According to neuropsychologist, Rick Hanson we can actually ‘build happiness into our brains’ in as little as 30 seconds.

Our brains have a bias towards negativity

Neurologist Paul MacLean[1] explains that our skulls holds not one, but three brains, each representing a distinct evolutionary layer that has formed, one on top of the other.  While the three brains are connected by nerves to each other, they can each operate as a discreet brain system with distinct priorities and capacities.

The first brain to form is known as the reptilian brain.  According to MacLean it is rigid, obsessive, compulsive, ritualistic and paranoid, it is “filled with ancestral memories.”  It keeps repeating the same behaviours over and over again, never learning from past mistakes.  This brain controls muscles, balance and autonomic functions, such as breathing and heartbeat.  This part of the brain is active, even in deep sleep.

This brain is all about survival.  It doesn’t want us to relax, get too complacent, and enjoy ourselves.  It wants us to be vigilant and suspicious.  This is what kept our ancestors alive – always being on guard and wary.  Like any habit, the longer it is practiced, the stronger it becomes.  Since the reptilian brain is the oldest of the three brains, it can at times, dominate and override the other two brains.

The second, and next ‘oldest’ brain, known as the limbic brain, is concerned with emotions and instincts.  As MacLean observes, everything in this emotional system is either “agreeable or disagreeable.”  This brain tends to be the seat of our value judgments, instead of the more advanced neocortex – the third brain.  It decides whether our higher brain has a “good” idea or not.

The best way to compensate for the negativity bias is to regularly ‘take in the positive’

In his book, Hardwiring Happiness, Dr.Hanson shows how to turn our everyday experiences into the neural pathways we need for our well-being.  He explains by combining neuroscience with contemplative techniques, we can take charge of our brains.[2]

Mental states become neural traits

Hanson offers a 4-step process to ‘hardwire happiness.’ Here are the first three steps (the 4^th step is optional):

Have a positive experience – notice the positive in any given experience, or reflect on a past happy experience.  (Positive is that which leads to happiness and benefit for oneself and others.)

Enrich it – expand your awareness of the experience to include not only your feelings, but other sensory input.

Absorb it  - Through the power of intention you can intensify the experience, and sense it sinking in and becoming part of you.

Intense, repeated mental / neural activity – especially if it is conscious – will leave an enduring imprint in the neural structure. According to Hanson, it takes less than 30 seconds to establish a neuropathway.  If we can make a point of practicing this process throughout the day, we begin to weave an underlying sense of resilience and well-being into ourselves, where happiness becomes our new baseline.

Take charge of your brain!

If you don’t consciously make use of this power yourself, other forces will shape your brain for you – including pressures at work and home, technology and media, the lingering effects of painful past experiences …

Most of us spend a lot of time in our heads – thinking, reasoning, analysing, making assumptions, developing beliefs, and forming judgments and opinions.  Did you know that these activities – that engage the prefrontal cortex of the brain, use more energy than other parts of the body?  And after all that, sometimes we are not any clearer, and might even be more confused!

This is because we are not working with all the information available.  We exist in a sea of frequencies – vibratory waves of information, that go through us as well as around us.  In addition to the TV and radio waves, mobile phone frequencies, electromagnetic waves of appliances and computers, solar, lunar, and other cosmic waves, are emotional frequencies of others, thought waves, and the waves of collective consciousness.  And every single vibration carries information.  For example, when two people pick up on each others’ thoughts – they have actually tuned into the thought frequency of the other.

Since we could not function if we were aware of all the frequencies within the vibratory field we live in, we have very effective filters that protect us from a potential overload.  Nevertheless, our bodies are constantly monitoring and responding to this vibratory field we live in.

Your body perceives what is not known by the senses

Our bodies are sensing aspects of our environment beyond the range of our other senses, and beyond what we know with our cognitive mind.  Remember, just because we cannot see, measure, taste, smell, hear, or feel something does not mean it does not exist.  Even our technology has limitations to detect certain frequencies of information.

Your body is a sophisticated tuning fork

Your body responds to the energy within your environment, and you experience the sensations that correspond to what your body perceives.  For example, when someone is not being truthful, you may not know it at a cognitive level.  In fact, your mind might be telling you to trust this person.  However, the person is transmitting discordant energy and not only does your body perceive this energy/information, you experience the affect of this energy.  Your body responds much the same as it would to a message of ‘unsafe,’ however the sensations are usually way more subtle.  For example, you might feel a slight sense of discomfort as if ‘something is not right.’  If you are not tuned into your body, you are likely to miss these sensations altogether.

Truth resonates

When you hear a Truth (not a factual truth, such as “the train arrived 11 minutes later than scheduled,” but rather one that speaks to your heart and soul), your body literally resonates.  You may feel a tingling as you expand your ‘field’ in response to a Truth.  Some people experience alignment, as if ‘all the parts’ have clicked into place, and they feel energy surging through their bodies.  Some experience greater clarity and feel empowered.  An overall sense of well being is experienced when a Truth is spoken.  To experience this resonance you might like to listen to Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.  It’s no wonder that speech stirred the hearts of millions, and still does today.

Judgments lead to self-fulfilling prophesies

When we judge others – even in an attempt to understand them, our minds are busy using up energy making meaning, formulating opinions, and creating beliefs.  What’s worse is – thanks to what we now know about neuroplasticity – that we literally shape our brains to continue to experience what we are judging.  AND thanks to what we know from modern physics – when we focus on a certain aspect or outcome, not only is this what we bring into existence, we eliminate all other possibilities to occur.   We can easily get caught up in the cycle of ‘self-fulfilling prophesies.’

Honour your body – it is more accurate than your mind

As we know, the mind can get overwhelmed, confused, and can often be easily influenced or manipulated.  The body responds to the unseen energy behind others’ words and intentions and cannot lie.

It pays to listen to your body first

We can experience more peace and harmony, and make better choices when we listen to our bodies first and feel into the energetic information we are receiving.  Our bodies will faithfully and accurately tell us “yes, keep going,” or “no, this is not a good thing.”  We can keep our mental chatter to a minimum and avoid over analyzing and making judgments of ourselves and others. Noticing what we are experiencing in our bodies keeps us in the present moment.  We are literally engaging with the energetic information that is happening in the very moment.

A peaceful mind leads to greater harmony – on the outside as well as the inside.  We can put our minds to better use when we let our bodies guide our choices and actions.

We are living in a time where information of all kinds is increasing.  Not all this information is helpful, truthful, or complete.  It behooves us to develop the skill to peacefully navigate this sea of information, and listening to our bodies is at the core of this skill.

To learn and experience more about this, come to one of our programs or book a session with the horses.

One morning minutes before a client was to arrive I found Finn – our 5-month-old orphan foal, stuck against the fence.  In equine circles, this is referred to as being cast.  When a horse becomes cast, it may feel entrapped and unable to regain its feet and can panic. As it flails and struggles, it can injure itself and the struggling horse can also hurt anyone who comes near.  This is not just a good time to become neutral, it’s critical for the safety of the cast horse and helping humans.  Situations like this have taught me the power of being neutral.

The story we give to a situation creates our emotional charge

We are instinctively good at staying neutral when a child falls down and runs to us bleeding.  We don’t panic and scream “you’re bleeding to death,” but rather we stay calm and focus on what needs to be done. We could all be more peaceful, content, and less stressed if we could remember to be that way and stay neutral in any challenging situation.  It is the story we give to it that creates our emotional charge.  Take traffic jams for example.  A traffic jam is just a traffic jam. It is neutral.  It just is.  Ask 20 people what they felt during a traffic jam and you are likely to get 20 different responses from angry, frustrated, anxious, annoyed, to unaffected, peaceful, and relaxed – depending on what they were thinking and where they were going.  For example, someone who is running ahead of schedule and doesn’t want to arrive too early might welcome the delay caused by the traffic jam, while someone who is on their way to attend an interview might feel anxious about missing a job opportunity.

Being neutral keeps us open and present

Being neutral does not mean being detached, complacent or passive.  It means being present to what is happening without limiting outcomes through judgement and stories.  Thinking about what could happen puts us in the future, or thinking about what should have happened shuts us down from seeing new possibilities.

Shifting into neutral

It’s nearly impossible to shift from feeling angry to feeling peaceful.  The gap is usually too big.  But it is possible to recognise that it’s our story we tell about the situation that creates the emotional charge.  With this awareness, we can choose to let our story loosen its grip and slip into neutral.

Having a neutral perspective is a higher state of consciousness

A neutral perspective instantly expands our awareness, creates a space for possibilities to emerge, and aligns our emotional resonance with Nature.  The reality we experience can only match our resonance.

Neutral = grounded and centered

A neutral perspective keeps us in balance, and we can stay grounded.  It’s from this mental and emotional centre that we have access to all our resources and wisdom to make better choices and take appropriate action for our highest good.

Here is Finn minutes after I helped him move away from the fence!  He doesn’t seem to have a problem with staying in neutral!

In his TED talk, Simon Sinek shares his insight that leaders who inspire action, think, act, and communicate in a way that is the complete opposite to the rest of us.  He explains that inspiring leaders understand why they do what they do – why does it matter.   He says “Inspired leaders act from the inside out.”  What I love about his talk is that his perspective is yet another example of the importance of leading from the heart, and how we communicate our message is significant.  Sequence matters.

We are drawn to leaders that are good at communicating what they believe

When we are aligned with what matters, we reach states of higher coherence: a synchronisation of our physical, mental and emotional systems. It can be measured by our heart-rhythm patterns – the more balanced and smooth they are, the more in sync, or coherent, we are.  The electromagnetic field created by these systems affects everyone around us.  Since everything in nature seeks balance, people (animals and nature, too) are drawn to those who are highly coherent.

Biology counts

Inspiring others to action means they have to make a decision.  The work of neurophysiologists, Antonio Damasio and V.S. Ramachandran, whose detailed study of damage to key areas of the brain, has established that we literally cannot make decisions without emotions.*  When we communicate to others from “the inside out,” we’re communicating directly to the part of their brains that influences their decision-making.

Sequence matters

Sinek noticed that communicating what matters must come first.   Sinek uses Apple Inc. to illustrate his point – because of their ability to remain one of the most innovative companies year after year, and their uncanny ability to attract a cult-like following:  if they were like everyone else, their marketing message would sound like this: “We make great computers.  They are beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?”

However, the way they actually communicate starts with ‘why,’ and their message might sound like this:  “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo.  We believe in thinking differently.  The way we challenge the status quo is by making our computers beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly.  Want to buy one?”

When we inspire others (or ourselves) to action, it starts with why – the emotional component of the decision.  Perhaps this is what we mean when we talk about winning hearts and minds.  The heart represents the limbic, feeling part of the brain, and the mind is the rational language center.  Given the natural order of decision-making, perhaps the expression, “winning hearts and minds” is not a coincidence.  Why do we not set out to win minds and hearts?”

Sinek says, “the ability to win hearts and minds is not easy – it’s a delicate balance of art and science.”  Here is another example of how our language indicates that sequence matters.  Why is it that things are not a balance of science and art, but always art before science?  Perhaps we intuitively know that the art of leading is about following your heart!

* The limbic system controls the emotions and essentially decides which of our perceptions are of emotional importance and will be acted on.  If the connection between the cortex and limbic system is damaged, we lose our ability to set priorities and alternative courses of action can no longer be sorted for emotional significance.  The intellect is functioning perfectly, however we are incapable of making decisions.