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The Neuroscience of Happiness
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Julie Beck has an interesting read in the Atlantic about how our brains are naturally wired to focus on the negative because evolution has optimized our brains for survival, but not necessarily happiness, which means that we feel stressed and unhappy even though there are a lot of positive things in our lives. 'The problem is that the brain is very good at building brain structure from negative experiences,' says neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson. 'We learn immediately from pain—you know, "once burned, twice shy." As our ancestors evolved, they needed to pass on their genes. And day-to-day threats like predators or natural hazards had more urgency and impact for survival. On the other hand, positive experiences like food, shelter, or mating opportunities, those are good, but if you fail to have one of those good experiences today, as an animal, you would have a chance at one tomorrow. But the brain is relatively poor at turning positive experiences into emotional learning neural structure. 'Positive thinking by definition is conceptual and generally verbal and most conceptual or verbal material doesn't have a lot of impact on how we actually feel or function over the course of the day. A lot of people have this kind of positive, look on the bright side yappity yap, but deep down they're very frightened, angry, sad, disappointed, hurt, or lonely.' Dr. Hanson proposes several ideas for helping 're-wire' our brains for happiness. One of them is that we need to learn how to move positive experiences from short-term buffers to long-term storage. 'But to move from a short-term buffer to long-term storage, an experience needs to be held in that short-term buffer long enough for it to transfer to long-term storage,' says Hanson. 'When people are having positive thinking or even most positive experiences, the person is not taking the extra 10, 20 seconds to heighten the installation into neural structure. So it's not just positive thinking that's wasted on the brain; it's most positive experiences that are wasted on the brain.'"
It's called Scotch Whisky. Just another gift from the Scots. That and logarithms and engineers. (Oh and haggis!)
Mostly random stuff.
Research has shown that gratitude, admiration, elevation of others increases people's happiness more than remembering being happy. Not sure how it scores against Scotch whiskey.
Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
Once you've had enough pain in your life, you learn to appreciate the good things you have. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is, "Oh yeah, carpet under my feet! I remember when I didn't have carpet, this is so much better." That sort of thing does wonders for your happiness levels.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I saw a donkey show in Tijuana many years ago but I'm still fuzzy on what I emotionally learned from it.
Therapy based upon this has been available for years. No need for a physiological explanation: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ804035.pdf
How to Build a Happier Brain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0V4TZAyd8I
That's older technology. You can view the new technology here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBCy-aY26zs#t=17.
Same stuff, different interpretation. Enjoy!
That's why you want to save meals and sex for when you've been good.
"Women" of course could be "men".
I hate when that happens.
Happiness does not matter to the human race.
The PURSUIT of happiness drives us. But obtaining it... The goal is met. We are done.
So that can't happen very often or we fail as a species.
Your brain isn't wired for happiness. Case in point, I experienced true happiness twice; once while on ecstasy, and life as a child.
Animal trainers have demonstrated repeatedly that positive reinforcement is more effective at eliciting behavior than negative. In other words, the carrot works better than the stick.
To me, this seems contradictory.
There is a lot of papers on the point you bring up. What makes something positive? Eating after not having food is positive or is it the end of a negative experience? If you have plenty to eat, is food still a reward? (animal trainers keep their animals a bit hungry ).
So is a paycheck positive? Or is it preventing a negative. etc etc..
Reward is useful for shaping behavior, but it turns out not to be particularly effective at creating happiness. See: drug addiction.
One thing I'd like to be sure isn't lost here is the clearly stated difficulty: Keeping a positive moment in mind long enough for it to go to long term storage.
If we don't have enough time to stop and appreciate positive moments they are lost, obviously.
There is a body of literature on idleness and over the last few years I've begun to amass a collection of it. The more I follow idleness as an art, as a way of being, the happier I've become. It hasn't gotten rid of too many negatives, per se, but I find myself happier in general (though that might be due to any number of other factors, correlation/causation etc). It has even contributed to a little delinquency, for sure (hooray fun!), but seems on the whole a good habit.
It's been said many times, but this article bears it out: If we don't stop to smell the roses and really appreciate them, appreciate others and the gifts we bring each other every day, we are rushing blindly and headlong toward just physical death, but the death of the spirit too.
So you, yes you, the person with 4 monitors, a tablet, and an iPhone buzzing with facebook while the TV is blaring in the background, who feels all high off gadgetry (and maybe cheetos)... I dare you to try the hardest thing you'll ever do: Stop and do nothing for a day. Just sit, stare out a window, make a pot of tea. Just stop. and. be. idle.
Though if you do get antsy I can recommend reading "How to Be Idle", a fun read and an antidote of sorts.
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Having what you want
over
Wanting what you have
If you prefer to optimize for happiness, there are lots of drugs to help you with that.
Unfortunately, optimizing for happiness has serious disadvantages even in modern society. Preferentially learning from painful experiences has its benefits even today.
I struggled with depression for many years and eventually came up with a simple exercise to increase happiness: At the end of the day I write down as many good things that happened that day as I can; they can be as simple as having a nice sandwich or the enjoyment I got from listening to music. I aim to write at least five a day. I then read back over the last couple of weeks entries too. The way I figure it, the problem was that when I felt bad about something I couldn't remember the good things in life clearly enough for those memories to combat the feelings of sadness (ie. my brain hadn't burnt the good memories in clearly enough). I took the simple and proven techniques that I use when learning a new subject (write good notes, read over those notes several times) and applied them to emotional memories instead of facts. Works very well, only takes up 5 minutes a day.
The author is unable to differentiate happiness and pleasure !
Pleasure comes when I have a good experience. Pain comes when I have a bad experience.
Happiness is totally different !
Happiness appears mostly after pleasure.
For example, if I make love with my beloved partner, and I have an orgasm, I'll experience pleasure.
After the orgasm, I feel happy, because I feel at peace with my partner.
Happiness is simply a state of mind: I become happy when I'm in peace.
Pleasure is external (or related to external stimuli), and happiness is internal.
For example, when I meditate (=when I stop all my thoughts), I experience happiness.
Happiness is so easy to reach that in fact nobody really wants happiness, because it's so boring: nothing happens.
Everybody seeks pleasure, and pleasure always comes with pain.