Anything that’s normal for you, you tend not to notice. You don’t notice the feel of your socks on your feet or your own blinking because they’re so ordinary that your brain edits them out to keep you from being overwhelmed.
The inverse corollary is that if you notice something, it’s because it’s unusual. A disruption of your pattern.
If bad things were happening to you constantly (literally constantly), you’d stop noticing them. We look back on people who lived hundreds of years ago and we can’t even fathom how they weren’t miserable, but whatever conditions they lived under were simply their “normal.” In two hundred years, people will be amazed that we lived like we do today!
What’s the upshot of all this? If something bad happens to you, a positive reframe is that you only notice it because it’s so unusual that anything bad should happen to you at all! Your life is pretty great; you just rarely notice because “pretty great” is your normal.
So notice the normal! When something unfortunate befalls you, appreciate how nice it is that such misfortune is the exception. You probably paid attention to your blinking when you read the beginning of this post, but until just now you’d already forgotten about it again. The misfortune will pass just as quickly, but you can choose to appreciate the blessings whenever you like – or whenever you get a little reminder.
The Opportunity Machine 