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Is your mind biased to see the positive or the negative in your environment?

A new form of self-therapy called cognitive bias modification attempts to train your mind to see the positive through a fun and interesting new technique.

In fact, a recent study has shown that cognitive bias modification (CBM) has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety. And another study discovered that CBM can reduce the pain of social rejections.

The basic idea behind the exercise is to try to spot the “happy face” among a bunch of “sad faces.” With practice, your mind gradually starts attracting to the “happy faces” faster and more easily.

And the reason this works is because your mind becomes less sensitive to the negative stimuli in your environment and more sensitive to the positive stimuli in your environment.

Try “cognitive bias modification” out for yourself.



How fast can you find the “happy face” in the image below?



Did you find it? Good.

The way “cognitive bias modification” works is you continue to get different grids of faces like the one above, and you have to click on the “happy face” as soon as you find it.

You can try out the main version of this exercise here, which was created by social psychologists at McGill University (who have found a lot of positive results using this exact technique). And you can also find a mobile version of a similar exercise called “PsychMeUp!” for both Apple and Android.

Another reason I suspect this exercise may work is because it can create a type of emotional contagion effect.

This just means that emotions can often spread from one person to the next – so the more your mind is trained to see positive faces, the more your mind is going to mirror those positive emotions being communicated to you.

My only problem with the “cognitive bias modification” exercise that I’ve shared is that there isn’t too much diversity in the faces.

However, one way you can make up for this is to create your own “cognitive bias modification” exercise by doing a Google search for “faces” and then scrolling through identifying all the “happy faces.”

There is a lot of potential in this exercise, but keep in mind that it’s just one tool of many. It probably won’t magically change you, but it can certainly help.

Try it out for just 10 minutes and see how it works for you.



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