Have you had your 5 a day? (From The Argus)

Have you had your 5 a day?

9:25am Thursday 27th October 2011 in Blogs By Karen Macmillan - More to life

The human brain is wired to notice the negative comment and give it more weight than a positive one. Some of us are naturally cheery and need only 2 or 3 positive experiences to balance out each negative one. The safe ratio is thought to be 5 to 1. How can we ensure we keep our ratios good?

One way is to practice gratitude. There are various ways to do this. A simple one is to write down 3 things we are grateful for at the end of each day. Some days this can be easy; others it may be hard and we may have to write simple things like 'the air that I breathe' or 'my bed'. The simple act of noticing what we are grateful for starts to build a reservoir of good we can tap into and allows us to fall sleep in a positive frame of mind so that we are less likely to wake up grumpy (!) I started doing this along with several other gratitude related practices in the summer. It works.

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