Huffington Magazine Issue 84 | Page 66

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.”