Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder

by Arianna Huffington

Without such spiritual renewal, we may be left with only negative experiences to draw from. And as Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuropsychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the book Hardwiring Happiness, writes, “The brain is very good at building brain structure from negative experiences.” But our brains are relatively poor at doing the same thing with positive experiences. To fight this, he explains, we need to “install” the positive experiences, “taking the extra 10, 20 seconds to heighten the installation into neural structure.” In other words, we need to take the time to wonder at the world around us, feel gratitude for the good in our lives, and overcome our natural bias toward focusing on the negative. And in order for it to “take,” to become part of us, we need to slow down and let wonder do its job, at its own pace.