Are you finding it a little more difficult to find joy during pandemic life? While the burden of suffering felt during this experience is undoubtedly unequal, it is quite possible you have felt the toll in one way or another. Upon reflection, you may find your mental list of thorns to be more extensive than your list of roses, so to speak. You may actually find yourself ruminating over negative experiences.
It turns out the human brain is naturally inclined to focus on, learn from, and use negative information more often than positive information. Psychologist Rick Hansen says our brains are like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones. This means the negative experiences tend to stick, while the positive experiences easily slip away.
You might have experienced the negativity bias if you have ever remembered having a great day overall, yet you found yourself focusing on the one thing that did not go so well. On more than one occasion, I have found myself dwelling on one negative program evaluation in a sea of positives.
Because of this inherent bias, we actually have to intentionally practice savoring the joy in life. The same holds true in relationships. The work of Gottman and Levenson demonstrates that it takes five positive interactions to counter a single negative one.
Most often, pleasant and beneficial experiences happen many times a day - enjoying a good cup of coffee or tea, a good conversation with a friend, checking something off your to do list, laughing with your child. If we don’t consciously take the time to soak in these good experiences, they pass through the brain like water through a sieve. So the question becomes, how do we make these good experiences stick?
Rick Hanson summarizes the process of deliberately internalizing beneficial experiences with the acronym HEAL.
Have a beneficial experience: Either notice an existing experience, or create one yourself.
Enrich it: Stay with the experience for at least 30 seconds. Feel it fully with all your senses.
Absorb it: Receive it into yourself. Let it soak in.
Link it (optional): Use the beneficial experience to soothe painful experiences.
I encourage you to try and make this a regular habit – savoring the joy of the positive, good feeling moments in your life. Start by noticing those simple pleasures and challenge yourself to stay with them by practicing the HEAL steps.