It’s Good to Feel Good: Positivity changes your brain!

Why are we superstitious about happiness? You know, afraid something bad will happen in the near future if we feel too happy right now.

            

Like, there’s this cosmic balance that has to be maintained: if we are too happy, then something bad must occur.

            

When you spell it out like that, it sounds a little silly, right? But on some level, a lot of us think like this now and then. When something begins to go our way, we wait for that other shoe to drop. It is as if we cannot trust in happiness and must always be fearful of the future.

            

When you feel this happening, it's a sure indication that you are stressed out.

            

And when you have this kind of negative expectation, you prime your brain to look for trouble. That’s right—your brain will be on the lookout for what you imagine or anticipate. That’s just how it works.

            

If you are worried about something, your brain will look for signs to validate those worries, achieve those outcomes.

            

If, on the other hand, you anticipate success and good times, it will look for evidence and opportunities to validate or accomplish those.

           

Maybe being fearful a lot was valuable in helping human beings survive in earlier, untamed eras. And sadly, in some homes and neighborhoods today, or toxic workplaces, hyper-vigilance may still be easily cultivated.

            

So, is this healthy?

            

Actually, no.

            

Prolonged or perpetual stress, a state in which your body and mind are on the lookout for threats, takes its toll on your health. Vigilance requires a lot of energy--resources that your body and brain might use for other functions.

            

Chronic stress wears down your system and makes you vulnerable to stress-related diseases like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and even osteoporosis.

            

Stress also activates inflammation, and that means more pain. Relaxation-response programs like SMART, developed at the Benson-Henry Institute, or mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), have been used successfully to reduce suffering from pain for just this reason. By lessening the negative emotions triggered by stress, inflammation itself can be reduced, and pain is not as bad.

           

Over time stress even changes your brain at the cellular level. In the amygdala, a very ancient, survival-focused segment of your brain that is commander in chief of your stress system, neurons and their dendrites (branches that help cells communicate with each other) develop more as stress stimulates this area, while cells in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), for instance, can shrink, losing dendritic branching and length, and not growing new neurons. Or, PFC neurons extend their branches more toward the amygdala, so that more types of stimuli can trigger it to turn on stress.

            

The PFC is where important human actions like self-control, emotional control, problem solving, and planning take place. It is linked with positive emotions, like love, unity, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, hope, and so on. The more you develop this area, the more you develop these positive aspects of being human.

            

On the other hand, the threat-activated amygdala connects to negative emotions—fear, anger, jealousy, judgmental attitudes, sadness. The bigger it gets on the cellular level, the more things can push you toward negativity--and poor health.

            

So, despite proverbs or superstitions that tell you otherwise, it is healthy and even important for you to feel good--about yourself, about life, about others, about the future. The more time you spend experiencing positive emotions, the more you are fueling that area of the brain, instead of the negative-emotion, stress system. Positive emotions, positive perspectives—looking for the silver lining, or making lemonade from those lemons of life—serve to build up your PFC, temper your negative tendencies, increase your resilience.

What you think, you become;

What you feel, you attract;

What you imagine, you create.

                               Buddha, Dhammapada

Barbara Fredrickson, positive psychology researcher and author of Positivity, explains that while negative emotions serve important roles in allowing a species to survive the dangers of life, positive emotions serve a different survival purpose.

            

Positive emotions and activities, like gratitude, playfulness, affection, and love, serve to bring people together and, in creating and broadening their base of social bonds, to protect them in the future. Remember that girl in high school, the guy in college who was always smiling, always friendly, and also had lots of friends? Positivity is pro-social, and let’s face it, people need people.

            

Gratitude is one of the  most powerful positive emotions there is. It has even been called the doorway to all the other positive emotions. There was great wisdom behind the practice of expressing thanks before meals or in prayers before going to bed that modern science is now validating. How amazing is that!

            

When you are positive, you are also not in a stressed state, so you are not wearing down the inner resources needed for maintaining homeostasis—your body’s delicate balance. Instead, you are actually contributing to good health – both for yourself and others.

            

Being worried or negative becomes a habit that can be challenging to break, but never impossible.

            

You don’t have to remain that person who always fears negative repercussions if something nice happens to you, or if you are feeling good about an accomplishment. You can begin to reverse the tendency to see the glass as half empty by embracing your own positive emotions and thoughts.

            

Allow yourself to pause there, spend time with those positive thoughts and emotions, relish happy memories. imagine and look forward to positive future events.

            

Breathe, pause, think of something pleasant, hold it in mind for at least 30 seconds.

           

It is that simple.

             

As the holidays approach, don't just fill your calendar and show up where it tells you to go. If you have something fun or exciting coming up, spend a little time each day anticipating the goodness of it, looking forward to your plans with family or friends.

           

Guide your daydreams toward positive emotional scenes. Are you going to see someone you don’t often get to see? Instead of dwelling on past resentments that can spring quickly to mind, stop and take a deep breath. Then see if you can remember some good times with that person. Can you make that person look happy in your imagination?

            

Think up some fun things you could do when you get together in the coming weeks. Maybe plan to bring that backgammon set you guys used to play as kids, or a deck of cards, or a photo album. You might even find yourself sending them a looking-forward-to-seeing you card...

            

We seem to effortlessly make time for worrying… Instead, why not make the choice to imagine positive things? Sure, maybe none of them will happen, just like our worst-case scenario worries. But you will smile while you think about them, your mood will lift, and your PFC will be bathed in stimulation, nudging neurons to grown and stretch their dendrites to positive places, strengthening your resilience and positivity for the future.

            

You will feel good about yourself, and you just might spread some of that goodness outwards as well.

Elisabeth Carter Ed.M., MFA, completed the training to provide SMART at the Benson Henry Institute in 2015. For information about her Metro-West (Boston) based program, visit www.managemystress.net.