Work to focus on and remember positive experiences

Summary

• Work to focus on and remember positive experiences

Details

• Good experiences happen to us all the time. We have to make sure that notice and enjoy it
• We can enrich it but focusing on that moment, and trying to remember the details about it.
• We can absorb it by working to remember it
• We can link it to replace painful or harmful things in our mind
• Some experiences may be minor, but should not be dismissed just because of this

Reflections

• It requires effort to do this, and presence of mind. but probably it will become a habit
• daily log or journal helps to make this more of a habit

References

• Resilient - How to grow an unshakable core of calm, strength and happiness - Rick Hanson

Quotes

ACTIVATION

1. Have a beneficial experience: Notice it or create it.

INSTALLATION

2. Enrich it: Stay with it, feeling it fully.
3. Absorb it: Receive it into yourself.
4. Link it (optional): Use it to soothe and replace painful, harmful psychological material.

This process starts with experiencing the good you want to grow inside yourself. There are two ways to have a beneficial experience. First, you can simply notice and focus on one that you are already having. Second, you can deliberately create an experience, such as calling up a feeling of self-compassion or sitting down to meditate.

Each day is like a path strewn with many little jewels: the small ordinary beneficial experiences of life. It’s easy to overlook these and step right over them. But then we get to the end of the day and ask, “Why don’t I feel richer inside? Why does it feel like I’m running on empty?”

The jewels are already there. Why not pick some of them up? If an experience feels good, it usually is good for you and often for others, too. Don’t dismiss enjoyable experiences as lightweight and trivial, and don’t think that grinding, wearying, stressful experiences are somehow the foundation of a good life. It’s the opposite: positive experiences fill us up, while negative ones wear us down. Sure, some pleasures are bad for a person over time, such as eating too many sweets. And some psychological resources are grown in part through unpleasant experiences. For example, you can strengthen your moral compass through appropriate guilt and remorse. But on the whole, if something feels good, that’s usually a sign it’s a jewel worth reaching for.

Related

• Focus on Positive
• Having a positive attitude is like having a feast constantly - Proverbs 15-15
• Your mind is like a garden. You must watch it, feed it and weed it.
• Find pockets of time during your day to slow down
• You are shaped by your experiences, and your experiences are shaped by what you pay attention to
• Resilience means being in a situation to take advantage of positive random occurence and to survive negative random occurence