Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar born 1970, is an American and Israeli teacher, and writer in the
areas of positive psychology and leadership. As a lecturer at Harvard University,
Ben-Shahar created the most popular course in Harvard's history. The subject of
the course was “happiness.” In his very
popular book, Happier: Learn the Secrets
to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment (p. 11), he reveals a “happiness
ritual” that has proven to be very successful.
Each night before going to sleep, write
down at least five things that made or make you happy — things for which you
are grateful. These can be little or big: from a meal that you enjoyed to a
meaningful conversation you had with a friend, from a project at work to God.
If you do this exercise regularly, you
will naturally repeat yourself, which is perfectly fine. The key is, despite
the repetition, to keep the emotions fresh; imagine what each item means to you
as you write it down, and experience the feeling associated with it. Doing this
exercise regularly can help you to appreciate the positive in your life rather
than take it for granted.
You can do this exercise on your own or
with a loved one: a partner, child, parent, sibling, or close friend.
Expressing gratitude together can contribute in a meaningful way to the
relationship.
Understanding
how the brain functions provides key insights as to why the “happiness ritual”
is so successful. Michael Shermer wrote
about those functions in his book The
Believing Brain: From Ghosts and God to Politics and Conspiracies – How We
Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (p. 5).
The brain is a belief engine. From
sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain naturally begins to look
for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. The first
process I call patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in
both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process I call agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.
We can’t help it. Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into
meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These meaningful
patterns become beliefs, and these beliefs shape our understanding of reality.
Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory
evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further
confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of
reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback
loop of belief confirmation.
Use
the “happiness ritual” to create new patterns
of happiness and give your brain something much better to search for and
confirm.
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