The Delight Practice
There is power in knowing that YOU CAN get better at something with practice.
For example, dance, piano, yoga postures, with practice your physical body improves. Your brain isn’t so different from the rest of your beautiful body! You can train your brain to be less biased toward the negative, and less biased in general. This is the path of the yogini, the path of being with reality, as it is. Instead of what many do, which is throw the past into the present, or project worse case scenarios into the ever present now. Know this, you can get better at being in the now. And it may require practice…
REPEAT THIS TO YOURSELF THREE TIMES:
MY BRAIN LEARNS BY REPETITION
Get this, your sweet brain has a beautiful adaptive evolutionary function called a negative bias. This negative bias came about thousands of years ago when your ancestors needed to run from immediate threats like saber tooth tigers and other menacing environmental factors that you (mostly ) don’t need to worry about anymore. That same negative bias has passed down through your lineage as a genetic gift to ensure the survival of you and your people. The only downside is that it can get hardwired and stuck in the “on” position. If any of the following sounds a tad like you, welcome! Welcome to being human in 2023, you are gonna want to do the Delight Practice!
Negative brain bias might look like:
Internalize negative experience – causing you to worry and dwell on the small things.
Personalize insults more than compliments.
Connect to others through pain more than pleasure.
Mull over or completely spin-out on unpleasant events more than pleasurable ones
Find it easier to focus on negative information, and find that it’s harder to focus on positive information.
Take action with THE DELIGHT Practice:
Here is a sweet (grounding and nourishing) practice to remind your brain how life is delightful at times, and potentially train your brain to be less bias and more in the moment with reality as it is.
Step 1. When something delights you, notice it. For me it’s the small sweet things I find delightful. Like the way my dog Rosie tilts her head and raises one ear, or sometimes when I make the green light and really needed to, delight… Babe, if you have been filtering your worldview through a negative bias, you may have been letting delight slip by unnoticed, and that can change.
Step 2. Stay with that feeling of delight for 15-20 seconds. Let this life enhancing feeling of being delighted by something wash over you and through you. Hang out with it for a moment, don’t rush away to the next thing. All too often good things happen in life and we don’t take the pause to acknowledge, to notice, or to enjoy. It’s time to enjoy, isn’t it?
Step 3. Use this technique to bring you into the present moment whenever you feel delighted by something. I deeply encourage you to not underestimate the power of this simple practice.
Loving You,
Johnna
