This short practice is adapted from Rick Hanson’s wonderful book, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence. He reminds us that the human brain is overwhelmingly focused on protecting you from threats. Let’s think about why that might be. For millions of years, our ancestors evolved to live in the wilderness. They formed small bands of hunter-gatherers, living in caves or fortified villages surrounded by hungry, poisonous and dangerous animals, as well as other bands they mostly lived alongside peaceably, but who could attack at any moment. This was a dangerous time to be human.

So your brain evolved to live in this world – not the 21st-century world we live in now, which for most of us involves an urban existence, in peaceful democracies and with far fewer life-or-death threats than your brain evolved to deal with.

But your threat-focused brain still operates as if you were living in the forest, or out on the savannah. And this is why all human brains have an in-built negativity bias, meaning you are laser-focused on bad stuff – threats, worries, painful memories, financial difficulties, relationship troubles… You think about that a lot and pour huge amounts of mental energy into ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

When good stuff happens, you enjoy it for a moment, then it’s gone. And you move quickly to hungrily searching for the next thing to worry about. This is not your fault – it’s just what brains do.

As Rick Hanson says, your brain is like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good. So we need to build our mental muscles to help us pay as much attention to good stuff as we do bad.

The practice

Here’s a short, powerful, neuroscience-derived practice I use with all my clients, as it’s so helpful for correcting that negativity bias, helping you focus on and enjoy pleasant experiences and stop obsessing about unpleasant ones.

Start by finding a comfortable position, either sitting or lying down and closing your eyes. Take some deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth, counting four seconds in and four seconds out. Keep breathing, letting the breath be calming and nourishing for you. Let your abdomen rise and fall with each in-breath and out-breath.
Now think about something good that happened to you recently. This could be something from a whole spectrum of pleasant experiences, from tiny moments of joy, like eating a delicious piece of fruit, seeing pink blossom framed by blue sky, or reading a book you found deeply enjoyable; right up to powerful, profound experiences like asking someone to marry you, winning an award for your work, the birth of your first child, or someone you love deeply recovering from a scary illness.
Visualise that experience in as much detail as possible – really imagine that you are there and it’s happening to you in the present moment. Where are you? What do you see around you? Are you alone or with someone? How does this experience unfold – is it a conversation, phone call or email exchange? Or is it just something you see, hear, smell or taste? Focus on the sensory details of your experience as vividly as possible – the more vivid this is the better.
Now focus on how you are feeling during this experience. What emotions do you notice in your body? Do you feel calm, happy, joyful, excited, proud, satisfied, relieved, inspired, moved, awestruck… Or something else entirely?
Really focus on the visceral experience of the emotions in your body. For example, you might feel an inner warmth, or a lightness in your body, or perhaps a pleasurable upsurge of energy. Whatever you are feeling, just focus on it, enjoy it and let it soak into your body for around 60 seconds. Then take a deep breath and open your eyes.
So, here’s the miraculous bit – you just hard-wired that experience and the positive feelings linked to it into your brain. It only takes 10 seconds to do this, but the longer you allow for this process the better. Plus, you are simply enjoying pleasant experiences fully and completely, so the longer you do that the more enjoyable it will be for you.
Try to get into the habit of doing this whenever something good or enjoyable happens. If you build this practice into your daily life, over time you will start to tilt the scales of negativity and positivity in your brain. Eventually, you will find yourself ruminating and worrying less about bad stuff; and feeling calmer, happier and more content.
Now continue with your day, looking out for positive experiences to hardwire.

I very much hope you enjoy this practice – I have recorded it as a Hardwiring Happiness Talk and Meditation for Insight Timer. You can listen to the recording, plus my collection of meditations, breathing techniques and guided imagery using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

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