To focus my intentions in this new year, I've been reading a little book by author Rick Hansen called Just One Thing: Developing a Budhha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. If you don't know Rick, he is a neuroscientist and the author of Buddha's Brain. 

He is also the co-founder of The Wellspring Institute for Collective Wisdom, which publishes the monthly Wise Brain Bulletin. He also offers a free newsletter, "Just One Thing" which shares a simple practice each week that is not included in his book. Fortunately for me, he is affiliated with the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, so I've been able to hear him speak locally several times (For more information on Rick Hansen, click here. 

The first section of Just One Thing is called "Be Good to Yourself." I am finding it an ideal companion for this first month of 2013, and I like the fact that this book contains 52 practices, conveniently one for each month of the year.

One important principle to remember is that the brain is inherently biased towards negativity. There is research to indicate that all animals learn faster from pain than pleasure and that painful experiences are more memorable than positive ones.

As Hansen points out, "the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones" (p. 18). The recommended practice is tilting toward the good-aiming toward what brings happiness to yourself and others. Easy to write and hard to do, perhaps, but it's possibly the only way to stockpile more positive experiences in your deep, implicit brain.

Here are several strategies to tilt toward the good:

1. Look for good facts and turn them into good experiences. There are many facts that cross our paths every day: Flowers and trees start blooming; we finish a project; we get a phone call or email from someone that we care about. Go beyond knowing good facts to feeling them. Try the practice of pausing at least 3 times a day to actually feel good about something that has happened.  
2. Intensify the goodness of good experiences. The longer you hold positive experiences and feelings in your awareness, the more neurons will fire and wire together and strengthen their imprint in implicit memory.  
3. Have the intention and sense the good experience sinking into you. There are many different ways of "taking in" good experiences. Any single time that you achieve this is not enough to make more than a little difference but over time, this practice will begin to reweave your neural net with more positive experiences and attitudes.

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley has spent more than 10 years and close to six million dollars studying the benefits of gratitude. Their findings conclude that feeling a sense of abundance, an enjoyment of simple pleasures, and an appreciation of others can lead to stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure, more joy, optimism, happiness, and other positive emotions, increased generosity and compassion, and decreased loneliness and isolation.

For example, studies conducted by psychologist Robert Emmons illustrate that when people regularly work on cultivating gratitude - such as keeping a gratitude journal - they experience a variety of measurable benefits on the psychological, physical, and social front. His research found that people who focused on practicing gratitude were significantly happier, exercised more, and reported experiencing fewer physical ailments than those who didn't.

Emmons has studied more than a thousand people, from ages 8 to 80, and found that the simple practice of gratitude was linked to an abundance of positive effects:

Physical  

• Stronger immune systems
• Less bothered by aches and pains
• Lower blood pressure
• Exercise more and take better care of their health
• Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking

Psychological  

• Higher levels of positive emotions
• More alert, alive, and awake
• More joy and pleasure
• More optimism and happiness

Social  

• More helpful, generous, and compassionate
• More forgiving
• More outgoing and feeling less lonely and isolated

Emmons believes that the emotions related to gratitude are social ones because gratitude requires us to see how we've been supported and affirmed. He also points out that gratitude magnifies positive emotions and blocks toxic, negative emotions. His research results are based on a gratitude journal practice which consisted of weekly entries of 5 things for which the writers were grateful.

Along with 13 other researchers, Emmons and colleagues will be studying gratitude from several perspectives. For example, at UCSF, Dr. Wendy Berry Mendes, an associate professor of emotion will be measuring biomarkers, or early cellular signs of disease to answer questions of whether gratitude, and other positive emotions, influence and change underlying neurobiology related to health. Another researcher, Dr. Laura Redwine, at UC San Diego, is studying the connection of gratitude with heart health for 100 patients at high risk for heart failure.

For more information on Emmons' work, and some excellent videos, please visit here. And to learn more about the gratitude research, and to sign up for Greater Good's e-newsletter, go here.