Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.
-Rick Hanson

For the past twenty years I’ve been presenting a scene at my workshops, in which a husband and wife come home after work and greet each other in the living room. One spouse begins by reporting the litany of problems faced that day – traffic, boring meetings, computer crashes, parking ticket, etc. . . When that spouse is done, the other one responds: “You think you had a bad day?? Let me tell you about my day.” And now we hear an even longer, and more dramatic, recounting of problems and complaints. By bedtime, both partners are emotionally exhausted and glad the day is over.

I now offer a second script. The setting is similar. But when asked, “Honey, how was your day?” the first spouse launches into a long list of ways in which he or she was supported: the coffeemaker worked, she didn’t get into a car accident, her eyeglasses helped her see more clearly, there was heat in her office, etc. . . In both cases, they are reporting facts. But few of us use the second script. We gravitate towards the negative – the problems, the challenges, the difficulties. Why is that?

In recent years, researchers in the field of neuroscience have discovered what they call the “negative bias” of the brain. Your brain (and mine) is actually hard-wired to notice the problems and difficulties we come up against. Historically, these were threats, and avoiding threats was how we could stay alive. So we developed a brain that was much better at noticing problems and challenges and not nearly as good at noticing how we are supported and cared for.

You can read more about the neuroscience of negativity, if you wish, in this article by Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain.

The result is that we can get overwhelmed by all the problems we are facing and lose sight of the ways we are being supported. The best way I know to counteract this negativity bias is a method of self-reflection from Japan called Naikan. Naikan works with your attention in two ways:
1. By reflecting on the past (i.e. the previous day) you step back and become more aware of how you were supported by others, rather than just getting lost in how difficult your life is.
2. Through self-reflection, you begin to influence how you see things in the present. This is one of the most interesting and least understood elements of Naikan.

Most of us put a lot of energy into trying to change our circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with that – if you can fix a problem, then by all means do so. But constantly trying to get life to unfold the way you desire it to unfold is exhausting. And it will not help you cultivate an authentic sense of gratitude. No matter how smart, wealthy and determined we are, we inevitably run into challenges that we can’t fix. Gratitude, grace, and faith – these are qualities that cannot be cultivated by working on the circumstances of our life. They are qualities that are cultivated by developing the capacity to see and understand our life in a deeper and more profound way.
Most people I know are busy. Too busy. They don’t have time for self-reflection. They are struggling to just get through the day and check off as much as possible from their to-do list. But there’s no balance in this kind of life. There’s no reflection to balance action. When you live like this, you can end up getting caught in the negative bias your brain is designed for.

Even just a few minutes of self-reflection at the end of each day can help give you a fresh perspective on your life. Try it. Take a few minutes to reflect on your life using Naikan’s three questions. It’s not about being optimistic. It’s about being realistic. So take a few moments to sip a cup of Reali-tea. It’s a tea that helps you see what your brain misses. Reality . . . the antidote to negativity.

Gregg Krech will be leading the distance learning program, Gratitude, Grace and a Month of Self-reflection starting Thursday, November 10, 2011. Join him for this profound program that helps us move into the holiday season with an authentic spirit of Thanksgiving.

When relationships are new, everything seems possible.  The terrain that you cover together seems lush, inviting and easy to navigate.

But at some point, little grooves may begin to develop on your path, as the two of you spend time together, being who you are, with your own quirks, habits and norms.  At first these grooves are not a problem, but gradually you become less sure-footed, as they begin to trip you and to require  attention to navigate.  Little hills and barriers also form as you make your way together.  You start to know where these obstacles are, and anticipate them as you make your way around.  While sometimes you may hop over them, or gracefully sidestep them, other times you may kick at them or stamp your feet.  Eventually, as these territorial landmarks grow and deepen, you may become disillusioned and frustrated.  What happened to that beautiful, inviting plot of land that you set out on together?

Actually, we don’t need to be in an intimate relationship to know this kind of pattern — a similar process can occur on a macro level with life itself, as we make our way around.  If we are not careful, the potholes and barriers that develop, as we interact with life, can come to dominate our experience.  In an effort to address them, we may ruminate about them, analyze them, and talk about them.   Despite our best efforts, they may or may not budge.

But the more we focus on our struggles, the less we focus on the blessings and gifts that are also part of our lives.  The blessings and gifts are just as real as the problems, but they don’t necessarily carry a charge with them.   Though they line the paths of our life each day, they may not reach out and grab us by the throat.  If we allow our attention to be tugged and pulled by the emotional charge that accompanies our problems, our blessings and gifts may never really come into focus in our lives.  When this happens, our spirit suffers and our relationship with life becomes distorted and strained.

The ToDo Institute has developed a truly unique program that addresses this aspect of human nature.  Gratitude, Grace & a Month of Self-Reflection  is a powerful distance learning program that will provide structure and guidance for cultivating appreciation in our lives – not some vague and distant sense of appreciation, but a rich, specific, heartwarming connection with the supports and gifts that line our lives each day.  This program has the potential to transform your relationships and your experience of being alive.

The program begins on Thursday, November 10, 2011.    Please join us and a rich community of fellow-travelers, as we navigate the rich and complex paths of life together.

In this extraordinary video, Iain McGilchrist describes the real differences between the left and right halves of the human brain. It’s not simply “emotion on the right, reason on the left,” but something far more complex and interesting. Before McGilchrist became a psychiatrist, he was a literary scholar — and his work on the brain is shaped by a deep questioning of the role of art and culture. His recent book The Master and His Emissary explores the nature of the brain’s two hemispheres (the right is the “master,” in McGilchrist’s terms). How have our two hemispheres evolved to relate — and how did their relationship create our consciousness, our culture, and our ability to understand our own brains?

About 2 minutes into the video, there is a wonderful explanation about the difference between single-pointed attetnion (narrow focus) and broad attention (broad focus). In addition to the depth and clarity of McGilchrist’s ideas, the animation is superb, not only keeping the viewer’s interest, but using wonderful visuals to help support McGilchrist’s explanations. In the end, McGilchrist reveals his bias:

“We have created a soceity that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift”

I’ve just finished conducting a nine day residential training in Japanese Psychology at the ToDo Institute in Vermont. During portions of the training we put up a large piece of flip chart paper in order to create a Thank You – Sorry board. The image you see in front of you is an example of such a board after it’s been filled in. The process is really very simple. The top half of the board is reserved for notes of thanks from one person to another. The bottom half of the board is reserved for notes of apology. Throughout the day, people can walk up to the board and grab a marker and scribble a short note, either thanking someone or apologizing to them. As the board gets filled in, it becomes a record of some of the acts of kindness that have taken place that day.

Think about how often you engage in an activity with the goal of finishing. Washing dishes. Cleaning the bathroom. Mowing the Lawn. Eating breakfast. Getting a degree. We often engage in our life’s activities with the focus on finishing and while we’re working on the task our attention is on what we’re planning do to when we’re done. In essence, our mind is one step ahead of our life. The problem, as you can see, is that with our mind always a step ahead, we never really fully participate in our life at this very moment. We assume the point is to finish (and maybe finish first, or finish quickly) so we miss the actual experience of the activity itself. In this wonderful little animation, Alan Watts points out that the goal isn’t to get to the end of the composition. The goal is to sing and dance to the music. Of course we know this, but how often do we forget as we get overwhelmed with life and rush from one task to another, trying to check off all the items on our to-do list.

Charlotte Joko Beck died this past Spring at the age of 94. She was a wonderful Zen teacher. Her teachings were beautifully accessible and directly connected to our real lives, particularly our psychological and emotional suffering. At one of her dharma talks, she suggested asking the question,

“Am I really in contact with my life?”

Now most of us would answer immediately, without even thinking, “Yes, of course I’m in contact with my life. After all, I’m living that life 24 hours a day. How could I not be in contact with it?”

But what does it mean to be in contact with your life? It means to have direct contact with real life – to use our sensory experience to engage with life around us. To be in contact with your life is to notice that first sip of coffee and follow it as it meanders down your throat. To have the thought, “I think I’ll get myself some coffee” doesn’t involve contact with your life. You are simply thinking about your life – more specifically, about what you want from life.

If you are sitting down right now, are you aware of the firmness of your chair against the not-so-firmness of your butt? (I’m making an assumption, I know) That’s real contact with your life. When you take a shower, do you actually pay attention to the water gliding out of the shower head? Do you feel the wateriness of the water running down your skin as gravity pulls it towards its inevitable destination? That water has been living in darkness for so long. And it will return to darkness again as it enters the drain. Its brief experience of the world of light is the ride it takes on your body. Do you notice that ride or are you planning your meeting for later that morning?

To be in contact with our lives is not about the endless stream of thoughts that race onto, and off of, our mental projection screens. We could watch those thought-movies regardless of whether we were in a prison cell or at the county fair. And our feelings states – now I’m tired, now I’m feeling depressed, now I’m upset because the “yes” I had hoped for turned out to be a “no”. This preoccupation with our internal experience isn’t contact with our lives. It’s what distracts us from our lives.

We’re in touch with our life when we make contact with it through our senses and when we connect with it through our bodies. Kids know how to do that really well. When I ride my bicycle with my daughter Abbie, I go around the puddle, but she goes out of her way to go through the puddle. We have a cushioned swing in the living room that hangs from the wooden beam on the ceiling. When you walk through the door it’s one of the first things you see. Families come for a visit and the kids see that swing and they go right for it. They jump on it, swing on it, hang on it, twist on it. There’s nothing to think about. After all, it’s a SWING! But the adults mostly walk by it. They don’t even touch it with their little finger. Sometimes they ask about it: “Oh, that’s interesting. What is that for?” And I explain that it was a gift from our friend Jane and it was made as a kind of inversion bar so people could hang upside down and stretch. And then we sit down and talk about something profound or maybe just about how busy life is and that there’s never enough time. Think about what you could do with all the time you have spent discussing, reading, and complaining that there’s not enough time. You could have used that time to play on a swing.

Your mind is like a two year old that doesn’t want you to be in contact with your life. It wants all the attention for itself. It has all kinds of strategies for getting your attention: Hey, what about this idea? Hey, remember what happened last week at your mother’s? Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to go to France someday? Of course, if you went to France, your mind would be saying, Hey, I’ll bet it’s really nice over in Italy. Your friend Margaret went to Italy and she loved it.

We need to figure out how to be in France when we’re actually in France and how to be in Italy when we’re actually in Italy. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Charlotte Joko Beck didn’t try to make it complicated. It’s just not that easy. That’s why making contact with our lives is a constant practice. So we just keep coming back to our life as it is – the swings and puddles and music and soup and coffee. It doesn’t always make us happy. But that’s not the point.

It’s real.
And it’s life.
And someday it will end.

“What we’re trying to learn is how to be in contact with the very fearsome, but the very precious thing which we have, which is our life.”
- Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011)