Pollyanna In Action

The Pollyanna principle states that at an unconscious level our minds have tendency to attract towards optimism, while at the conscious level we have tendency to focus towards negative.

This always made me wonder at the amount of effort that it must take to be a negative person. The efficiency of the brain won't allow us to operate multiple tasks at the conscious level for an extended period of time, our brains go into autopilot and operate unconsciously (eg. while reedng, teh sifht yru fell tu udnresnatd thes snteence) to allow the CPU to focus on other tasks. Sometimes, however, it's unavoidable. Bad news hits and we have to handle it, and it's tough to focus on the positive.

Reading or watching the news in the past year has become a function of unavoidable, conscious habit. If the constant coverage of the falling markets and financial woes hasn't left us feeling economic depressed, it has at least emotionally so. How have our brains been able to cope with all of this conscious negative effrontery? With the world feeling this crisis, our unconscious must be begging for relief!

Leo Burnett Lisbon has answered our plea by creating an application for firefox in which when “CRISIS” appears in text, it is swapped out with the word “OPPORTUNITY”.
And with the word "crisis" being the biggest buzz word in 2008 and 2009, we sure could use this positive reinforcement.

Check it out: http://www.see-the-opportunity.com/