Savoring

Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. Hanson researches, writes, and teaches topics of positive brain change — how we can rewire our brains to learn from positive experiences. His study on the topic was recently published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. His theory of “Taking In the Good” can be applied to savoring the moment.

Our brains are like machines that build themselves. Every time we make a thought, even have a feeling or sensation, we lay bricks to build the neural pathways in our brain. These roads become easier for future thoughts and feelings to travel down.

According to Hanson, our brains are molded by ancient survival mechanisms to be “like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.”

Our brains evolved a strong negativity bias. It looks for bad news and reacts intensely to it, quickly storing it in neural structure. We can still be happy, but it requires vigilance. We face a natural susceptibility to fear, stress, anxiety, disappointment, and hurt.

Hanson argues that we can fight this negativity bias with positive brain change. “By tilting toward the good – “good” in the practical sense of that which brings more happiness to oneself and more helpfulness to others – you merely level the playing field.”

“In essence,” Hanson states, “You can manage your mind in three primary ways: let be, let go, let in.”

Let it BE, Let it GO, Let it IN

The practice of letting it be, letting it go, and letting it in can turn everyday experiences into memorable positive experiences and help us savor joy in small moments.

We know that the brain takes its shape from whatever the mind rests upon: if one keeps resting their mind on doubts, hurt, and stresses, then their brain is shaped into greater vulnerability of these things. Whatever we give our attention, we give the shape of our brain.

Considering this, the thesis of Hardwiring Happiness is as follows:

“The best way to develop greater happiness and other inner strengths is to have experiences of them, and then help these good mental states become good neural traits. This is taking in the good: activation of a positive experience and installing it in your brain.”

“People draw on psychological resources such as gratitude to cope with adversity and maintain well-being.” — Rick Hanson

Hanson provides a method for keeping the spotlight on the experience, and an acronym to aid in remembering it:

H.E.A.L.

1. Have a positive experience.
2. Enrich it.
3. Absorb it.
4. Link positive and negative material.

Step one activates a positive experience, and steps 2 to 4 install it in your brain.

Check out these videos of Dr. Hanson explaining the H.E.A.L. practice:

Equipping and using this method is a skill. It can be practiced and learned, always improving. A great part about it is that it can be trained all the time: either in the flow of daily activity or during special times like meals, before bed, etc.

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• Have a Positive Experience – Take Notice – Pleasant sensations are all around you, all the time. Whether deep and complex, like appreciating a loved one, or simple and immediate, like having less pain in your shoulder today, all of these are opportunities to sink into positive experience. They can dwell in the background or the foreground of your experiences. Go looking for them! It is a worthwhile journey.
  Create Positive Experience – Search for good facts. You can find them all over: in your current setting, recent events, ongoing conditions, your personal qualities, the past, the future, in sharing, in the bad, in others, in your imagination. The list goes on.
• Enrich a Positive Experience – One of the surest ways to enrich a positive experience is to increase its duration. Deliberately apply your attention to the experience and then sustain it. Give yourself gentle instructions: “Stay with this. I’m on my own side. Let’s make this last a bit longer.” Name the experience. Start from particularly stimulating and obvious positive experiences, and eventually move to more subtle noticings.
• Absorb an Experience – Visualize the experience sinking into you. Sense it coming into your body. Let yourself be changed by it. Even if it seems unrelated or exaggerated, routinely give yourself this absorption. You can deepen its neural traces by embodying it to its very fullest.
• Link Positive and Negative Material – Hold both positive and negative in awareness while keeping the positive more prominent and not getting hijacked by the negative. Gradually, the positive will more and more easily soothe and even replace the negative. Unpleasant experiences are part of life, and sometimes have value. Don’t let the natural negativity bias turn a negative experience into negative material. For more related to this, see Giving and Receiving.