How to Hardwire Your Happiness

More on happiness. This time from The Art of Manliness. I wrote about happiness a couple of weeks ago.

Every day for the past year I’ve been “rewiring” my brain for happiness with a simple meditative practice I learned from a psychologist named Rick Hanson. It’s so easy, you can do it in just a few seconds. Really.

That sounds pretty intriguing!

Have you noticed that when things are going great, it hardly registers, but as soon as something bad happens, it sticks out like a sore thumb?

You know how it goes: your boss praises your work all the time, but he shoots down one idea, and that’s all you can think about; you start wondering if you even want to stay in that job. Or you post a pic on Instagram, and all your friends and family give you accolades and first bump emojis . . . but one person says something negative, and all the positive affirmation goes out the window. You’re still stewing about the snide remark hours later. 

Why do our brains do this? 

The human mind is designed with a negativity bias — we pay more attention and give more weight to negative experiences than positive ones. There’s likely a perfectly good evolutionary reason for this: increased sensitivity to potentially negative stimuli is what kept our caveman ancestors safe from life-threatening risks. It paid to be a bit paranoid and neurotic when a rustle in the leaves could mean a man-eating tiger.

All of us have inherited this negativity bias from our ancestors in varying degrees, and it’s still sometimes useful; while death no longer stalks us at every turn, there remain things in life that can definitely kill or maim you, or just be psychologically damaging, and being able to recognize and avoid them is important.

In some circumstances, though, our ingrained negativity bias is mismatched with the modern landscape; we lend an insult on social media the kind of attention commensurate with a life-and-death situation — as if we’re in danger of being ostracized from the protection of our ancestral tribe — when it actually has no real significance.

For some of us too, this negativity bias is simply too strong and too sensitive — it routinely gets activated by problems that don’t have meaningful consequences, crowds out the recognition of the positive things that are also going on, and causes rumination and emotional disturbance disproportionate to the trigger. In such cases, one’s negativity bias can lead to stress, depressive moods, and even full-on clinical depression.

For folks like us, our overactive negativity bias needs to be brought into healthy balance.

How do you do that?

That's a very good question. And the answer is to HEAL yourself:

HEAL is an acronym for: 

Have a positive experience
Enrich it
Absorb it
Link it

In a nutshell, the HEAL process is all about proactively savoring positive experiences and emotions. By doing so, you train the brain to see more of the positive and less of the negative in life.

Here’s how to implement the HEAL process: 

Have a positive experience. You don’t necessarily have to go out of your way to do this; oftentimes it’s simply a matter of noticing the good stuff that already happens throughout your day. For example, if my daughter runs up to give me a big hug, I make a point of recognizing what a nice moment it is. Or it could just be a matter of noting how great your warm mug feels in your hand and how good your coffee tastes as you drink it. Be on the lookout for nice sunsets, warm breezes, and other people’s acts of kindness.

If there aren’t any positive experiences happening to you at the moment (like if you’re commuting to work), you can create one in your mind. Think about a positive memory — a good time from the past, a goal you achieved, or someone you know who loves you. If you have a tendency to get down on yourself, try to think of aspects of character/personality that you like. Are you disciplined? Reliable? Reflect on those good qualities. You can even think about the fact that you’re alive and breathing and have a roof over your head. Those are definite positives, but our negative brain takes them for granted.

Really focus on the emotions that you feel when you think of these positive gifts and experiences. Do you feel proud? Grateful? Compassionate? Loved? Calm? Peaceful? Safe? Really feel those positive emotions. This focus on the emotional rewards of positive experiences is the key to rewiring your brain for happiness.

Enrich it. Remember, people with a strong negativity bias let the good stuff of life quickly slide off their brain like Teflon; it’s “Yup, there’s a sunset,” and their thoughts are immediately on to something else. The next two steps in the HEAL process are thus designed to get life’s positive vibes to stick in your mind like Velcro.

Once you have a positive experience, stay with it for five to ten seconds or longer. Enrich it by looking at it from different perspectives. Capture the moment in 3D. What’s going on around you? How does it feel in your body to experience that positive emotion? Imagine that feeling filling your mind. When you feel the positive emotion start fading, consciously bring it back and linger on it a bit more. The point of the enriching step is to rekindle that positive emotion over and over again; we’re trying to repeatedly fire those neurons connected to your positive feelings in order to create a new connection — a new more positive groove in your brain.

Absorb it. After you’ve enriched the positive feeling or experience, enhance its stickiness even further by imagining it sinking into your mind. Hanson recommends picturing those positive emotions soaking into your brain like a sponge. Author Laura Vanderkam suggests another way to absorb positive vibes: imagine that you have a treasure chest in your mind and that you’re stashing the good experience inside of it.

Link positive and negative material. Linking is kind of a weird step and one that I don’t personally use too often. Dr. Hanson even says it’s optional. It involves connecting the positive emotions/experiences that you’ve enriched and absorbed with a negative emotion or experience and then gradually imagining the positive overtaking the negative. 

For example, let’s say you recently lost your job and you’re feeling down in the dumps. Bring that to your attention, but sort of hold it off to the side. Now, bring to mind a positive experience or reality like the fact that your family loves you. Enrich that feeling. Absorb it. Now imagine that positive feeling overtaking the negative emotions of you losing your job. What I do when I do practice linking is imagine my positive experience as a green blob swallowing up the red blob of a negative experience.

If all you can remember from this HEAL process is to intentionally take a few extra seconds to soak in good, joy-producing experiences like a sponge, you’ll be well on your way to pointing your brain in a more positive direction.

This is similar to the Savoring practice from the Yale course on happiness I'm taking, although I've only done it once so far...I need to work on making it a habit.

Now when my kids run to give me a hug, I really savor it. I think about what it feels like to have their little arms wrapped around my neck, what they smell like, what my house looks like, what the weather outside is like. I’m basically trying to turn it into a very real, movie-esque memory. And then I soak the experience into my mind like water soaking into a sponge. I let the warm feeling wash over me. That hug becomes a part of who I am.

Be sure to check out my previous blog post on happiness (link above) and check out the free Yale course!

Interesting days

Today - Random Acts Of Kindness Day, World Human Spirit Day and My Way Day

Tomorrow - Drink Wine Day, Pluto Day, Eat Ice Cream For Breakfast Day and Battery Day

Next Monday - Tortilla Chip Day, Play More Cards Day and World Bartender Day

March 17 - Saint Patrick’s Day