Happiness Training
The synth plays in my music. I have a new battery in my car. The surface of my mattress squishes underneath my bottom. My walls are plum-colored like the lips of a 90s TV star. I feel the sensation of my breath as it expands and contracts my rib cage across my torso. I see the colors and shadows from dappled light on the things around me as I look out through my eyelashes. I am human. I am alive. I am well-enough. I have this moment of free-time to simply take in what is…to take in the good. That is what I would like to focus on in this writing; ‘taking in the good’. The process of taking in the good comes from the book Hardwiring Happiness; The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, by Rich Hanson, Ph.D., where he addresses the brain science of happiness and how to move away from negativity.
First let us start by looking at the incessant hurdle we have to overcome; the negativity bias. Ever wonder why a bad thing in your day affects so much more of your mental space then a good occurrence? We often go through life having experiences where we graduate from college, get a sweet note from a friend, or get a discount on our coffee; then a coworker says something that triggers our anger and suddenly our day is consumed by the negative comment. This is because the brain has a negativity bias. Humans evolved to have a reactionary amygdala (the part of the brain associated with fight or flight), because in our evolution it was often more important to pay attention to threats over opportunities. If I did not pay attention to threats, I might become lunch for larger predators, while looking for opportunities could potentially put me in danger. The human brain began to evolve to be more aware of threat than opportunity because it was more important for evolution to survive than to notice positive things in the environment. However, for those of us whose survival needs are met, we have the choice to notice opportunity over scarcity.
The process of taking in the good, or savoring, is an excellent tool to combat the mind’s nasty tendency to hyper-focus on negativity. Taking in the good is a way of focusing the mind on positive experiences. This could be small, daily positive experiences or larger scale life accomplishments. Instead of having a positive experience and then moving on to the next problem to solve, taking in the good is a strategy to help us enjoy the positive experiences that are happening around us all the time with more depth. It has a few easy steps and even comes in a tidy little acronym: HEAL.
Step 1: Have a positive experience.
Step 2: Enrich it.
Step 3: Absorb it
Step 4: Link positive and negative material (optional).
Step 1 comes naturally in life. Positive things happen all the time, no matter how small. I woke up on time, my house is temperature controlled and I got enough sleep. Step 2 is where it gets a bit more complicated, because our brains are naturally wired to skip over the positive experience and move on to the next experience. To Enrich the experience means to stay with that positive experience; dwelling on it for about 5 or 10 seconds. During this step, it is helpful to notice things about the experience in more detail and potentially something novel about it. For Step 3, the key is to take that positive experience and really create a visualization of how that experience is benefitting you. Perhaps you can visualize positive particles of the experience integrating into parts of our body or mind. Finally, Step 4 which is most certainly the most challenging step includes taking a positive experience and the associated brain state and then calling up negative thought content. By calling up the negative thoughts with the positive ones in the foreground, you can begin to rewire the negativity and neural connections that are associated with those negative thoughts. This step is much more challenging and is best practiced once the first three steps are fully mastered.
So what is the gist of this process if you are just moving through your day and hoping to focus on the mind on more positive experiences? Basically, the point is not to discount the positive experiences you have in your life by moving directly on to the next thing to worry about. Taking in the good is a practice that can be done anywhere and at any moment. Taking in the good can happen after a positive experience, so that you let yourself glow just a little bit longer from a positive interaction, or taking in the good can be a way of enhancing a positive experience as it is happening. If you are hoping to enhance a positive experience in the moment you may look around yourself and notice the sensory aspects that you appreciate during that moment. You can note things that are positive that you notice when you put your attention on them, such as, “It’s so nice to be spending time with my family. I feel relaxed around them and this chair I am sitting in is so comfortable”. Bringing your attention to these positive elements of your experience can really serve to deepen your experience and it actually helps to record the experience into your memory. The more times you record positive experiences into your memory, the more accessible positive brain states become to you.
So often in psychological work and language we focus on the disorder or how to problem solve. Sometimes the best thing to do is accumulate positive experiences and build the positive neuron loops that allow positive thoughts to pop up more frequently. When we continually focus on negatives, we are training our brains to do so as well; when we intentionally focus on positives and implant them in our memories, we train the brain to produce more positives more frequently. Taking in the good is boot camp for the brain; train your brain to focus on the things you do want, and slowly it will begin to do so on its own.
