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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Here’s a simple practice to rewire your brain to be less negative and shift into having more confidence and a more positive view of life.
Imagine you do a presentation at
work, and then everyone in your team
has the chance to give you feedback.
If five of those people compliment
your work and one person criticizes
it, which one will you remember later?
Which one could keep you up
at night ruminating about it?
If you're like most
people it's the criticism.
And the criticism gets highlighted
in our minds because of what is
known as the negativity bias.
Now, this bias towards the
negative is completely normal.
As we evolved over the last 150 to 200,000
years, it was vitally important to learn
from negative experiences so that we
could outwit predators and avoid dangers.
So the brain registers negative
experiences very, very quickly and
highlights them and stores them in memory.
This helped us remember how to
avoid potential future threats.
On the other hand, positive experiences?
They don't register in the same way.
They need to be held in awareness for some
time before they get stored in memory.
Now, we don't live in a world where
there's constant threats and dangers
like, the hundreds of thousands
of years gone by, but our brains
still operate in the same way.
Now the problem with the negativity
bias for us these days is
that over the long-term we can
develop a growing tendency to be
pessimistic, stressed, and negative.
We can become sensitive to upsets
grievances and resentments, and it can
knock out confidence and really cloud
our ability to see things clearly.
Neuro psychologist and author Rick Hanson
often uses the metaphor that negative
experiences are like Velcro for the mind.
Whereas positive
experiences of like Teflon.
They slide right off.
This is a great metaphor for truly
understanding how sticky negative
experiences can be in the human mind.
Now, on a personal note, I can vividly
remember a potentially damaging experience
that I had thanks to this negativity bias.
It was just a couple of years ago
when I ran the Mindfulness Summit.
The summit was a not-for-profit
project to get mindfulness out into
the mainstream where we raised over
a million dollars for charity and
gave it all away to mindfulness-based
charities around the world.
Now, part of my job in this mission that
we were on was to interview 30 people who
were some of the world's most respected
meditation teachers, spiritual teachers,
researchers, and neuroscientists.
And we had 250,000 people
sign up to watch this thing.
So I was naturally nervous.
I'd never interviewed anybody before.
But to make matters worse, during the
first two days of the summit, a lot
of people got on the forums and they
started doing what's called flaming.
So they put out really
nasty and hurtful comments.
Some people said, things like that
they were finding me annoying.
They didn't like me.
And I'm putting this nicely.
It wasn't written so nicely as that.
And it was really, really hard
for me to see those comments.
I have to be honest with you right now.
I felt like I was publicly
humiliating myself.
I was so embarrassed.
I was, I felt awful.
And I was, you know, having one of
those moments where I was just wishing
the world would swallow me whole.
So it would have been quite
easy to let those comments
really damage my confidence.
And they did put a dint in my
confidence when I first read them.
It put a dint in my confidence and my
confidence in the ability that I had to
complete their mission that I was on.
So here's what happened though.
Eventually, and luckily for me, I
sobered up to the mental hole that I
was going down and I realized that I had
been affected by the negativity bias.
I had completely overlooked for these two
days, the many, many positive comments
that I was also receiving on the forums.
In fact, I had overlooked it
so completely that my business
partner had to point it out to me.
He pointed out to me that actually
95% of the comments were good
and only 5% were negative.
I couldn't see it.
I was literally blind to that fact.
And as the summit went on, feedback
became more, more positive overall.
The people who were flaming
sort of disappeared.
And the overall feedback that
we got from the summit was
incredibly, incredibly positive.
So from that day on, when I realized
the negativity bias had a hold of
me, I decided to make sure that
I spent time each day reading the
positive feedback, as well as taking
in some of the more negative comments
if they had something to teach me.
Just to make sure that I
was seeing things clearly.
That was an important realization for
me that I wasn't seeing reality clearly
before and had to really practice, at it.
The negativity bias was making me not
able to see reality as it truly was.
So you can see how this
negativity bias can stop us
from being able to see clearly.
It can create a lot of inner turmoil that
can knock our confidence and create a
lot of negativity and distress, actually.
We can start to feel sometimes
also like our partner, our lives,
ourselves, we're not good enough
when we ruminate on not going, what's
not going well and what's negative.
So you can see how, you know,
gradually we can become plagued by
negativity, resentment, bitterness,
low confidence, if we're not careful.
So how do we work with this?
How do we counter this negativity bias?
How can we start to make sure that we
can see life in a more balanced way?
Well, here's the really great news.
Over time, and with a little
bit of practice, we can
change the negativity bias.
We can even it out.
And we can actually totally
rewire our brains to see things
in a more clear and balanced way.
Now, as a neuroscientist might say,
neurons that fire together wire together.
So in other words, the more time
you actually train your brain in
taking in the good and seeing things
clearly, the more it becomes an
ingrained way of being, and seeing.
Rick Hanson has this wonderful technique
that I'd like to share with you that
helps you reshape your brain's neural
pathways so that you'll take in more
good and positive experiences and
balance out that negativity bias.
So the technique has three basic stages.
Very simple.
First stage, he advises us to deliberately
seek out good experiences every day.
Really, really simple.
It could be something so simple as just
appreciating the beauty in your garden,
feeling the warm touch of sunlight on your
skin, you know, the taste of a coffee.
Just so what he's saying is you want
to deliberately cultivate, seek out,
create these moments of taking in the
good in your life and then noticing
the times when they happen organically.
This helps you to activate your brain to
start the process of taking in the good.
Secondly, you want to
enrich the experience.
So to enrich any good experience, what
you need to do is just stay with the
experience for at least five seconds
and fully open up to what's happening.
So open up to the body sensations,
the emotions, everything that's
happening in the present moment.
Really drink in that good experience,
fully letting it fill your mind
and body and build in intensity.
As you do this, you'll be able to move
the experience from your short term
memory into your long-term memory,
which is important in rewiring your
brain to take in and see more good.
This may take a little bit of time as
you want to really connect with the
feelings you're feeling in the moment.
So really focusing on allowing that
experience to sink into your being as
you truly engage with it, feel the joy as
you appreciate and savor that experience.
The third step is to then
absorb the experience.
So this is really simple.
Simply after you really allow that
experience to sink in and be fully felt
and known, you simply set an intention.
You just have a moment where you make an
intention to feel that it's now a part
of you and take it with you in memory.
So really setting an intention to take
this with you, to keep it with you.
So this really, really simple
technique can be used every day to
help you truly appreciate and enjoy
the positive moments of your life.
The more we take in the good, the
more we can see and experience
life in a more balanced way.
And it's ,of course, not that
we're going to ignore negative
experiences and we're not going
to stop bad things from happening.
That's just a natural part of life.
We have ups and we have downs.
We have pain and we have pleasure.
So that's fine, but we can take
control of how we perceive life.
We can seek out more good so that we don't
become overwhelmed by the negativity bias.
And over time, with this practice, we'll
be better able to connect with the present
moment and the good experiences that we're
having as we go through the day, because
we won't be so worried all the time about
the negatives or the past or future.
So today and for the rest of this week,
and further on than that, see if you can
focus on taking in the good like this.
Maybe even just right now consider what
are some good aspects of your life that
you don't normally notice that you could
appreciate today, as you're going through
your day, what's beautiful, enjoyable
that you can appreciate and savor.
Maybe making a little intention right
now that when those moments come, whether
it's the hot cup of tea or the sunlight
on your skin, or a walk in nature,
that when those moments come, you'll
really take them in, take in the good.
As you cultivate this capacity for
taking in the good, you'll notice
a shift in your perceptions towards
a more positive view of life.
And you'll likely experience a lightness
of heart and mind and a little bit more
joy and wonder flowing into your days.
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