Sunday, January 24, 2010
Collecting Memories
Positive Psychology researchers say one of the strategies for increasing your overall level of happiness is to collect positive memories. The brain tends to naturally remember negative events more than positive ones so some effort is required to register the positive events in your pleasure bank. How to do this? Collect pictures or momentos and look through them. Savor the experiences when you are having them. Focus on every smell, touch, view, feeling. Tell others about your experience, share it. That's part of savoring it. Experiencing positive feelings is part of our resilency, a time for building our survival skills, extending our awareness, much like lion cubs play fighting. We are able to take in more information when having positive feelings and have a heightened ability to accept new experiences. Some say it's evolution at work. For survival, the mind had to narrow and focus during times of crisis. When safe, the mind could relax. But some stay stuck in crisis mode, for lots of reasons. If that happens, rebuilding time is lost. So play, chatting with your friends and having fun is critical to survival. I knew it all along.
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This post spoke to me on a deep level. I was just feeling sad about the fact that most of the time when I remember my mother (she passed four years ago), my memories are negative and this makes me feel guilty and sad. She was a difficult person to get along with and, as you probably know, when thoughts of your mother are not warm and fuzzy, guilt rears it's ugly head. I am going to take your advice and go through some pictures that conjure up those good memories and work at changing what my memory bank chooses to remember.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insightful words. I needed them.
XOXO
Debbie
I hope it makes a difference for you. Thank you for your meaningful post.
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