Embodied Happiness: The Practical Neuroscience of Positive Emotions - Part II

well as the four steps of taking in the good the four steps that are involved in turning a useful positive mental state into lasting neural structure the first three steps are the standard steps the fourth step is optional much so can you see it up there I'll do it kind of quickly first step H have the positive experience you got to get the song playing usually because you notice it's already playing you're with someone and it feels good with them you're or you're having an experience of accomplishment or you're you just kind of have well-being or you're relaxing you're exhaling and your body's relaxing as you exhale you're interested in something you go outside and it's it's pretty you eat a glazed doughnut don't let my wife hear this but glazed donuts are awesome okay so you're having a positive experience or you create it you think of something you're grateful about or you bring to mind someone who cares about you maybe loves you you deliberately activate a positive experience that's the first step second step you enrich the experience you get a lot of neurons firing so they get a lot of neurons wiring minimally you want to help the experience last five 10 20 seconds straight all right you can add to the enriching you can get more of those neurons firing and wiring with four other factors that are well established in research on learning that help build structure in the brain intensity so first is duration that's the basic one and then on top of that if you want as bonuses help the experience be more intense right that aides learning help the experience be multimodal feel it emotionally feel it in the body enacted if that's appropriate set up a little straighter to strengthen the sense of determination I'll let your face be softer if you want to really take in a sense of compassion maybe put your hand on your heart if you want to feel more loved okay efore enriching and the third step a for absorbing usually overlaps enriching in the actual practice and it means simply that we are sensitizing we are priming in the terminology of psychology we are priming memory systems so they become extra absorbent by intending and sensing that the experience is really sinking it with children we'll talk about feeling that it's going into you like the warmth of a cup of cocoa in your hands hot chocolate you know on a cold day or putting a jewel of the experience in the treasure chest to your heart adults I'll use more abstract language like give yourself over to the experience let it land inside you let yourself be changed a little bit for the better by this experience that's the absorbing step that's the standard process of taking in the good it's a little bit like as a metaphor of fire step one we like the fire get it the good experience going step two we enrich it by adding logs to the farm step three we absorb it by letting this nice experience thank you all right and then if we want to and we're able to do this usefully without getting swept away we help the positive experience heal negative material by linking to it l for linking in other words since neurons are fire together wire together if we're aware of both positive and negative material simultaneously in the mind and the positive is more powerful its more prominent it's more intense it's more in the foreground of awareness it gradually infuses the negative it goes into it it starts associating with it even to the point of gradually replacing it so as the negative material goes back down the memory hole to be reconsolidated in structure it takes some of those positive associations with it so that the next time it's reactivated including as implicit memory where we just have a funny feeling or we don't feel happy or there's a kind of sleepiness or an inhibition or a muslin of us whatever it is or we go back to some old body postural pattern the next time that negative material is activated it'll bring back up with it some of those positive associations all right you want to try it well I know it's about time right Rick okay let's try so I'm gonna go to the next slide if you want to look at it we're gonna do this two ways we're just gonna do first than noticing and then second that creating okay so first off see if you can notice something pleasant in your experience right now you're not creating something positive you're just noticing something already positive now it could be in the background of awareness perhaps an ongoing sense of vitality in your body or some basic background sense of well-being or connection maybe connection to other people perhaps in this room or elsewhere there could be a sense of just interest or curiosity in the mind whatever it is maybe just a sense of appreciating good fortune I'll be quiet in a moment bring this positive experience to the foreground of awareness so that you really have it and see what it's like is a little experiment will do for about half a minute to just dwell in the positive experience sinking into it like a sponge it's sinking into you like a sponge you're staying with it you're enriching it you're helping it be bigger inside yourself giving over to it you're protecting it from other distractions I'll be quiet in a moment and you're helping it sink into yourself okay so let that one kind of move to the background we'll do another cycle here going through the first three steps of taking the good in this case I'm going to invite you to create a positive experience and a particular positive experience and let's see what happens it's an experiment this one is feeling cared about so if you can bring to mind someone and it doesn't have to be a perfect relationship that you know cares about you it could be in your life today or in your past it could be a group of people or an individual could be a pet to be a spiritual being or force so you're trying to now turn the idea the knowledge that this person does care about you into an experience in the first step of having an experience of feeling cared about and then once you get that fire lit you're starting to actually have a feeling in your heart a kind of a sense of emotion maybe a feeling liked or appreciate it or just seemed or even simply included or certainly loved any one of those is the experience of feeling cared about or is under the heading of feeling cared about then second and third steps enriching and absorbing help this experience of feeling cared about become more intense help it last and get a sense of it sinking into you like water into a sponge if you like you can strengthen this experience in terms of multi-modality by putting a hand on your heart or a hand on your cheek as if the most loving being in the universe was giving you compassion and kindness and love feeling cared about okay it's okay to keep feeling cared about all right it's really fine it's one of the as we'll see in a moment it's really key positive experiences so we did this little practice here and as you can see in the slide you're basically letting it sink into you you know if you were to summarize the whole verbiage you know for me today or in my book are varying happiness which is about this topic you could be summarized in four words all right you don't need to buy the book you really don't have it enjoy it have it lights the fire you're activating it enjoy it installs it in your brain 10 20 30 seconds at a time half a dozen times a day gradually filling up your own backpack with inner strengths so how was it for you any questions or comments about that practice and then I'm going to talk about how to apply it including in clinical settings looked like he was working for you for most people at least like you could stay with it sometimes it's like like trying to light a fire with wet wood you know especially when you're trying to create a positive experience you can't get it going or you get it going and it really quickly associated something negative like feeling not cared about or by the right person or in the right way alright that's very normal and part of this practice is that it's a concentration practice a dozen seconds at a time you're trying to become absorbed in the positive experience and protect it you're trying to create sanctuary for it and implicit in this practice is being on one's own side being an ally to himself a friend to himself standing up for yourself that you have the right the opportunity to have a positive experience for ten seconds in a row right at least that much okay so how can we use this method so these are general methods right we have we enrich we absorb and I'll soon get to we can link if we want that's the optional step we can apply them to all kinds of things we can apply this practice to thoughts registering that you are a nerd not a wimp for example okay we can apply this to any kind of perceptual experience sight sound taste touch smell and body sensations we can apply these methods to really registering the shift in the body let's say in using you know Ananse methods or related kinds of sensory motor learning we can also use these methods have enriched absorb it's for emotions to really you know let certain kinds of useful positive emotions sink in gratitude joy contentment relief right peace helping them sink in also desires desires broadly defined wants values goals wishes purposes even drives that's very useful to let sink in you know a lot about life is you know the secret to life in a lot of ways is to help yourself learn to want the stuff that's good for you that you don't want right because the stuff that's we want that's the easy it's what we don't want but we know is good for us and I have a my own personal list so how do we help that sink in well we can do that too we can help the experience of a wholesome desire sink in or help it sink in when there's a kind of reward when we've acted from that wholesome desire so the brain is increasingly inclined toward that particular high road because it anticipates reward down that road and then last behaviors of various kinds actions inclinations we can also help that sink yet alright these are the targets of taking in the good okay so far then okay yeah you want to do the microphone willing thanks for doing that it's coming around the bend there you go I'm reflecting a lot about just I've been here in the training for the last eight days the APM and brilliant and that and all of her assistants and I've noticed how when I interact with people who don't know me I'm able to just be myself and I don't have the stress of home or yeah and so it feels really good you know you're getting stories or connections with people that feel really good last night I had some not-so-great conversations with my hubby yeah and could just really feel how that like yeah well thank you for sharing that did you want to say I Marla I'm trying to be motion about I think of that honestly as a gift to all of us but if your willingness to go there and it implies a respect for others in a sense of the safety no thank you I feel like the importance of it you know totally be in that positive space and how do you develop good communication skills with your partner right to keep that positivity going because you know when you're first in love and you're sharing in this way and it's great and bliss and then ulsan life happens and so that would be my question to you how do you keep that first thing and bringing it out that's great thank you well for me first step is just to feel the weight of the other person you know whether it's your partner your husband you right now just kind of yeah I mean how often do we give people the gift of letting them land for at least a few seconds in our heart that's just really important and more broadly I'll say a few things that I think are relevant here one is to really try to help yourself register in a relationship when your partner's not a jerk in other words to really help a land when your partner is in mild ways attentive loads the dishwasher properly you know is doesn't interrupt doesn't act like a fool whatever is kind is warm is touching is affectionate you know pays the bills comes home on time for dinner what have you you know try to let it land because again with the negativity bias especially as relationships go by we're very distracted it's so easy to miss many of the little good things that our partners doing every day that we become habituated to in terms of the brain and we kind of don't notice them anymore they become like the background refrigerator hum we don't hear it right and think how much of it it feels good to us is a kind of gift to us when others notice our everyday contributions does even just a few of them notice how that feels imagine what a gift that is to the other person this is particularly important when we're trying to renege reknit let's say a fabric of a relationship that's gotten tattered whether it's an intimate relationship or siblings or any other kind of relationship and then it's really important to let it land when the other person is actually trying their best to meet your need at least in some way and not immediately as I've seen a lot as a couple's counselor immediately snatched you know defeat from the jaws of victory in a sense by doubling down on our complaint or going after the next thing rather than letting this one really land so I think these methods I actually have a slide about this that I didn't put up here because it's is not a heavy therapist group but about how to use this with couples or in our own relationship so for me it's really letting the good stuff land right that's that's a really important thing second by repeatedly taking in resource experiences of different kinds and I'm actually going to get to some special kinds that have special impact right by repeatedly taking in these good experiences we become more stable when our partner is being with us in a way that we don't particularly like all right we get less affected by it and we're more able to stay centered and stay in the interaction playing within bounds and still speaking truth to power still saying what needs to be said or recognizing that you know it's a phone call I'm far away you know they're dealing with all kinds of stuff ten thousand causes upstream are causing their bad moment and I'm probably more of a bit player in their bad day than really the cause of it and I don't really need to get into this right now to be restrained so we have to decide which is which we don't know but practicing off the field as it were and building muscles and in the brain in fact metaphorically speaking and building up experiences of feeling loved feeling worthy feeling valuable feeling like we have rights of our own right feeling that it's possible to fences make for good neighbors I think as I said that you know I can be here with you and not necessarily feel implicated in your mind stream without rejecting your mind stream I can be in that balanced place where I'm very open to you while staying centered in my own seat you know so we've taken lots and lots of experiences like that off stage as it were or in the locker room or whatever and then when who you know are you kidding me you know the oatmeal starts to fly we've built up capacities to be more resilient we have more shock absorbers inside ourselves you know and and so forth so I would say that and appreciate to you that a lot of what we can help land are soft and subtle lessons where like the capacity is to register and recognize the suffering and other people I'm getting teary that is also a resource experience to take in to be able to stay with that and see that and realize you know a lot of what's coming out my way which I don't approve of every bit of it for sure and we're gonna talk about this later I have a little list I'm developing right now I'm not waving my rice but in them there you are but in the oh man in a moment I can register that you know you're suffering and that's a lot of what's happening here and that capacity to see suffering another right without being swallowed up by it that too is a really powerful and beautiful thing we can take in good job okay so let me segue off of that I probably need that pretty soon myself but I want to talk about different kinds of as I go no I'm good I'm good to go I'll tough it out you know different kinds of experiences have different kinds of value right so we want to take in good experiences already went through different categories right thoughts perceptual experiences emotions desires and behaviors we take that in and this is a way to think about what will help our clients or students our kids our mates our spouts you know what have you but also if you look up there if you think about it and I developed this model in my book a lot and also at my website I have tons of stuff freely offered we have basically three needs safety satisfaction connection we therefore have three overarching motivational regulatory systems in our brain to avoid harms to approach rewards and to attach to others these systems are very loosely associated with the reptilian mammalian and primate human stages of evolution you know avoid harm's approach rewards attached to others or as I like to think about it pet the lizard feed the mouse hug the monkey all right and in that show alright so if you look up there you can see that certain kinds of issues have other things like right here if I could just play with this as an example if we're having an issue in the attaching to others system there's been some kind of breach of rapport or you know empathic attunement doesn't seem like it's really happening here now if I said to you think of something you're grateful for that's the approaching reward system that probably wouldn't help the ache in the heart also if I said maybe think about some ways that you're strong or safe that wouldn't really address the ache in the heart if we have scurvy in effect we need vitamin C iron will not help but if we have anemia we need iron in other words we we typically benefit from key experiences that are antidotes that are targeted at our particular issues so we could ask ourselves these four questions which I just think are really valuable and I use them first question is what's the problem nor what's the issue what's the nature of the condition what's going on here what's happening second what if it were more present in my mind would really help what if it were more present in the mind of fill-in-the-blank my client my child my student myself would really help that's the second question what's the key antidote experience what's the resource experience that would make a difference at this point or at this stage in the growth process third question how could I have an experience of that how can I experience it because we build neural traits by activating the mental states we record the songs by playing them how could I have an experience of that inner resource that would make a difference that's the answer to the second question and then the fourth question is once I'm having the experience how can I help us think yet rather than just wasting it on my brain all right see those four questions I think they're really helpful and you might think to yourself these days what's your vitamin C you know for me a little quick story here growing up like I said you know king of the dorks I landed in college and it felt like I had inside me a hole in my heart I had not received the normal supplies of feeling included valued and wanted okay nothing horrible happened to me my issues were trivial compared to that of so many other people all right that said causes have effects I didn't really get what I norm what a normal what we normally meet and so I had a hole in my heart I tried to solve that problem by accomplishing things in terms of the approaching reward system they didn't help me feel better deep down inside because that wasn't the medicine I needed right I tried to help myself feel better by being determined by being strong right by be you know being stubborn sticking up for myself that's in the avoiding harm system that didn't that wasn't the medicine I needed right what I needed and I finally discovered this early in college was I needed to internalize again and again and again experiences in the attaching to other system a feeling included wanted appreciate it like the girls smiled at me in the elevator oh my god you know guy throws the football to manage Merle ball good coach and soon I'm gonna throw to you more oh my god you know people say yeah let's go pizza great hey Rick you wanna stay with us oh yeah please anyway I was like a little sponge feed me Seymour you know take it in because I wanted to feel that now some of that I did foolishly but a lot I knew inside myself this was my medicine this is what I needed you know this was my vitamin C right so what's your vitamin C what's your key resource experience what would make a difference if it were more in your heart feeling stronger feeling less anxious what would help you feel less anxious feeling less frustrated or disappointed less sense of loss well would give you more of a sense of rewards coming in to you or for many of us you know what would help you feel more cared about more included more seen more appreciated more valued more loved and then when you're clear what's your vitamin C in this you know perfectly imperfect world you can look for those opportunities to have that expose experiences throughout your day two three four or five times a day half a minute a minute at a time or less but brick-by-brick drop by drop you can fill the hole in your heart so any comments or questions about this point so far do I hear a little baby in the room that's great okay yeah no okay I'm gonna keep going right and I'll stick around if you like afterward okay so yeah I'm gonna go for it all right on demand if you lie let's try this idea of a vitamin C experience your key resource experience now you don't need to know the right one and feeling cared about is the universal medicine because feeling cared about meets our needs in the attaching system it's also rewarding and it helps us feel safe because as we evolved in the Serengeti exile was a death sentence we want to feel that we're with other people and there are many aspects of feeling cared about so if you don't know which one to do you can always do feeling cared about alright if you can write down give yourself a little thought give a little thought to what would be a key resource experience for me what would make a difference for me if it were more present in my mind and it's okay to we just think about something kind of a subtle spiritual thing you're working with these days or maybe a little if you felt more confident or frankly less preoccupied with what other people think of you you know kind of what's it feel like to let that go or maybe just gratitude or recognizing where you actually are accomplished so I'll be quiet as you have this experience as best you can try to create it in yourself thinking of things that would Kindle it in your mind try to get the fire of this key resource experience going and then in the second and third steps as you start having it help it sink in help it last if your mind wanders come back to it keep trying to help it be embodied emotional and since it going down into you down into places perhaps that have really longed for this experience be a friend to yourself let yourself receive this experience okay come on back that was a stretch I didn't know how that would go but seemed like it went okay for at least some people once we get the experience going once we get the song going the recording apparatus in the brain doesn't know who got the song playing see once we get this activated we can start installing it in our brain even though we self activated it and frankly being able to self activate a useful mental state is foundational to coping resilience and every day while being in even spiritual practice okay so any comments or questions about this idea so far all right I think this is okay that you're okay I'm just can I read the vibes here you know it different groups like New York I've been there quite often they're like hands up yeah please sorry yeah yeah can you comment on the usefulness or otherwise of euphoric fantasies sure okay great so what might be the uses and miss miss uses of euphoric fantasies most positive experiences are good for us and it's interesting again I I did a deep dive into evolution you know to do this book mother nature wants us to feel good because it's good for us and unpleasant experiences feel bad because they're bad for us from a survival standpoint you know so most positive experiences tend to be they're good for us the problem is and I might as well do this part right now even though I'm just gonna do it at the very end we have a brain that evolved to want what it likes and to the extent that the 2,500 year old Buddhist psychological analysis of the causes of our suffering is accurate that driven 'us pressure resisting grabbing clinging clutching to the extent that those under the general broad umbrella term of craving lead to a lot if not most of our suffering and harm to the extent that that's true the trick naturally the question naturally is how do we do this thing and I'm talking about where we help positive experiences actually come into us and we pop open the bottleneck in the brain so they can sink down inside how do we do that without falling without tipping over into the dark side of the force as it were into clinging or craving or just getting you know ignoring that negative you know it's kind of getting lost in some low two-seater realm of the positive how do we actually do that it's a very real issue especially for someone like me that teaches Buddhism all I have to kind of like think about this right and the trick is to enjoy it without getting attached to it the trick in your own experience is to feel very intimate with your own body to come down into your body to really experience it to let it yeah all right while simultaneously letting go so it's like you're your mind dual eyes it myself in the razor thin slice of time that is now as time streams through us or we stream through time it's time streams through us I do it like this like the future is out there the past is like here you know through the net as it streams through experientially I try to have a sticky net letting the good stuff stick and otherwise letting it go while momentarily receiving the next useful experience and that's kind of the art of it now it's okay to want certain things that are wholesome but if we get too lost in our euphoric fantasies and people can go down some troubling roads there you know in various ways my wife and I are starting to watch the TV show Breaking Bad you know we're about five episodes in don't tell us anything spoiler alert but you know you can get really lost in that other kinds of fantasies as well but one very powerful use of fantasy very specific is to imagine good caregiving that you never will have had you're not deluding yourself about what really happened out of kindness to yourself and a very hard-headed clear-eyed recognition of the vulnerability of the brain especially in a child to negative experiences and out of motivated benevolence toward yourself the one being among all beings you have the most power over and therefore the highest duty to out of that you might if it works for you and I've known people from this has been very very helpful me included in some ways he called to mind a very rich experience of a kind of nurturing that you never really got and you never will have had right and yet you call upon your own nurturing qualities or a sense of other people in adulthood a good good with you and to just feel that sinking into those young places inside that were mistreated or neglected or above so that's one way to have fantasy be really quite powerful for people and it's if it's okay in terms of our time frames here it's a good transition to the next point I want to make about how to do the L step the linking of positive and negative okay go there and I should add I have a lot of material about this on my website very freely offered Rick Hansen Sol net and you can go to the slide sets the PowerPoint slide sets and I'll also send these to if you can give me your name and email address you can go to the PowerPoint slides that's where I'll do a whole day long workshop on this for therapists for example with a lot of detail including a lot of stuff about kids so I'm gonna do a few more points and then we're gonna do the link thing so it's good to take in the good trust me it's good to take in the good I think you've seen what it's like taking the good there's a nice quote here from Lao Tzu how does he put it keep a green bow in your heart and a singing bird will come it's kind of nice now how do we use this with others how might we use this with our students with our children patients clients whatever if you look up there you'll see that we can offer taking in the good to others just like we do anything with other people 1 we can do it implicitly we can just take them through it without making a big deal about it like someone for example is shifting their body in a useful way or registering a useful attitude or you know getting a positive feeling we just say it's things like yeah isn't that nice this sense of warmth between us or yeah that sense of stability in your body now yeah stability we're just keeping there we're just keeping that fire going we're just keeping those neurons firing so they wire trunk we're trying to get past the critical mass phase that threshold roughly 10 20 seconds where it actually starts converting and encoding into neural structure below that threshold especially with a brain that's not yet sensitized to the good you know it's nice but it doesn't make much difference if any at all ok so that's the first way the second is we teach people the method and we let them do it on their own if they will this is very good for teenagers who are very perfectly about autonomy somebody's other people or maybe it's just appropriate we name it we say by the way brains like velcro for bad Teflon for good or however we talk about it if you want to help your brain learn the good stuff there's come standard methods that work really well they're supported by research you have to have a positive experience and then help it last you know 10 20 30 seconds in a row and even since it's sinking in see what happens if you try that that's the second way we name it explicitly and we leave it to them third we explicitly take people through it we say ok you're having that good experience that stability in your body that sense of gratitude the feeling of being loved let's really go with this let's stay with it you know maybe I'll just kind of talk you through it or I'll be quiet while you do this yourself because you know how to do it and I won't stare at you while you're doing this right that's the third way and the fourth we teach it explicitly and then we encourage people to do it out in the real world outside our office and sometimes even tell us about what happened or even give them a little checklist about it ok four ways to do this with other people and then I want to talk to children good so all kids in my experience benefit from taking in the good why not we want to help them learn good emotional learning we want to help them get more good stuff in their backpack as they go down the road in life children at either end of the temperamental spectrum you know serious Turtles or serious Jackrabbits really benefit because turtles tend to be anxiously preoccupied and they're afraid that if they feel good they'll lower their guard and something bad will happen right same as anxious adults and then Jackrabbits maybe you're kind of positive we but the next thing the next good thing is happening one after the other so quickly that there's no opportunity for it to sink down from short-term memory buffers in the long term storage plus Jackrabbits going to turtle pen schools get you know banged on many times a day you know in terms of negative experiences so they need it especially as well kids register positive experiences faster than grown-ups do so we don't need to take the time with them by the way in this setting I'm kind of unpacking these methods right but in real life have it enjoy it you know we just kind of flow along we're feeling good there's a nice moment with our partner we got some emails done we put the kids to bed finally let it sink in and we give ourselves that good experience ten twenty thirty seconds in a row just in the flow of life in a kind of intuitive way on the other hand when we learn anything new it helps to kind of unpack it and highlight different parts to it okay so with kids it happens pretty quickly and then the last thing I'll say a little practice is to go after vitamin C experiences with kids both in general and also just before bed you know kids roughly 3 to 13 3 to 10 3 to 12 who will put up a psychobabble you know to prolong their bedtime right so you kind of talk with them about a good thing that happened in the day kind of have that positive experience get it going like that fire and then once it's going yeah isn't it nice kind of sinking in that's a real keeper isn't it sweetie you know put that one in the treasure chest of your heart I've seen that that little practice just before bed has surprising impact part of it of course is because mom or dad is actually giving you special attention you know that matters it's nonspecific okay but in addition to that you're getting the benefit of really taking in the key experience and I've just seen that have a really really big impact I should use it as a way to also say that for me there are three kinds of benefits in taking the good one is the specific flowers we grow in the garden of the brain the garden of the mind brain system the particular resource whether it's a child or an adult that is taken in second what's implicit in the act of taking a new good you got to get on your own side to take in the good you got to treat yourself like you matter which is really important if you haven't felt like you've mattered enough to other people you're also being active rather than passive you know a cue ball instead of an eight ball and your training attention because to do this it's not always so easy and the third type of general benefit in taking the good is to sensitize the brain to the positive to actually make it sponger to the positive over time so you get faster and faster and it's easier and easier to turn every day positive experiences into lasting inner strengths inside your brain mm-hmm now I want to talk about the L step and then we're gonna wrap it up and I'll stick around and happily answer questions or just kind of hang out alright so the link step yeah microphone thanks for putting up with it it's coming thank you our runners it's great thank you a runner I haven't heard anything about like journaling or writing it down a lot of us like to do that is that useful for you no holding on to this yeah is journaling useful I think journaling is very useful in terms of activating a positive experience and then helping it be rich the question of course is when we're journaling or otherwise really using language are we mean up here with the thought track and not that richly engaged with the emotion track or the sensation track that's the only question so if we're doing a journaling process and along the way bringing mindful awareness to the sense in the body of what we're writing about you know and we're helping ideas become experiences you know menus become meals as it were right then I think it's a very powerful method and there are lots of other ways to cultivate positive experiences sharing about something good with other people that's a great one reminiscing about the past that's a great one creating the basis for a good experience right working in the garden deliberately to start having that experience and then not wasting it on your brain helping it sink in I really want to talk about linking okay and to do this I think just in the interest of time and respecting people's time here I'm just gonna name it and tell you how to do it be a little careful because this involves negative material as well as possible everything before was positive even if some of the intention behind it was to address needs but in the fourth step you're actually also aware of negative material and it's important to not get sucked into it or hijacked by it all right so if you take a look at this slide and it builds on this idea of antidote experiences certain forms of old pain or current pain are really addressed by certain kinds of positive experiences for example if you have felt weak or helpless maybe things happen when you were young or you in a situation where you feel helpless antidote experiences are things like a sense of being strong feeling like you can cope or that at least in some other parts of your life you were able to really make things happen see that idea so you might ask yourself like I did okay I had that hole in my heart where I didn't feel loved enough included enough wanted enough right experience as a feeling wanted feeling included feeling loved we're really really good for me so the way you do this for step is you for sure have that positive experience you want it to be prominent and in the beginning it's a little funny to divide awareness to include both positive and negative and awareness but with practice you can really do this so you're mostly centered in the positive experience while having a sense of it connecting with or going into those hurt or wounded or neglected places inside all right and if you often if you want to do this you could get a sense that the current positive experience is connecting with younger parts of yourself and they are actually receiving it and it's going into them be careful if you do this with traumatic material as my friend Linda Graham has pointed out to me many standard therapies involve the linking step to be clear I did not invent any part of taking in the good it's natural to take in the good and it's natural to link positive and negative what I have tried to do is explicate it carefully and grounded in some kind of framework of evolutionary neural psychology but we know it had taken them good it's not rocket science have it enjoy it you know we're especially good at have it where the real money is is installation enjoying it so you know if you're on your own I would say probably not a good idea to try to send the positive experience into the center of the trauma all right on the other hand with a scale therapist you might find a lot of value in doing that or using the positive to connect with issues kind of around the core of the trauma like the sense of being let down by failed protectors who really should have stuck up for you more and in more general terms whether you're feeling anxious these days or or kind of mopey or not loved enough or not worthy enough there are many opportunities to deliberately activate positive experiences and then let them link to and connect to negative material building both of them in your mind at the same time okay that's basically the linking step and you're very welcome to do that on your own I think it's for me it's definitely top five for me psychological methods of anything I've ever learned including in spiritual traditions and you can use this linking method for spiritual practice as well okay so I kind of want to move to a wrap here respecting time so I want to just give you a little quote at the very end here which I'll pop up there you can yeah read it as well and some of that other stuff if you want just give me your name and email address any of the slides you know what I think is really interesting to go back to the two Wolf's in the heart which wolf are we gonna feed right day after day and lately this thought has come to me which is what's the most important minute in your life what's the most important minute in your life it's this one you got it it's the next one we can't do anything about the past more than a minute or two or three out our influence really starts to fade but the next minute is the most important minute of our life what will we do with this minute in the next minute of our life which wolf will we feed knowing that the brain has a negativity bias and alerts very very quickly and all too well and it really holds on to that learning from negative experiences can we feed the wolf of love can we help the good things grow inside ourselves and to me it's very powerful to appreciate that this method is practical and it's grounded in science and we earn it we have to do the work right we can't just lolly law our way through life we have to do what we can to have these positive experiences and then especially help them sink in that's where we earn the fruits but if we do that day after day it's the law of little things things will really change and as you see up there in the quote you know this is from the Buddha he says think not lightly of good saying it will not come to me drop by drop is the water pot filled likewise the wise one fills oneself with good so I really wish you well in filling yourself with good and as much research shows as our own cup or pot runneth over we start having a lot more to offer other people as well helping the world become a better place so thank you I even have a pretty picture see kids thank you thank you so so very much wonderful wonderful I love it I see the room going through the experiences anyway so again as I said we don't have the actual book he said don't you don't have to buy it I don't believe him on that hard and but but you can put your name in the back so you can get the slides and you can get on Rick's everything and that's about it and Rick you're gonna hang out for a little bit yeah okay so Rick he's just gonna be here if you guys want to talk to him and I was trying to make up a way that you can sign their books once they buy it but I don't know how to do that so we'll forget that part thank you very very much and I you know I do want to thank Mike where's Mike Mike Davis is he around he's probably gonna run in from the office and Carol here's Mike um I mean these people just put a lot of work uh Mike Mike and Jason and Carol Carol I mean these are all people in the training they're you know they're part of my staff and and all of you guys that are in the training that just vacuum then put the chairs and just turn this room into a presentation hall very quickly come on come on because I really I want to thank you and you come here our flower arranger yes come on come on come on flower arranger and the students that a help won't stand up there gets recognized you yeah yeah thank you thank you thank you you're adorable okay all right

Channel: Rick Hanson

Views: 9,012

Rating: 4.8736844 out of 5

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Id: _sZmqYbhvj0

Length: 51min 35sec (3095 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 03 2014