Our natural human default is to notice what isn’t going well. This negativity bias isn’t easy to combat. In fact, research shows it takes five positive events to overcome the effects of a single negative one.
The good news is, research also shows noticing kindness is as powerful as doing acts of kindness when it comes to inspiring us to commit our own kind acts. That’s because our brains accesses our own past experiences of giving and receiving kindness. This, in turn, makes us feel warm and fuzzy (so to speak), inspiring gratitude and encouraging us to do our own kind acts.