50 Pics Of People Having A Worse Day Than You (New Pics)

Toxavidi, an accredited member of the BACP, told Bored Panda that even minor problems can throw off our entire day. "Even small mishaps in the morning like throwing our morning coffee on us or even getting a text or an email we don’t like can affect the rest of our day. A typical sentence I’ve heard a lot of people (and sometimes myself) say is, ‘Oh, great start to the day!’ With sarcastic irony, of course. At that point, when we say that, the ‘negative bias’ effect can start," Toxavidi said.

But what exactly is negative bias? Well, according to counselor Toxavidi, it's the notion that negative events tend to affect us psychologically more than positive ones. That's why we can "persuade" ourselves that the rest of our day will turn out to be horrible. Sometimes, we end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because we look at the world through lenses triggered by anger, fear, or the expectation that something will go wrong.

Toxavidi explained that self-fulfilling prophecies are socio-psychological phenomena where we predict or expect something to come true, so our behavior aligns to fulfill this belief.

"As humans, we create the environment that we think about, so if someone thinks positively, they will see the world more through a positive lens and little mishaps may have a lower effect on them. While someone who is pessimistic and sees the world through a negative lens can be affected more by little misfortunate mishaps," she highlighted the power of positive thinking.

While small mishaps can happen all the time and even every day, how we control our thoughts and what perspective we have on unfortunate events can help us determine how the rest of our day goes. Toxavidi stated that we can control how long we feel negatively after bad events by shifting our view of what occurred.

"For example, I remember a lady at an event where someone by accident spilled red wine on her silk shirt. I remember the calmness in her. She said, 'It’s okay. I love this shirt but it’s not worth enough to ruin my night.' At that moment, she was able to control her thinking and create an argument for her little mishap that helped her to stop ruminating on how the shirt may have been destroyed," the counselor gave a real-life example of how we too can keep our spirits up throughout the day even when it's raining mishaps.

Bored Panda was also very interested to find out more about psychological resilience. Toxavidi said that psychological resilience is our ability to bounce back after facing adversity.

"Although there has been a debate whether resilience, mental and emotional, is innate or something that can be developed, for me, it’s an innate condition that all humans have but needs to be developed and modeled well for it to come to the surface," she explained. "All humans are wired for survival, so resilience must be an innate trait for everyone for this to happen, but if it’s never developed, then it may not come out as a trait for someone."

We start developing our resilience in our growing environment. And we use our parents as role models. This can have huge effects on our future development. "For example, a parent who gets panicky over a little mishap or who sees everything through a negative lens passes that behavior to the child. The child will be conditioned to start using that same behavior. However, this can change and a person who has learned not to be resilient can develop the skills of resilience again."

She continued: "Resilience is the skill of adaptation, which for me is another innate skill of humans compared to other animals. Humans can adapt to situations easier. Having counseling or psychotherapy is an example of how resilience can be developed and learned and become a new way of living."

Toxavidi has seen evidence of people developing resilience firsthand in her counseling practice. Patients who had negative views of themselves and the world around them and were unable to stay in relationships or find self-fulfillment learned to develop skills to make them more resilient, confident, and able to tackle adversity better. Naturally, this led to them developing better relationships both with themselves and others.

We at Bored Panda are huge fans of laughter, so we were curious to find out to what extent humor plays a role in our ability to bounce back from mishaps. Toxavidi confirmed that humor can play a "significant role" in this and can be a great resilience strategy.

"In a study in 2013 in Advances in Physiology Education, it’s been shown that humor and laughter can decrease levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and increase the activation of the pleasure hormone, dopamine. Other studies have shown that just smiling without even finding anything funny can make the brain believe that you are happy and decrease stress levels."

She added that humor can help us reframe problems that we would otherwise interpret as "overwhelming and damaging." Not only that. Toxavidi told Bored Panda that humor can loosen you up, energize your thinking, help you take hardships less seriously, and manage disappointment better.

"Another important key to resilience is to be part of a community and have external support from family, friends and others. As humans, we’re social animals so without having a strong sense of belonging, we cannot thrive or be resilient," she said.