Exit
ences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating
the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral
reasoning, and reflective compassion... From this personal
perspective, it is much easier to
understand why people are drawn
to mind wandering and willing to
invest nearly 50 percent of their
waking hours engaged in it.
LINGER ON THE POSITIVE.
Want to wire your brain for happiness? You can start by savoring
those tiny moments of joy in your
day, whether it’s the smell of fresh
coffee or a smile from a loved one.
Lingering on these positive moments can help to overcome the
brain’s “negativity bias,” which
causes us to store negative memories in our brains more easily (and
strongly) than positive memories.
“[Lingering on the positive]
improves the encoding of passing
mental states into lasting neural
traits,” Hardwiring Happiness
author Rick Hanson recently told
The Huffington Post. “That’s the
key here: we’re trying to get the
good stuff into us. And that means
turning our passing positive experiences into lasting emotional
memories.”
THE THIRD METRIC
HUFFINGTON
01.19.14
BUILD DAILY RITUALS.
Habit is one of the most effective
ways to make any positive change
in your life. By developing habits, good behaviors that may have
once required a feat of willpower
to put into action become automatic — which is why they can
also be so difficult to break.
“For the things that you decide
matter… the only way to ensure
that things that aren’t urgent but
A recent UCLA study
found that eudaimonic
happiness — that which
was linked to having a larger
purpose or sense of meaning
in life — was linked with
healthy gene activity, whereas
hedonic, or pleasure-seeking,
happiness was not.”
are important happen is to build
rituals,” The Energy Project CEO
Tony Schwartz told The Huffington
Post. “Build highly specific behaviors that you do at precise times
over and over again until you don’t
have to use energy to get yourself to
do it anymore — until it becomes as
automatic as brushing your
teeth at night.”