But I get it .
Also , I had gone to the car while the boys were last-minute gathering their things , so I had no idea he had been frantically searching for shorts , not wanting to make anyone late .
“ I didn ’ t even know you were racing for the car ,” I assured him . “ Let alone stressed about being late . I was just commenting about our luck in making every light .”
“ Oh .”
His mind had told him a story that he bought hook , line , and sinker . Because that ’ s the way his mind saw it . And usually our minds go negative .
Rarely is mindsight 20 / 20 ; it ’ s usually negative .
Kendra Cherry , author and education specialist , refers to this knee-jerk mental reaction as negative bias , our human “ tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily but also to dwell on these events .” And “ this bias toward the negative leads [ us ] to pay much more attention to the bad things that happen , making them seem much more important than they really are .”
She continues : “ We tend to learn more from negative outcomes and experiences . We even tend to make decisions based on negative information more than positive data . It is the ‘ bad things ’ that grab our attention , stick to our memories , and , in many cases , influence the decisions that we make .”
We are quick to hear and receive the negative , needing at least give positive comments to outweigh one negative . Even when the comments or conversations occur silently in our thoughts .
That morning in the car , Fury was carrying a heavy load of messaging that couldn ’ t have been further from the truth But after we outed the negativity and laughed about how we all tend to overhear ( as in hearing more than is said ), a delightful new door opened for he and his siblings to start a game of what-Mom-says versus what-we-hear . Fun times in the car .
Siblings , couples , children , students – all of us read into what we hear . Everyone ( everyone !) has stepped foot in the nothearing-what-is-actually-being-said minefield and will do so again .
Author Lysa TerKeurst shared a little about our natural bent toward mental storytelling on one of our SaySomething chats . She told us about a lovely junior high experience where not only was everyone invited to a party – except for her – but they had matching pink T-shirts that they wore to school and in the carpool that took them to the party :
“ We all have a story . And we all have a story we tell ourselves . So the story that day was : She probably just didn ’ t even think I was close enough friends with her to invite me to the birthday party . End of story . But the story I was telling myself is : I ’ m never going
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