Posted on June 27, 2026
Anyone who passes by my house this time of year will see a long line of rose bushes with beautiful red blooms. This floral display reminds me of an old adage: “Life is not a bed of roses.”
As a child, I heard those words often. They were meant to warn me that life would not always be easy and care-free but instead filled with challenges and difficulties I would have to surmount. But now, I would say this instead: “Life is exactly like a bed of roses.”
Let me explain. Unlike some bushes, rose bushes are thorny, as the scratches and punctures on my legs and forearms illustrate after a trimming and dead heading session. In addition to their blooms and thorns, the bushes have buds. But I’d never thought of those three parts of the rose bush as representing anything until my son-in-law, Dan, began a family dinner with an exercise he’d learned at a business conference.
Dan instructed each of his three young children to think of two “roses” – things that had made them happy that day. Then they were to think of one thing that hadn’t gone well – a “thorn.” And, finally, one thing they looked forward to – a “bud.” As Dan explained this, it struck me as a wonderful way to bring perspective to a day. And, whether we’re children or adults, that perspective is badly needed.
Our Usual Outlook: Negativity
It’s very easy to end a day dwelling on something negative. Because no one wants to feel this way, we may resist these unpleasant thoughts, but this only prolongs them. Chiding ourselves for having such thoughts adds to our misery.
It may be surprising to learn that it’s natural for negative thoughts to dominate this way. In their book, The Power of Bad, John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister explain our “universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more than positive ones.” Our brains are wired for a “negativity bias,” which is thought to be evolutionary. Early human brains evolved for survival – to look for danger rather than what was going well – and this way of seeing the world is still with us.
The fact that the negativity bias is natural doesn’t mean it’s always helpful, though. Clinging to a hurtful comment from a friend, colleague or family member while overlooking positive interactions with that person could lead to resentment and spoil an otherwise good relationship. Noticing failures to meet our goals more than our successes could discourage us from trying.
Fortunately, thanks to its neuroplasticity, the human brain has the capacity to learn, with practice, new behaviors and ways of thinking, and people have gone about this in various ways.
Shifting Toward the Positive
Gratitude practices are one way to direct our thoughts toward the positive things in our lives rather than the negative ones. A typical gratitude practice might be to end each day by listing three things for which we are grateful. Some people like to record these in a gratitude journal. The goal is to rewire the brain over time to scan more for life’s positives than its negatives for the sake of our health and happiness.
Focusing on the good things in life, both big and small, can help to gradually shift our perspective from pessimism to optimism. When this happens, we can begin to feel more content and confident. And this benefits our health: Evidence shows that pessimism leads to body inflammation and disease while optimism promotes physical and mental wellbeing.
Getting the most out of a gratitude practice depends, like most things, on how we do it. If we are simply ticking things off to fill a list, we may be unable to feel as many benefits as we would if we were to write about fewer, more heartfelt things, even if we named the same things over and over.
As the goal is to rewire the brain toward positive thinking, gratitude practices typically leave out negative experiences unless they are related to something for which we are currently grateful.
Including the Negative and What Lies Ahead
What I particularly like about the rose-thorn-bud exercise is that it deliberately acknowledges negative experiences – the “thorns” in our day – alongside the “roses.” By looking at what didn’t go well in addition to what did, we create space to process these things.
By naming two roses and one thorn, Dan’s version of this exercise, like a gratitude practice, attempts to rewire the brain toward more positive thinking than it might normally engage in. And naming a “bud” – something we’re looking forward to in the future – broadens our perspective beyond the present.
Unlike a gratitude practice, which is often done alone, the rose-thorn-bud exercise lends itself well to a group, which gives participants the opportunity to hear others’ perspectives and to feel that they are not alone. Its relationship-building potential is one reason for its popularity with work teams.
So, whether you choose to engage in this practice or not, let every rose bush you see, even if it’s not in bloom, be a reminder that the thorns in life are but one part of a whole and that many roses and buds are there, too, if we take the time to notice them.