How to cultivate a positivity bias

Published in Popular Science Monthly, 1896

As I explore the connections between mind, body, heart, and soul more closely, I am fascinated by the scientific explanations for many mindfulness practices. Understanding how biology, evolution, and social factors influence my emotions and actions, I am developing and strengthening helpful habits while weakening destructive ones. This past week, I have been concentrating on the "negativity bias" of the brain. Basically, as humans we remember negative events and emotions more strongly and more quickly than we do positive events and emotions. In our evolutionary past, a fast and strong reaction to a potential threat proved more useful to survival than did responsiveness to opportunities. For our ancestors, if you missed an opportunity, there would probably be another chance, but if you miss a risk, you might be dead. Living in a different, less physically threatening world today, we can counteract this tendency by purposefully noticing and savoring positive events and emotions. To strengthen positive memories and shift your mood towards joy and contentment, place extra attention on the good things that happen to you throughout the day, no matter how small. For instance, the other day I appreciated the feeling of the sun on my arms as I was biking, and the beautiful leaf dancing down the street in the wind. Giving special attention to this small detail shifted my mood towards being more biased to notice positive, rather than negative, things around me during the day. 

Another technique is to savor particularly good experiences. You can do this by taking time to relive the  positive experience, going over the details of the event. Immersed in the experience of that moment, try to feel the joy, pleasure, excitement, love, connection, empathy etc. You can further strengthen a pleasurable memory by purposefully creating neural pathways connecting it to other positive events that have happened. Then, the next time you think about the older positive event, you will also recall the new positive event. For example, I just had a really fun photo shoot last week, and I spent a few minutes three times during the day to relive the experience. I also recalled the other fun photo shoots I've had  in my life, going back to a fifth grade photo shoot I did with friends. I hadn't thought about most of these memories in a long time, but found myself smiling and feeling so happy as I was doing this exercise. It was very powerful in the moment, and seems to be increasing my "positivity bias" as well. For more information, I strongly recommend Buddha's Brain, the book where I got these exercises, and which discusses the science and the mindfulness practices that can help rewire your brain.

Control Vs. Love

Shadow and Light by ~theLastWanderer

They say, "If you love something, set it free. If it's meant to be it will come back to you." At least, that's my version of this common expression.  I've always heard this adage in the context of loving other people, but it can be applied just as well to self-love. Unconditional love does not involve control, whether that be controlling another person or controlling oneself. Transforming my relationship to myself and developing unconditional self-love means freeing myself rather than controlling myself. It means facing my shadows directly and healing my darkness through acknowledging it, rather than hiding and burying the darkness as deeply as possible. Transformation is both an acknowledgement of What Is, and a vision of What Can Be. Transformation is bridging the present and the possibility, bridging the ephemeral and the eternal. Transformation happens through finding new effective ways to set myself free - free from expectations and assumptions, free from perfection and control.

Rewiring my brain, a project I started last November, involves developing and refining tools to connect my heart, mind, body, and soul. Over the past five months I've been developing habits, skills, resources, and neural pathways through this rewiring program I developed for myself. The first 90 days were the intensive training period to develop habits of self-care and every day presence in my life. Now in Phase 2, I am strengthening the habits and neural pathways of love, awareness, connection, and freedom. This is building my resilience, allowing me to delve deeper into the shadows of my life. These shadows, these fears and hangups and past failures, deter me from taking audacious risks toward my true callings. I am working to shed these layers, to embrace failures as learning opportunities, to embrace fear as excitement, to embrace risk as potential. This means letting go of control by giving myself the freedom to fail. To choose love over control is a clear choice, and yet one I find so hard to make. The daily practices of listening and reflecting, of gratitude and hope, of acceptance and communication are the ingredients I need to make this decision a reality in my own life. What do you need in order to feel safe making the choices you know are best for you? What does our society as whole need to stop destroying ourselves and our planet, to make the choices we know are best for us?