It’s well known that humans have an ingrained negativity bias, where negative events more significantly impact our psychological state than positive events. This tendency toward gloom is also reflected in media, with a study from The New York Times revealing mainstream media outlets carry a disproportionately negative bias in their reporting.
While life isn’t all sunshine and roses, the news is history in the making, and it is important to stay informed. However, there are plenty of reasons to remain positive, and there is no reason for negativity to pervade your life. Here are three tips to practice news resilience and stay positive.
Reduce your news consumption
Unless you’re in the middle of a warzone, keeping up on hourly news updates is really doing no good for your anxiety levels. A popular tried-and-true technique is to simply stop reading so much news.
By putting rules in place – like not checking the news during your lunch break or only scrolling through Twitter for 30 minutes a day – you can easily reduce your doom-scrolling time and recenter your brain. Setting aside a specific amount of time for reading puts you back in control of news habits, lifts your mental health, and gives you back your agency. Anything you miss will most likely get back to you via friends, colleagues, or social media anyway.
Over consumption of news can drastically impact our mental health which causes a ripple effect on those around us. By decreasing your amount of reading you can also create meaningful change in your immediate community, allowing you the space to be a good parent and decent friend.
Take action
Obsessing over the news rarely makes someone feel better. Action, on the other hand, usually does. Do something about what you’re reading by donating to meaningful work that helps people in crisis. You might read about the War in Ukraine and feel helpless but donating to these important aid organizations will help you and, more importantly, the people you’re reading about.
Read The Optimist Daily
Our world’s obsession with bad news has taken over, so for a burst of positivity in your news cycle read The Optimist Daily! We strongly believe there is a lot of good in the world you can read about if you just look for it. We want to shine a light on the brighter side of humanity and offer our readers a breath of fresh air.
