Author who studies millionaires: Here’s why most successful people are upbeat and positive

Human brains are hardwired for negativity, reports psychologist Rick Hanson, senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

There's a good evolutionary reason for our Negativity Bias: Negativity keeps the brain alert for dangers in our environment. A hundred thousand years ago, this was critical to survival.

Being focused on threats and dangers kept our internal radar systems in search mode for lions, tigers and bears.

However, we live in a very different world today. External environmental threats in the form of lions, tigers and bears are, for the most part, nonexistent. Unfortunately, the evolution of

our brains has not keep pace with the safety upgrades our civilized society affords us. As a result, our brains have held onto this vestigial trait. 

That's a problem, because negativity is a nearly insurmountable barrier to success.

It is virtually impossible to become successful, as an entrepreneur, if you maintain a negative mindset. In fact, positivity is so important to success it is one of the common "rich habits"

of self-made millionaires. I spent five years studying the good and bad habits of 177 self-made millionaires and wrote four books, sharing that research. I found that 79 percent of rich

people, before they became rich, believed they would make it, compared to only 18 percent for the poor. Over half, or 54 percent, of the rich credited optimism as critical to their success

in life, and nearly three-quarters, or 71 percent, forged the habit of finding things to be grateful for in life.

Third-party studies have also found that positivity is helpful, even perhaps critical. In 1998 and 2000, the landmark Broad & Build Studies by B.L. Frederickson found that positivity

increases focus, cognitive ability and risk tolerance. All of those traits were shared by the self-made millionaires in my study.

The good news is that it is 100 percent possible to reprogram your mind to eliminate negativity. Here are some ways to do that:

Tom Corley is an accountant, financial planner and author of "Rich Kids: How to Raise Our Children to Be Happy and Successful in Life."

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A version of this article originally appeared on Rich Habits.

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