Week 8

Cultivating Happiness

And here we are at the end of our time together. Over the past seven sessions we have focused primarily on challenging experiences and explored how mindfulness and self-compassion can transform these experiences into something positive. After all, compassion is a positive emotion.

As we all know, life is a mixture of good and challenging experiences, bitter and sweet moments. Session 8 allowed us to focus on how to get the most out of the positive experiences in our lives and our positive qualities in ourselves. We need to remember to water seeds of joy and savor the good moments and experiences to sustains our hearts and spirits.

As we noted earlier in the course, we are all hardwired to scan our environment for what is wrong. The Default Mode Network in the brain is always scanning for problems in the past and in the future. Evolutionary psychologists have referred to this as the negativity bias. When we experience negative emotions such as anger or fear, our perceptual field help us focus on survival. As Dr. Rick Hanson eloquently captured, "We are velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good ones."

In contrast, positive emotions such as love and joy broaden our awareness to notice new opportunities. Because we all have a strong negativity bias, we need to intentionally pay attention to positive experiences to accurately perceive our world and ourselves.

In Session 8, we explored three ways to correct for the negativity bias include: Savoring, Gratitude, and Self-Appreciation.

Savoring and Gratitude

Savoring is mindfulness of positive experiences. It refers to recognizing pleasant experiences, allowing oneself to be drawn into it, lingering with it, and letting it go. Research indicates that this simple practice can greatly increase happiness and life satisfaction.

Gratitude means appreciating the good things that life has given us. If we just focus on what we want but don't have, we will remain in a negative state of mind. Ample research shows that gratitude practice enhances wellbeing (e.g., gratitude diary, counting blessings, gratitude letter writing).

Some findings from research include:

Keeping a gratitude diary for two weeks produced sustained reductions in perceived stress (28 %) and depression (16%) in healthcare practitioners.

Counting blessings at the end of the day for two weeks reduces the impact of daily stress and increases overall wellbeing.
Dietary fat intake is reduced by as much as 25% when people are keeping a gratitude journal.
Gratitude practice is related to 23% reduction of stress hormone, cortisol.

Gratitude is a wisdom practice. When we practice gratitude, we are acknowledging the many factors, large and small, that contribute to our lives. We think of gratitude as the texture of wisdom, how wisdom feels.

Gratitude is also a relational practice that help us connect with life. The joy that arises from gratitude may be attributed in part to freedom from the illusion of separateness.

Savoring is mindfulness of positive experiences. It refers to recognizing pleasant experiences, allowing oneself to be drawn into it, lingering with it, and letting it go. Research indicates that this simple practice can greatly increase happiness and life satisfaction.

Gratitude means appreciating the good things that life has given us. If we just focus on what we want but don't have, we will remain in a negative state of mind. Ample research shows that gratitude practice enhances wellbeing (e.g., gratitude diary, counting blessings, gratitude letter writing).

Some findings from research include:

Keeping a gratitude diary for two weeks produced sustained reductions in perceived stress (28%) and depression (16%) in healthcare practitioners.
Counting blessings at the end of the day for two weeks reduces the impact of daily stress and increases overall wellbeing.
Dietary fat intake is reduced by as much as 25% when people are keeping a gratitude journal.
Gratitude practice is related to 23% reduction of stress hormone, cortisol.

Gratitude is a wisdom practice. When we practice gratitude, we are acknowledging the many factors, large and small, that contribute to our lives. We think of gratitude as the texture of wisdom, how wisdom feels.

Gratitude is also a relational practice that help us connect with life. The joy that arises from gratitude may be attributed in part to freedom from the illusion of separateness.

The Word

by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli,” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

-to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Would you consider…

A daily gratitude practice with three unique entries?
What if one of those entries was a self-appreciation? Imagine noting with gratitude how you were able to show up in one moment of your day?

Self-Appreciation

Self-appreciation is the third practice we use in MSC for cultivating happiness. Savoring and gratitude provide a foundation for self-appreciation. Appreciating our good qualities means that we have a the capacity to savor them, and we need gratitude toward those who have helped us in order to appreciate our strengths without feeling vulnerable or alone.

We can be grateful for many things in our lives, large and small, but we are rarely grateful for the positive qualities in ourselves. We tend to criticize ourselves and focus on our inadequacies, and take our good qualities for granted. This gives us a skewed perspective of who we are.

Have you noticed how challenging it can be to receive a compliment? Ordinarily, when we receive a complement, it bounces right off us, but when we receive the slightest negative feedback, we fixate on it. It feels uncomfortable to even think about what’s good about ourselves. We know that if we have a negative experience, it takes at least five positive interactions to counteract this experience.

Remember: Our minds are velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.

There are two insights that can help us feel less separate and alone and thereby more able to appreciate our good qualities:

Common Humanity: Remembering that everyone has strengths and good qualities. Bringing awareness that having some good qualities does not meant that we are better than others: "I may be better at this and you may be better at that."

Interdependent Causality: This refer to the fact that our strength and good qualities are due, at least in part, to multiple factors outside ourselves, including the beneficial influence that others have on us. By recognizing the contribution of others, we can begin to feel connected even as we recognize our strengths.

Finally, if we apply the three components of self-compassion to our positive qualities (as well as negative ones), we can appreciate ourselves more fully.

Mindfulness - We need to be mindful of our good qualities rather than take them for granted.

Self-Kindness - We need to be kind to ourselves by expressing our appreciation.

Common Humanity - We need to remember that all people have good qualities so we do not feel separate from or superior to others.