the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.
Even when positive experiences outnumber negative ones, the pile of negative implicit memories naturally grows faster.
From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. If you want to survive, you would focus more on the potential dangers in your environment, rather than the things that might make you feel good?
Can Cause “Drift to Low Performance”
From Book - Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows
The lower the perceived system state, the lower the desired state. The lower the desired state, the less discrepancy, and the less corrective action is taken. The less corrective action, the lower the system state. If this loop is allowed to run unchecked, it can lead to a continuous degradation in the system’s performance.
Way Out
There are two antidotes to eroding goals. One is to keep standards absolute, regardless of performance. Another is to make goals sensitive to the best performances of the past, instead of the worst. If perceived performance has an upbeat bias instead of a downbeat one, if one takes the best results as a standard, and the worst results only as a temporary setback, then the same system structure can pull the system up to better and better performance.
Source: Book - Buddha’s Brain - Rick Hanson Topics: Cognitive Bias | Happiness | Goals