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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. I wonder how common miscalibrations are. Personally I've noticed that my overall impression of experiences is usually much more positive than they should be. I'll think back to, say, a business trip I didn't want to take and think of it fondly even though almost every individual memory I have of it I was either bored or miserable.

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> Personally I've noticed that my overall impression of experiences is usually much more positive than they should be.

I envy you a little bit.

I've noticed that my overall impression of experiences is usually extremely negative, as no matter how many positive memories I have, the negative experiences always overwhelm me so much that the positive ones don't even feel real.

I remember going to a vacation, and while there were a few pleasant moments, I can't really recall them and re-experience them - I just know rationally that they did happen. But recalling unpleasant moments brings all the unpleasantness back to the present moment.

I really wish it was the other way around.

I feel like I take positive experiences as granted and don't feel like they are noteworthy. Negative experiences are something to avoid in the future and I remember them extremely well.

With you on this one.

I started noticing thoughts that were so negative/depressive that I was actually aware of how irrational it was. For example things are actually quite good but my mind is in the dumps. So called Automatic Negative Thoughts (ants).

Since then been trying to reprogram my brain. Force those thoughts out of my head. Start singing randomly. It’s hard and I’m not always successful but I’ve definitely noticed a big improvement overall.

Hopefully this helps you too!

I have been training for almost a decade to flag all experiences as positive. It works; things that were objectively bad (chemo, having covid, getting robbed, business partner stealing money from the company, horrible clients etc) are all positive memories in my head. The only thing that I couldn’t manage was my dogs death; he was mauled to death by a pitbull right in front of me. I used to be quite a negative person and many earlier memories that were not that terrible are all giving me over the top bad feelings: when my grandfather died, I was wallowing so much in negativity that I decided to stop doing that once and for all. It works: live feels very positive and nice even though it of course often is not.

Checkout the Pollyanna principle [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna_principle

I'm not sure there's as much relation as it seems at first. For example, According to the Pollyanna principle, the brain processes information that is pleasing and agreeable in a more precise and exact manner as compared to unpleasant information. is completely the opposite of how it works with me. I have positive general impressions of things about which I can only remember negative details. It's like instead of evaluating the experience based on the sum of its parts I just have an inaccurate header label.

Highly relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-10-04

I really enjoyed the next to last panel with the young then old couple. Crazy how a single image can say so many things.

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