Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist, founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, and the author of Buddha's Brain and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time (New Harbinger, 2011), from which this excerpt is adapted. His work has been featured on the BBC and NPR. He lives in San Rafael, California.
1. Take in the Good
Scientists believe that your brain has a built-in negativity bias. This is because, as our ancestors dodged sticks and chased carrots over millions of years of evolution, the sticks had the greater urgency and impact on survival.
This negativity bias shows up in lots of ways. For example, studies have found that:
- The brain generally reacts more to a negative stimulus than to an equally intense positive one.
- Animals — including us — typically learn faster from pain than from pleasure; once burned, twice shy.
- Painful experiences are usually more memorable than pleasurable ones.
- Most people will work harder to avoid losing something they have than they'll work to gain the same thing.
- Lasting, good relationships typically need at least a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.
In your own mind, what do you usually think about at the end of the day? The 50 things that went right, or the one that went wrong? Like the driver who cut you off in traffic, or the one thing on your To Do list that didn't get done. . .
In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades implicit memory — your underlying feelings, expectations, beliefs, inclinations, and mood — in an increasingly negative direction.
Which is not fair, since most of the facts in your life are probably positive, or at least neutral. Besides the injustice of it, the growing pile of negative experiences in our implicit memory banks naturally makes us more anxious, irritable, and blue — and it makes it more difficult to be patient and giving toward others.
But you don't have to accept this bias! By tilting toward the good — "good" in the practical sense of that which brings more happiness and benefit to yourself and others — you merely level the playing field. Then, instead of positive experiences washing through you like water through a sieve, they'll collect in implicit memory deep down in your brain.
You'll still see the tough parts of life. In fact, you'll become more able to change them or bear them if you take in the good, since that will help put challenges in perspective, lift your energy and spirits, highlight useful resources, and fill up your own cup so you have more to offer to others.
And, by the way, in addition to being good for adults, taking in the good is great for children, too, helping them to become more resilient, confident, and happy.
2. Befriend Your Body
Imagine that your body is separate from you, and consider these questions:
- How has your body taken care of you over the years, like keeping you alive, giving you pleasure, and taking you from place to place?
- How well do you take care of your body, like soothing, feeding, and exercising it, or taking it to the doctor? And in what ways might you run it down, feed it junk food, or intoxicate it?
- In what ways are you critical of your body? For example, are you disappointed in it or embarrassed by it? Do you feel let down by it, or wish it were different?
- If your body could talk to you, what might it say?
- If your body were a good friend, how would you treat it? Would that be different from how you treat it now?
Personally, I can't help squirming a little when I face these questions myself. It's common to push the body hard, ignore its needs until they get intense, and tune out from its signals. And then drop the body into bed at the end of another long day like — as my father would say, having grown up on a ranch — "a horse rid hard and put up wet."
People can also get mad at the body, and even be mean to it. Like it's the body's fault if it weighs too much or is getting old.
But if you do any of these things, you'll end up paying a big price, since you are not separated from your body after all. Its needs and pleasures and pains are your own. Its fate will be your own someday.
On the other hand, if you treat your body well, like a good friend, you'll feel better, have more energy, be more resilient, and probably live longer.
3. Notice You're All Right Right Now
To keep our ancestors alive, the brain evolved strong tendencies toward fear, including an ongoing internal trickle of unease. This little whisper of worry keeps you scanning your inner and outer worlds for signs of trouble.
This background of unsettledness and watchfulness is so automatic that you can forget it's there. So see if you can tune in to a tension, guarding, or bracing in your body. Or a vigilance about your environment or other people. Or a block against completely relaxing, letting down, letting go. Try to walk through an office or store that you know is safe without a molecule of wariness: it's really hard. Or try to sit at home for five minutes straight while feeling undefended, soft in your body, utterly comfortable in the moment as it is, at peace: this is impossible for most people.
The brain's default setting of apprehensiveness is a great way to keep a monkey looking over its shoulder for something about to pounce. But it's a crummy way to live. It wears down well-being, feeds anxiety and depression, and makes people play small in life.
And it's based on a lie.
The muttering of fear tells you implicitly: Watch out, bad things are happening that you're not seeing, don't ever think you're completely okay, never let down your guard.
But take a close look at this moment, right now. Probably, you are basically all right: No one is attacking you, you are not drowning, no bombs are falling, there is no crisis. It's not perfect, but you're okay.
By right now, I mean this instant. When we go into the future, we worry and plan. When we go into the past, we resent and regret. Threads of fear are woven into the mental tapestries of past and future. Look again at the thin slice of time that is the present. In this moment, are you basically okay? Is breathing okay? Is your heart beating? Is your mind working? The answers are almost certainly yes.
In daily life, it's possible to access this fundamental sense of alrightness even while getting things done. You're not ignoring real threats or issues, or pretending that everything is perfect. It's not. But in the middle of everything, you can usually see that you're actually all right right now.
4. Keep Going
I once attended a workshop led by Joseph Goldstein, a Buddhist teacher. I had realized something, and shared my insight with him. He nodded and said, "Yes, right." I felt seen for having taken a step forward. Then he smiled and added something I've never forgotten: "Keep going."
Of all the factors that lead to happiness and success — class origins, intelligence, personality, character, looks, luck, etc. — the one that typically makes the most difference over time is persistence. Knocked down 10 times, you get up 10 times.
If you keep going, you may not reach your goal — but if you stop, you'll never reach it.
We respect people who persist. There's a magic in determination that draws others toward it and elicits their support.
And you just don't know when your day will finally come. There are so many stories of "overnight success" that actually arrived after many years of effort and failure. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was an obscure colonel in 1939 — nearly 49 years old — when Germany invaded Poland to begin World War II. Four years later, he was in charge of all Allied forces in Europe. Nine years after that, he was elected president.
5. Love
We all want to receive love. But maybe it comes in a form you don't want — perhaps someone offers romantic love but that's not what you're looking for — or maybe it doesn't come at all. Then there is heartache and helplessness; you can't make others love you if they won't.
Definitely, do what you can to get the love you need. But the advice here is about expressing love, distinct from receiving it. When you focus on the love you give rather than the love you get, then you're at cause rather than at effect; you're the cue ball, not the eight ball — which supports your sense of efficacy and confidence, as well as your mood. And it's enlightened self-interest: The best way to get love is to give it. Even if it's still not returned, your love will help calm any troubled waters.
Sometimes people worry that being loving will make them vulnerable or drained. But actually, you can see in your own experience that love itself doesn't do this: It protects and nurtures you when you give it. While you're loving, don't you feel uplifted and stronger?
That's because love is deep in human nature, literally woven into our DNA. As our ancestors evolved, the seeds of love in primates and hominids — such as parent-child attachment, pair bonding, communication skills, and teamwork — aided survival, so the genes that promoted these characteristics were passed on. A positive cycle developed: As "it takes a village to raise a child" evolved and grew stronger, the period of vulnerable childhood could become longer, so the brain evolved and grew larger to make use of that longer childhood — and thereby developed greater capacity for love. The brain has roughly tripled in size since hominids began making stone tools about 2.5 million years ago, and much of this new neural real estate is devoted to love and related capabilities.
We need to give love to be healthy and whole. If you bottle up your love, you bottle up your whole being. Love is like water: It needs to flow; otherwise, it backs up on itself and gets stagnant and smelly. Look at the faces of some people who are very loving: They're beautiful, aren't they? Being loving heals old wounds inside and opens untapped reservoirs of energy and talent. It's also a profound path of awakening, playing a central role in all of the world's major religious traditions.
The world needs your love. Those you live with and work with need it, plus your family and friends, people near and far, and this whole battered planet. Never underestimate the ripples spreading out from just one loving word, thought, or deed!
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