Do You Have A Tendency To Focus On The Negatives?

One day, a professor entered his classroom and asked his students to prepare for a surprise test. They all waited anxiously at their desks for the exam to begin.

The professor handed out the exams with the text facing down, as usual. Once he handed them all out, he asked the students to turn over the papers.

To everyone’s surprise, there were no questions – just a black dot in the centre of the paper.

The professor, seeing the expression on everyone’s faces, told them the following: “I want you to write about what you see there.”

The students, confused, got started on this odd task.

At the end of the class, the professor took all the exams and started reading each one of them out loud in front of all the students.

All of them, without exception, defined the black dot, trying to explain its position in the centre of the sheet.

After all had been read, the classroom silent, the professor spoke.

“I’m not going to grade you on this,” he said. “I just wanted to give you something to think about.

Not one of you wrote about the white part of the paper.

Everyone focused on the black dot – and the same thing happens in our lives. 

We insist on focusing only on the black dots – the niggly health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the business problems, the betrayal by a friend.

The dark spots are very small when compared to everything we have in our lives, but they are the ones that pollute our minds.”