When we go through periods of continuous stress, our mind can start to become stuck and blinkered and then our mood can start to suffer. Our thinking can become more rigid and we can start to experience depression.
From a biological perspective, most people’s minds have evolved to have a slight negativity bias – evolutionary wise, those who were particularly good at looking out or foreseeing problems tended to continue whereas those who were not so great at doing this, tended to not survive! However when we are struggling, our mind tends to attach to things that are wrong (even sometimes neutral things) like velcro – Psychologists call this we experiencing a negativity bias.
The more we expect things to go wrong, the more we attune to problems – our brain actually channels our perception into what “matches” what template being activated. We register more problems, more grumpy people, more red traffic lights….
One of the easiest ways to help your mind to widen back out again from “sticky velcro mode” is to physically look out onto a horizon – visually widening the field of input coming into our brain (such as looking out onto mountains, the distance, the ocean or the top of Mt Cootha!) for a few minutes activates the parts of the brain that also triggered widened perception (the opposite of blinkered stuck mode) and most people will notice increased lift and expansiveness in their mood.
No horizon views in your office? This 9 minute clip features incredible Louie Schwartzberg’s stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, and I find it to be a guaranteed mood booster.