negative comment.

4:38

Neuroplasticity and Retraining

But what we're going to be talking about today is good news, okay? Because of neuroplasticity, that means we can train our brain to hold on to more good stuff for longer, okay? It just takes practicing it.

It takes practicing gratitude and repeating affirmations and reflecting on the compliments regularly to rewire your brain. Yes, your brain is going to remember the pain, but you can teach it to remember joy, too.

And that's what I want to talk about today. When I've read this research, I just was blown away because it felt so real, you know? There was so relatable how we just, our brain fixates on a negative moment in time, something that was said.

And when you're going through a season where you feel like you're rebuilding, there is a lot of negative to remember. And your brain's doing that to protect you, to help make sure you don't get in that situation again. I get it.

I do. But focusing on the good, we have to remind ourselves that there's good, because our brain just doesn't hold onto it the same way. So we have to practice pulling up good memories and remembering the good to balance out the super negative.

And it's especially important during a season like this, where a lot is going on, where it feels emotionally overwhelming.

We can be flooded with negative emotions, and it really is your brain's way of protecting itself, of trying to scan for future threats, of trying to self-preserve itself, right?

So I want to talk about the power of remembering good, and not in a shallow, let's just think positive kind of way, but in a grounded, like, science back. Science says, we don't remember the good as often, but we need to, we've got to focus on it.

Our brain will focus on the bad, but science tells us we need to focus on the good, and that's neuroplasticity. We can retrain our brain.

And when we intentionally focus on the good in our lives, our brains start to rewire themselves to see more good. It doesn't mean that the bad isn't there. It just means that we want to focus on the good.

So, I understand, and I do want to start off by saying, a difficult season does make you see everything through a negative lens. Your brain is wired to scan for danger, and it's something that we have to be aware of so we can retrain our brain.

I think I've shared, I know, I've shared before on this podcast, that I was in a really major auto accident when I was 16 years old. I was in a convertible that flipped over.

It was very, very traumatic, a lot of injuries, you know, a big like boom kind of thing, right?

So, for the longest time, and really still to this day, even as a passenger in a car, we can be riding along and I can visualize and see auto accidents happening around me.

If one car cuts another car off, my mind replays it as if then they crashed, you know? That didn't happen in reality, but my mind plays that out because it's trying to protect me from another accident.

So it says, well, if you see them happen, maybe you can avoid them. So I see accidents all the time. It can be sometimes stressful for me to be a passenger.

I'm way better about it now than I was right after it happened, right? But my mind does that, and sometimes it's worse than others. Because it's just my body, my brain's way of trying to protect me.

If you see this ahead of time, if you see the potential changer, you can find a way maybe around it. It's trying to protect you, and I want you to understand that. You're not just a horrible, down, negative person.

Your brain is trying to protect you.

And so when I see accidents happen around me, not in reality, but I play them out in my head, I'm not being negative, I'm not being horrible, I'm not, you know, got some weird death wish, or see whatever, my brain is literally just trying to protect

me. And when you view it that way, when you say, hey, my brain's just trying to protect me, it takes a little bit of the emotion out, lets you step away from it a little bit and say, hey, I can retrain my brain.

And that's what, why I want to talk about remembering the good and practicing gratitude.

Because when you do that, when you take the time to remember good things and show your brain a different pathway to go down, like, let's think about all the times that things have happened right, then it can be easier to access hope in a difficult

season, okay? So we just want to talk about how to develop this good memory muscle. We understand that our brain is going to go down the negative pathways as a method of self-preservation. We get that.

We can acknowledge that and not feel guilty about it. But we're going to also say, how can I start getting my brain to go down a more positive pathway, just to balance it out, right? Because your brain really is always learning.

That's what neuroplasticity is all about. And I think this gives us a lot of hope. You're not just set one way.

There is some mold ability to the pathways in your brain. Yes, there's part of your personality and part of your natural inclinations that are the way they are. But you can help shape and retrain your brain, those neural pathways.

What you repeatedly focus on, your brain starts to find more of. And I've used this example before, but it's so appropriate here as well. It's like you decide you want to buy a yellow car.

You think it's unusual, a little unique, right? So that's what you have decided you're going to buy. And then what happens once you decide you're going to buy a yellow car?

You start seeing more yellow cars on the road. You notice them. You're like, oh my gosh, there's a yellow car.

I'm going to buy a yellow car. And suddenly, you realize there's more yellow cars than you realized. Now, were there more yellow cars on the road this week than last week?

Absolutely not. The difference is, you told your brain, your brain knows that that's what you want to buy, so it's trying to bring you things that are similar to what you've been thinking about, right?

So then it starts noticing more of those things like, well, here's another yellow car. You talked about a yellow car. Oh, look, over there in the corner, there's a yellow car.

Whereas before you thought about buying a yellow car, you're just, your brain zooms past it. Gratitude, good things can be the same way. When you start helping your brain go down that route, like, hey, I need more positivity in my life.

It's important to my mental health to be balanced here. Then your brain is going to start picking up on things like, well, here's another yellow car. Here's another good experience.

Here's something positive, because you're showing your brain, that's what you want to go down. And that's how neuroplasticity really works on our behalf. But it takes time, it takes consistent practice, okay?

So remembering the good is something that we've got to do consistently, and we've got to practice often. It's kind of like going to the gym. It's like physical strength training, emotional and mental strength grow with repetition, okay?

So it's not like we can do this once and walk away, just like you can't go to the gym once, walk away and think, you know, you're really super strong, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You gotta go repeatedly, right? To build muscles.

Remembering the good is the same way. We're building a muscle in our mental health. We're building a muscle in our brain.

We're trying to tell our thoughts to go down this path instead of that path, all right? And I do want to reiterate, you're allowed to grieve. Don't think that remembering the good means that remembering the bad is somehow wrong.

You are allowed to grieve the things that have happened to you. You're allowed to do both, remember and grieve and still feel joy. And that's what I want, this is what we're talking about, it's balance.

So you're allowed to hurt and still hold on to beauty. Healing happens when we make room for both. I'm not saying to ignore what has happened to you.

I'm not saying to pretend like it doesn't hurt. I'm just saying make room for good too, because our brain is going to hyperfocus on the bad. That's what science and the research has told us.

It's going to focus on that because of self-preservation. It's trying to protect you from future pain and future harm. And so as we acknowledge that, as we know that, we have to provide balance by purposely focusing on good things.

And that just makes balance, but it does not ignore or deny the fact that things are hard. It's not trying to pretend life didn't happen and it is painful.

It's a reality, but we're just trying to balance that reality with some good too for our mental health, okay?

14:58

Developing Good Memory Muscle

So this is the practical exercise I want us to try. I want you to set aside a little bit of time, okay? I want you to set aside maybe half an hour, and I want you to get a pen and paper.

Yes, I want you to write it down physically if you can. Everybody's a little different. Some people just really prefer to type.

But I think when you write it down, you're engaging more of your brain. You've got to engage the muscles to move your hand, to hold the pen, to form the letters as you write. It just engages more of your senses and your mind.

So I think physically writing this down is a little helpful. Just a notch above typing it. But if you have to type it, that's okay too.

But I highly recommend getting a pen and paper and writing these things down. And what I want you to do is create a good list. Okay?

So I want you to sit down and just take the time to write down a moment or moments, plural, where you felt loved. I want you to write down times where you were proud of yourself. I want you to write down unexpected blessings.

I want you to write down seasons where things worked out better than you expected. I mean, I just want you to go through your life and remember the really good times. Like, what happened that was well?

Did you get a promotion at work? Did somebody you love do something nice for you? Were you proud of yourself?

What have you done that when you look back on, you kind of smile like, hey, I did that. I didn't think I would finish that, but I did. And it doesn't matter if other people would view it as a great achievement.

It matters that you feel proud about it. Nobody else is going to look at this list but you. And I have shared this one before too.

One of the things that made my list sounds silly to everybody else. But because I was in that auto accident, I can get intimidated by driving.

And so after my divorce, I wanted to take my kids on a trip, but getting to where we were going, we had to cross over the great Smoky Mountain National Park. We were going to Gatlinburg, if you're familiar with that area.

And so driving over the great Smoky Mountain National Park, I love that. I had been to it many times as a child. I had taken my kids, but I had always been a passenger.

And that road is really windy, has a lot of steep inclines. And I was really intimidated to drive it myself as the driver.

And I remember even as a kid, my dad said, yeah, there's a tire shop right as you exit the great Smoky Mountain National Park, because a lot of people ride their brakes, and their brakes get burnt up, and they have to get new brakes when they finish

going across that mountain range, or that section of the mountain, because they've ridden their brakes so much because it's such a steep incline. And I thought, I really don't have money to buy new brakes just because I'm riding my brakes.

I was so intimidated. And it's silly, people drive that road all the time. One of the more popular national parks gets lots of traffic.

Nobody thinks about it, nobody cares, but it intimidated me. So one of the things that made my list was I drove that. I was really proud of myself for conquering something that intimidated me a lot.

So don't be afraid to write down things that you're proud of yourself about, that other people might look at and go to shrug their shoulders like, that wasn't that big of a deal. It matters if it was a big deal to you.

If you conquered your mountain, because your mountain is different than my mountain, what matters is you did something that intimidated you, and you were successful.

So I want you to write down all the times that you were proud of yourself, or think about times that God came through for you.

Crowder, I don't know if you're familiar with Crowder, it's Christian music, and there's a band called Crowder, it's David Crowder. Really like his music, and he has a song called Good God Almighty.

And there's a phrase in it that's really relatable, and it says, I get amnesia, I forget that you keep coming around.

But we forget, we forget the times that God came through for us, because our memory doesn't hold on to those as long as the hard times, right? We forget, you know, two years ago, when we were struggling, and God provided.

We forget where we were and how far we've come. Write those things down, go through everything.

The moment that you held your child for the first time, that just heart-stopping, achingly beautiful moment in your life, that it was just like, I can't believe how amazing this is. Write those moments down, write them down.

Remember the good, this is so important. And I think this is important for two reasons. Number one, you need to remember the good today, right?

You've got to sit down, especially in a dark season where your mind is just replaying every negative memory that has led you to a place where it feels like you're starting over. You've got to balance that out with good.

So it's really important to remember that today. But what you're also doing is you're creating a tactile, physical list that you can go back to. And instead of having to really try and do, you can read it and go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

You've now got a record that you can go back to on a really bad day, and pull it up, and make yourself read, there are good things too. It doesn't feel like it right now, but there are good things too.

All right, now that you've written your list, there's one other thing I want you to do.

So you've written a list of all the good things that you can think about in your life, the people who love you, the moments you feel loved, the moments you felt proud, the moments where you felt like you had great blessings, all those things.

I want you to go through that list and pick one good memory. I want you to pick the good one, whatever one, but I want you to pick one memory. And this is what I want you to do.

I want you to sit with it. I want you to visualize it. I want you to put yourself there.

I mean, I want you to think about where you were when this memory happened. I mean, get in that space. What did you feel?

Not only internally, but physically. What kind of clothes were you wearing? What were you sitting on?

What were you leaning against? Did the wind blow? Did you feel the sun on your skin?

Whatever it is, I mean, like, what did you physically feel? Did you smell anything? Did you taste anything?

I want you to put yourself all, go through all your senses and really get back into that memory to the best of your ability. Really visualize it. Why do we want to visualize it as best as we can?

Because your brain responds to a vivid memory almost the same way it responds to real experience. So, really sitting with a memory and replaying it in detail, it's like giving a canine, a dog, a scent. Like, here, smell this.

Smell this, now go find it. You see that on movies where they give a dog a scent, the dog goes and finds that scent. Well, that's what we're doing with our mind.

We're giving it a really good, detailed, positive memory. And then we're saying, I want to find more of these. And then your brain comes and says, oh, well, hey, we're driving along.

Do you notice how beautiful that sunset is? Here's a good memory. Let me bring it back to you.

And it starts looking for more. And we've got it, like I said, we've got to consistently practice looking for the good over time. And it takes a while, and it's gonna feel awkward at first.

I know that. It doesn't feel natural. But over time, through consistency, your brain will notice things that are good and bring them to you, just like a dog retrieving something with a certain sound.

Like, hey, did you notice this? Hey, did you notice this? It doesn't happen overnight, but this is the goal we're getting to.

So I really wanna encourage you to consistently practice sitting with good memories, remembering the good things that happen, and slowly and gently retraining our brain that, hey, there is good too, okay? We want balance, all right?

So I've said this before, and I will say it again, I really highly recommend every day writing down three good things. This is a consistent strength training exercise for your mental health.

Write down three good things, and what happened today that was good. And it could be that I ate a good meal, that I saw a good sunset. It could be something small, it could be something big.

Don't worry, look for something that happened. And over time, what will happen is your brain will go, oh, look, here's a good thing that you can write down. It doesn't happen maybe the first week or the second week, it takes consistency.

But then your brain starts to look for things that you can write on your list. So write down three good things every day. I feel like this is one of the best practices for our mental health.

And research backs it up, because research says our brain does fixate on the negative. Via self-preservation, it's just trying to protect you. We have to focus on the good.

We have to bring the balance. We have to be conscientious about saying, hey, I get the bad happened, but I want some good too. We've got to have a little bit of balance.

OK? So I just want to remind you, as we close, you don't have to force positivity. OK?

You don't have to pretend things are OK when they're not. But you can choose to remember that your life holds more than just this hard season. And every time you remember the good, you are gently re-training your brain for hope.

And that's what I want for you. And that's what I want for me. OK?

It's a muscle. It takes time. It takes consistency.

But it can be done. And science tells us that. It's not, it is emotion, and it is real, and it is feelings.

But there's also science behind it too, which somehow gives me a little bit of validation. It helps me realize that I'm not just a negative person. You're not just a negative person.

You're in self-preservation mode. And that's OK. But we can bring balance to this darker season.

We can look for the good. All right? If you would like to reach out to me and tell me what's going on with you, what the good things are in your life, how you are doing, you can find me online, www.workingonamazing.com.

You can also find me on social media. I do have an account on a few different platforms, but I will say, I do hang out on Facebook the most. And that's just a page, Working on Amazing.

So come check me out, send me a DM, let me know how you're doing. I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.