MSS #018: How to enjoy and notice more positive things in life.

MSS #018: Rick Hanson’s HEAL process

MSS #018: How to enjoy and notice more positive things in life.

13 May, 2023

Read time: 6.2 minutes

In a hurry? Cut straight to the 2 tools read from heading HEAL process from Rick Hanson’s book Hardwiring Happiness – reduced read time 2.9 minutes.

This time I want to cover how we overcome our brains survival priority to notice danger (negative stuff) faster and for longer letting positive good stuff pass us by!

Learn a technique to enjoy the good things with childlike awe and as a result start noticing more positives in life, in a cascade effect.

Unless you actively change your outlook and know how to do it, you’ll keep getting attracted to negative information like a magnet.

Learn this powerful technique and why it is important.

Our bias towards negativity and clustering thoughts

Biologically we have evolved to keep ourselves from danger.

For millions of years in our evolution, keeping ourselves away from harm and reproducing has been a key aim. Many of our brain and body systems have been orientated to this end.

Increasingly research shows that our brains are “set up” to have a heightened alertness to danger or potential danger. Sometimes that danger might be real and tangible, sometimes the danger might be theoretical or a potential risk.

Either way we are predisposed to guard against it. In that regard we have a bias towards noticing negative aspects of our lives, so we must work a little harder to notice and enjoy the positive things in life.

In Rick Hanson’s book “Hardwiring happiness” he describes how each part of our brain works towards delivering this extreme risk awareness. Rick talks about the brain being like,

 Velcro for negative experiences

 Teflon for positive experiences

The upshot is we must work differently to grab hold of, enjoy and remember the positive experiences in life.

Rick talks about using a process he calls HEAL to practice as he puts it “taking in the good”.

One of the key aspects of the HEAL process and research into how we take on board experiences is that negative experiences get remembered relatively quickly, but to take on board positive experiences we need to dwell on them for longer. At least 5-10 seconds, but ideally more than 12 seconds.

I will share the essence of the HEAL process in a So what? section a little later.

We see this bias towards negative information all the time. Nearly all our news and information systems are biased towards negative or sensational news, because this sells and what there is demand for, because of our evolutionary bias towards survival / negative information.

Brain scans also show similar thoughts cluster. If we start thinking about cars, we get more thoughts about cars, then maybe we think about a family car as children and the holidays we went on.

If we “prime” our minds with positive thoughts, we encourage it to find more of the same. Once listening to a podcast called “Positivity” by Paul McKenna he used a phrase from a friend of his

“positive overwhelm”

This HEAL technique gives you a chance to experience this “positive overwhelm”.

When I first started using this technique, I really enjoyed it for the time I used the technique, but as I used it more and more, I found my brain kept bringing me old long forgotten memories of related positives. This effect will cascade when you keep up the technique, giving a multiplying effect.

HEAL process from Rick Hanson’s book Hardwiring Happiness

This is a process to actively take in positive, uplifting experiences and to overcome the minds natural propensity to latch onto to negative or danger experiences and largely ignore or be nonchalant to positive experiences.

Have a positive experience

There are two types of experience, real ones and imagined ones. The strange thing is your unconscious mind responds the same to both.

For example, you can stare at a beautiful flower in the garden, in a book or in your imagination.

You can go and do something fun with someone you love, or simply imagine a past experience.

Because you can also use your imagination, you can invent a positive experience, it does not have to happened or be happening now in your life.

Enrich your positive experience

Enriching your experience is firstly about how long it stays in your awareness, try for at least 5 seconds, better to aim for 10 secs, the best is just over 12 seconds.

Imagine you are marvelling at something in nature, rather than just stare at it for 12 seconds, try to really absorb it by looking for something novel or unique about it that interests you. As an example, if you are looking at a flower, perhaps count how many stamen it has, notice it is a similar colour to your car.

Another way you can increase the impact and intensity of the experience is to enhance the modalities – for example

• increase the colour of the image,

• the size of the image,

• imagine what it feels like to touch it,

• increase any sound from the image,

• is there any smell associated with etc.

This applies equally to real or imagined experiences.

If looking at something real, just notice the colours more and how vivid they are, as we know what we see is a representation of the information our eyes transmit, interpreted by our brain.

Absorb it

This part of the process might seem a little strange to some, it is about using your imagination to fully interact with the experience and engage with it.

For example, imagine the experience being absorbed into your body like the morning sun, or having a shower of the experience.

You need to use your imagination and consider how you can truly absorb the experience.

Perhaps imagine working into and absorbing the experience. Or perhaps, imagine the object you are looking at or thinking about creates waves of energy that run into you.

If you are looking at a flower, imagine jumping into a large version of the flower. Feel and sense the softness of the petals. Imagine sliding down the petals like a fair ground Helter Skelter, you having fun doing this.

I know this might sound a bit strange. For the more logical people, like me, this is the language of our unconscious mind – it prefers images and emotion to communicate meaning. This is simply all we are doing, communicating with our unconscious mind, in its preferred language.

Link it

This is an optional step and draws from NLP* techniques, it is a way of using a positive experience like a fond childhood memory, to reduce the impact and emotion associated with a negative experience, like feeling uncomfortable around someone at work.

It does not take away any of the benefits of the original positive experience.

1. Bring the positive experience to mind, enhance the colours, emotion and sounds in your mind and body. Keep this experience in the foreground of your mind.

2. Now introduce the negative experience in your mind, keep these images smaller, with less colour than the positive experience and in the background.

3. Always keep the positive image and sensation “bigger” in every sense, than the negative one.

4. When you start to feel the impact of the negative thought drop and reduce, you can then withdraw the negative thought and just leave yourself with the positive experience.

That’s the HEAL process explained, now try it.

Quite often I will be fully engrossed in an activity and I will spot something that I need to stop and just enjoy. Perhaps the scent of a flower in the garden, seeing someone smile on the television, seeing a funny shape in a cloud in the sky, all sorts of things.

Because I have been practicing the HEAL technique and gratitude my mind often interrupts me and points things out to me that make me feel happy, grateful or I think are funny. In very much the same way if you are in a noisy room with lots of people, you will instantly spot if someone calls your name and bring it to your attention, I am sure you have experienced this at some time.

*NLP =Neuro Linguistic Programming. A very posh term for a whole range of learning and techniques about how the mind words and interprets the world.

Summary

Quick recap.

• Our evolutionary bias is to notice negative events more than positive ones.

• We need to actively work on noticing positive events, the more we do, the more we notice and our brains remind us of past events.

• Rick Hanson summarises it as Velcro for negatives and Teflon for positives.

• Use the HEAL process to capture and enjoy positive experiences, real, imagined or remembered. The “L” part is optional.

References

Hanson, Rick. (2013) Hardwiring Happiness – the practical science of reshaping your brain – and your life, Rider

Want more? When you're ready, 3 ways I can help you:

1. If you want to build amazing resilience, I'd recommend starting with an affordable course:

→ Nuclear Powered Resilience: I will teach you a single golden habit, if you want either,

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• you are curious how the mind works and want to learn how you can enjoy life more and increase your happiness and mental wellbeing

2. Work with me 121 - I can coach you to be implement any of the techniques I share, support you implementing any of training courses or be your business and mind coach helping you better manage those distracting thoughts that often get in our way.

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7 guiding principles to better thinking – what trips up our thinking and how to create different habitual responses.

What they should have taught you at school – awareness of how we think and how to get better results.

Vitamin C for the mind – how to feel and have more control in life, with simple techniques built into a habit.

Happy habits – simple habits to make you feel happier everyday.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, really hope this helped. Contact me if you think I can help you further at [email protected].

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Happy thinking.

13 May, 2023