Thought
In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades “implicit memory” – your underlying expectations, beliefs, action strategies, and mood – in an increasingly negative direction.
—Dr. Rick Hanson
Application
Dr. Hanson goes on say,
And that’s just not fair, since probably most of the facts in your life are positive or neutral. Every day, lots of good things happen, such as a lovely sunset, someone is nice to you, you finish a batch of emails, or you learn something new. And lots of other good things are ongoing aspects of your world (e.g., your children are healthy, life is peaceful in your corner of the planet) or yourself (e.g., personal qualities like determination, sincerity, fairness, kindness).
You might thinking, “I knew it all along, humans are negative!”
And it would it appear that you are in many ways correct.
Through the course of our evolution in chasing rewards and avoiding danger, it has been much more important to avoid a singular dangerous experience that could end one’s life, than to catch a reward that most likely would come around again.
So we (and most living things) have developed a bias for this line of thought. To the extent in fact that, as Dr. Hanson notes,
In a relationship, it typically takes five good interactions to make up for a single bad one.
People will work much harder to avoid losing $100 than they will work to gain the same amount of money.
Painful experiences are much more memorable than pleasurable ones.
So what do we do about it? Are we eternally wired this way, destined to be unhappy? Is it our duty to leverage every ounce of available willpower to practice the disciples of philosophy and deep thinking to remind ourselves what the Buddha, the Aztecs, Epictetus, Frankl, and Aristotle left for us about the good life?
Thankfully no.
Rather, Dr. Hanson suggests three simple practices to leverage our brains neuroplasticity and slowly reset this ancient bias toward the negative.
He suggests,
1. Look for good facts, and turn them into good experiences.
Good facts include positive events – like the taste of good coffee or getting an unexpected compliment – and positive aspects of the world and yourself. When you notice something good, let yourself feel good about it.
Really enjoy the experience.
Most of the time, a good experience is pretty mild, and that’s fine. But try to stay with it for 20 or 30 seconds in a row – instead of getting distracted by something else.
Intend and sense that the good experience is sinking into you.
People do this in different ways. Some feel it in their body like a warm glow spreading through their chest like the warmth of a cup of hot cocoa on a cold wintry day. Others visualize things like a golden syrup sinking down inside, bringing good feelings and soothing old places of hurt, filling in old holes of loss or yearning
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Backstory
Before I go any further, let me definitely point you in the direction of Dr. Hanson. He writes a free weekly newsletter on fascinating topics from his research in neurobiology that I cannot recommend enough. He also recently write a bestselling book called Neurodharma, masterfully weaving ancient philosophy and modern science in our communal quest for genuine happiness.
All of that said, a huge thank you to Dr. Hanson for his work and his inspiration of today’s newsletter.
Most of his work stems from the reality that our brains are evolutionary wired to operate in a dangerous environment in which our ability to respond to fear is the greatest asset in our biological toolkit.
However, we live in a time where, if we wanted to, every person could live safely and happily on the planet. The issues that prevent this are largely the survivor or reptile brain that many of us live from day to day.
The brain has essentially three macro components in humans.
Dr. Hanson writes,
To simplify a complex journey beginning about 600 million years ago, your brain has developed in three basic stages:
Reptile – Brainstem, focused on avoiding harm
Mammal – Limbic system, focused on approaching rewards
Primate – Cortex, focused on attaching to "us"
Of course, the brain is highly integrated, so these three key functions – avoiding, approaching, and attaching – are accomplished by all parts of the brain working together. Nonetheless, each function is particularly served by the region of the brain that first evolved to handle it.
But in moments of stress, worry, or tension we often resort back to that fight-or-flight, run or be killed functioning. This would be helpful if we were in constant threat of large predators…but we’re not.
And the reason this matters to us: we can study all of the philosophy about happiness and the good life that we want, but we’re running an uphill battle of sorts. We have to acknowledge that our brain’s core functioning creates a natural bent toward negativity and fear.
Our first step toward long-lasting happiness has to be in addressing this reality. Thankfully, our are brains amazingly supple and due to their neuroplasticity are capable of changing over time.
In short, if we are intentional enough and follow Dr. Hanson’s suggestions above, we can slowly train our brain to recognize its safety and encourage it to turn from the negative to the positive.
How amazing would that be, if we became people with brains that latched onto the positive and let the negative slide?
Friends, I hope this was helpful, please check out Dr. Hanson’s incredible work, and I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow for a Weekly Rundown before we head into a restful weekend.
Also, make sure to check out tomorrow’s letter to hear about the winners of last week’s contest, they’ve got some awesome swag coming their way!
-TPP
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Read the work that inspired today’s letter:
https://news.rickhanson.net/index.php?action=social&chash=5680522b8e2bb01943234bce7bf84534.1320&s=6efd348973b22baaa16bf6aa3f7a73f6
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_neuroscience_of_happiness
https://www.rickhanson.net/books/neurodharma/
Happiness