Hardwiring Happiness

Hardwiring Happiness tells you what you can do to overcome your negativity bias of focusing on and exaggerating negative events by relishing, extending and prioritizing the good things in your life to become happier.

There’s a scene in How I Met Your Mother when Ted sees his ratings as a professor on a website. The words fly across the screen, all compliments across the board – “knowledgeable”, “fun”, “cool guy” – and then it hits “BORING.”

His world is shattered, the day ruined. For the remainder of the episode, he ends up chasing better reviews, trying way too hard, until he eventually realizes it’s stupid to obsess over one bad review in 50 great ones.

I’m sure you know the feeling. Think of the moments in school you remember the most. Are they happy ones? Or the times when you got bullied, when you were hurt, when you got your first F?

The tendency to disproportionately focus on the negative is built into us. It’s a remnant from times when most negative things could kill you. Today most “threats” won’t, but your brain doesn’t know that.

However, there are still differences among us. The fear center of your brain, the amygdala comes in two variants.

A “happy amygdala” will stimulate your nucleus accumbens the goal-fulfilling part of your brain that sparks motivation, ambition and optimism. A “sad amygdala” will instead base your actions more on fear by releasing cortisol, adrenaline, and other stress-inducing hormones, making you feel rather anxious and worried.

Most of us have a “sad amygdala,” but luckily, it’s not set in stone.

Your brain never stops growing, which means it’s never too late to change its structure. By exposing it to more positive experiences and making a conscious effort to do so on a regular basis, you can tone down your sad amygdala and even turn it into a happy one.

A great way to start this practice is to simply remind yourself of the good things in your life more often, for example by starting to use what Rick Hanson calls a “Good Year Box.”

Here’s how it works: Keep a shoe box or other storage container in your bedroom. At the end of each day, before you go to bed, go through everything you’ve done and experienced again, and pull out at least one positive thing that happened. Write it down on a piece of paper and put it in the box.

This way, you’ll acknowledge good things in your life as they happen, while simultaneously training your brain to recognize those things more.