Rewirements

In our environment of "too much," our minds are often led astray. Here are some scientifically proven methods for improving our well-being in our environment of abundance.

I’m in Week 7 of the Science of Well-Being — and so far, we have covered all the ways the mind leads us astray or gives us the wrong ideas about what will provide us with a satisfying and purpose-filled life. We have since moved on to the strategies we can use to train our minds to see and appreciate the right things — the habits that positively contribute to our overall well-being.

Professor Santos refers to these strategies as “rewirements” — meaning that you can use these mental tools — if you practice them with intention — to rewire the mind so that these habits become second nature.

In my last post, I talked about one of the rewirement strategies: The habit of savoring experiences. Here is Santos’ full list of rewirements:

• Signature Strengths - using your top character strengths in new ways (you can take an assessment here)

• Savoring - taking time to think about, appreciate, and savor the things you enjoy. View yourself and what you are experiencing from a bird’s eye view, and share the experience with someone else — out loud.

• Gratitude - (List and/or Letter) - expressing gratitude for the people and things in your life.

• Kindness - increasing your acts of kindness. Try to find a person to go out of your way to be kind to each day — or better yet — multiple times throughout the day.

• Social Connection - making connections with strangers and acquaintances along with scheduling time for the people in your life. Talk to your neighbors, the barista, set a date on the calendar to see family, call your friends to check in on them, and tell them you love them.

• Exercise - increasing your physical activity to at least 30 minutes a few times a week.

• Sleep - making sure you sleep at least 7 hours a night several times a week.

• Meditation - meditating for 5-10 minutes if you are a beginner, or increasing your time in meditation if you already meditate regularly. Meditation can be a walking meditation, yoga, or any activity where you can focus on controlling your thoughts and discarding the ones that don’t serve you.

For the rest of the course, one of our tasks is to pick one of the rewirements from the list and commit to practicing this tool every day — in the end, we will take the same assessment that we took at the beginning of the course (the PERMA Profiler) and see if the knowledge passed through the class, combined with the act of intentional practice, has moved the statistical needle.

I’m going to continue with the practice of savoring. Many of the things on the rewirements list I feel like I have a decent handle on: exercise, sleep, social connection, etc. — but savoring — which forces your mind into the present moment — away from the past or the future, and being able to appreciate just what is — not what could be, or what could have been done differently — is something I have to practice with more intention. Training my mind away from wandering and attending to what is at hand — to what is my reality — to the only thing that is real at this moment, in this time, is a challenge. I suspect this is a challenge for many of us.

My wife and I spent this past weekend on a trip to the great city of Seattle for a friend’s wedding … with no children in tow… so quite a luxury when it comes to larger chunks of time to think and wander around in nature. Also, two four-hour long flights offer the delight of uninterrupted reading and contemplation.

The Present is a Gift, That’s Why it is Called the Present

Things are what they are for all other animals other than homo sapiens. One of our species’ greatest challenges is spending too much time ruminating outside of our current moment.

The scholar of stoicism Ryan Holiday puts it this way in his book: The Obstacle is the Way:

In our own lives, we aren’t content to deal with things as they happen. We have to dive endlessly into what everything “means,” whether something is “fair” or not, what’s “behind” this or that, and what everyone else is doing. Then we wonder why we don’t have enough energy to actually deal with our own obstacles. Or we get ourselves so worked up and intimidated because of the overthinking that if we’d just gotten to work, we’d probably be done already.

Things we know are great for putting us in the moment: Strenuous exercise, being in nature and off of technology, meditation and contemplation, spending time with the people we love, and savoring. Sounds a lot like Santos's list of rewirements.

Here are some of the studied outcomes of the practice of savoring:

1. Counterbalances the experience of unpleasant emotions during stressful events (Zautra, Affleck, Tennen, Reich, & Davis, 2005)

2. Boosts happiness in people experiencing fewer daily positive events (Jose, Lim, & Bryant, 2012)

3. Predicts greater levels of positive affect and self-esteem in primary school children (Bryant & Veroff, 2007)

4. Predicts higher levels of life satisfaction, happiness, and perceived control in adolescents and older adults (Bryant, 2003)

5. Predicts decreased depressive symptoms in older adults (Smith & Hollinger-Smith, 2015)

6. Predicts reduced levels of depression and anxiety in Chinese caregivers (Hou et al., 2016)

7. Predicts decreased levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia in U.S. undergraduates (Eisner, Johnson, & Carver, 2009)

8. Positively relates to higher levels of positive affect and life satisfaction (Quoidbach, Berry, Hansenne, & Micolajczk, 2010)

9. Positively influences satisfaction in long-distance romantic relationships through increased positive affect (Borelli, Rasmussen, Burkhart, & Sbarra, 2015)

10. Relational savoring, such as explicit disclosure of positive events to a partner, increases the quality of the relationship and levels of self-esteem (Pagania et al., 2015)

11. Helps people balance family and career responsibilities more effectively (Camgoz, 2014)

12. Promotes positive relationships when experiencing a wholehearted response to a narrated positive event by other people (Reis, Smith, Tsai, Rodriguez, & Maniaci, 2010)

Enough

“Nothing is enough for a man to whom enough is too little” — Epicurus

What the practice of savoring calls us to is a deep reminder that what we have is enough. That we are enough.

This is a difficult needle to thread. We don’t become wiser or more enlightened without a desire to improve ourselves. The key is to find our enjoyment and contentment in the process — not the end result. Letting go of “when I achieve or acquire this or that.” To find contentment with what is, with who you are, comes from releasing the desire to acquire.

Savoring calls us to quiet the mind. Loosen our grip of control to create a particular outcome. Only then can we learn.

Quiet the Mind

Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration - Thich Nat Hanh

AKA — Garbage in, garbage out.

Just like what we put into our bodies, what information we feed our minds shapes our outcomes. What do we pay attention to? What distractions do we allow? When we drown ourselves in unimportant information — we dilute our ability to think well.

“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” - Epictetus

We all have access to unlimited amounts of information — most of it does not serve us well. If we desire a content mind, a content spirit, a content body. If we desire to be able to really see the joy we already have — to savor our lives — we have to curate it, we have to practice it, we have to call ourselves to it.

Savor the Loves in Your Life

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

One of the things that I love most about weddings is how they draw us to savor the love we have in our lives. For our partners, for our children, for our friends and families. Celebrating the love between two people reminds us of how special our loves are — how precious our attachments are and how lucky we are to have them.

Contentment is hard to find alone. There is perhaps no greater gift than a partner who encourages you, supports you, and helps you be a better version of yourself. Your person to share your savoring with.

Love is a great instructor. It moves us outside of ourselves. To be a part of something bigger — to be connected to the rest of humanity by a feeling that transcends culture, language, and time. To be connected by what is invisible to the eye.

Keep looking for connection,

Erin Sucher-O’Grady