Back to Bite Me
HEALing power? Beware the boomerang
I recently came upon the book Hardwiring Happiness, by neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Hanson explains that for the sake of survival, our brains evolved to focus on the negative; for instance: it looks like that lion on the lookout for lunch is looking my way.
Hanson prescribes a simple four-step program to overwrite our brain’s outmoded default program.
His program teaches us how to focus on the friendly metaphorical creatures that cross our paths now that there are no longer literal lions to distract us.
The program acronym is HEAL: Have, Enhance, Absorb, and Link.
Hanson vividly depicts the first three steps by clever analogy, equating contentment with the comfort of warmth.
Kindly indulge me my metaphorical segue to Hanson’s theme: first, find the fire; second, fan the flames; third, relax and enjoy.
The fourth step, linking the negative with the positive, can be tricky: you have to fight fire with fire.
As you bask in the warmth of well-being, you are supposed to pour a tad of the bad stuff into your mental mixer.
The expectation is that the sense of serenity, enhanced as it is per step two, will overpower the downers.
By thus rigging the contest — that is, providing the warm-and-fuzzy feelings with ongoing reinforcements while attenuating the downer contingent — the fuzzies will easily triumph.
Ultimately, the downers will desert; they’ll come crawling to the victor’s camp and fall in surrender at the feet of the fuzzies, who will magnanimously absolve them of their mortal sin: negativity.
Having thus repented of their self-defeating ways, the erstwhile downers convert to embrace forevermore the cult of positivity.
Sounds like a plan?
Alas, sounds like a plan that can backfire, as fighting fire with fire is wont to do; indeed, the author so cautions.
The downers are malignant rabbits: the more we brood, the more they breed. They run rampant, preying on those who reside peacefully, minding their own fuzzy business, in the State of Contentment.
The sneaky creatures also are notorious ruminators; they can out-think, and thus overtake, our fuzzy troopers.
At this writing, in my rapidly depleting mind-field, the battle between them rages on.