Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Getting to Meaningful Action

"I used to think that complete transparency about the negative impacts of what we do and buy -- knowing our eco-footprints -- would in itself create a market force that would encourage us all to vote with our dollars buy buying better alternatives. Sounded like a good idea -- but I neglected a psychological fact. Negative focus leads to discouragement and disengagement. When our neural centers for distress take over, our focus shifts to the distress itself, and how to ease it. We long to tune out.

"When we are motivated by positive emotions, what we do feels more meaningful and the urge to act lasts longer. It all stays longer in attention. In contrast, fear of global warming's impacts may get our attention quickly, but once we do one thing and feel a little better, we think we're done."

-Focus, Daniel Goleman

1 comment:

Jeannie said...
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