“Can you imagine, I suddenly realized that in my life there is no happiness at all. It seems that you live well: the work is excellent, the husband, children, everyone is healthy. And it seems that everything is in order in your life. And then you gave us this assignment, and it turned everything upside down.”
The task in question looks simple. I give it to all participants in the mindfulness practice programs — a meditation that teaches us to return our attention to the present and live this present as fully as possible, openly and without value judgments. It is necessary for a week every day to celebrate one happy, joyful event right at the moment when it happens. And pay attention to what sensations were in your body at that moment, what emotions and thoughts arose in connection with this event, and how these emotions and thoughts manifested themselves at the level of physical sensations. And then in the evening write it all down in the «Diary of mindfulness.» And at the end of the week, study the patterns that will become visible.
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Almost everyone who does this exercise (as a rule, these are working people) notice that in the constant rush that their life consists of, they are not used to paying attention to themselves. To your emotions. On whether there is happiness in their lives — not as something outstanding and rare like a vacation or promotion, but as a quiet joy that seems to illuminate the fabric of being from within.
The second exercise, which is related to the first, is to start noticing which emotions you experience more during the day — positive or negative. To do this, I ask you to set a timer on your phone and every hour at the moment of the signal just pay attention to how you feel right now. It is a startling discovery for many that for the most part, they experience, worry, worry, or feel tension during the day, instead of being happy, excited, or experiencing pleasure. And these background feelings are so familiar to them that they don’t even notice them — only by the evening they are completely exhausted!
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This is no coincidence. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, writes that our brain becomes Teflon when it comes to joyful and pleasant experiences, and absorbs any negativity like a sponge.1 Our ancient ancestors, in order to survive and pass on to their offspring those genes, thanks to which we appeared centuries later, it was necessary to be in constant readiness for danger. Evolutionarily, our emotional brain is programmed to react much more actively to the slightest signs that something threatens us (even if it seemed to us that this is not at all the case) than to the beauty of the autumn park.
However, it turns out that when we start practicing mindfulness, we have the ability to choose our emotions! We can choose whether we suffer or rejoice, look at the world openly and benevolently or through the prism of anxiety and fear. This is due to neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to change in response to new experiences.
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To begin with, we learn to pay attention again and again to the emotions that we are experiencing right now — just notice them. In the second step, we explore whether this emotion is related to reality? What is justified in my reaction, and what is just a habit? A program inherited from ancestors or formed under the influence of circumstances that are long in the past? And then we try to change the habitual reaction.
For example, one participant in the program said: “I was sure that the constant stress of being overwhelmed at work was a given. All top managers live like this. And through the practice of mindfulness, I have noticed that I take on a lot of tasks myself, because otherwise I will feel guilty. And I began to notice these moments and try to react differently. Now I leave work earlier and run in the park every evening. If I hadn’t started specifically paying attention to my reactions and changing them, I would never have believed that I could change my schedule like this.”
What emotions do you experience the most during the day? Is there a place for happiness in your life?
1 R. Hanson, R. Mendius «Brain and Happiness» (Eksmo, 2013).