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One of the examples I like of cultivating a trait
– a historical example – was from William James.
Many of you know… have heard of him…
He came from a really accomplished family; his brother was a successful writer and so on...
and in his thirties he was totally unaccomplished, he wanted to be a painter and he tried that
but that didn’t work, and then he enrolled in medical school and
went to do an expedition up the Amazon and then that didn’t work out so…
In a moment of reckoning he questioned his innate capacity to do anything productive in his life
and that he should be alive at all, okay?
So he had hit a bottom.
And he decided, before he did anything rash, that he would conduct a one-year experiment.
Now this experiment is an example of cultivating the positive.
And here is what he decided: he said no matter what thoughts arose, he would keep turning
his attention to the assumption that change was possible.
In other words he'd keep turning towards hope - over and over and over again.
And he tracked it in his diary so you can read it, you know... He basically practiced
each day as if things could get better, as if he could transform.
That was his assumed lens.
And he became receptive to opportunities, okay?
His energy got engaged and he became increasingly aligned with his deepest interests,
which he was able to discover, and he married and he ended up studying at Harvard
and he ended up creating a metaphysical club and he wrote to one of his partners there, he says:
“I possessed, for the first time, an unintelligible, unreasonable conception of freedom.”
Hope, possibility.
Hope is a flavor of the ocean.
The ocean has infinite potential.
Our ocean-ness knows that this is unlimited creativity, anything can happen,
we are open to it.
And that is what he trained himself to do.
But it was in fact a training.
So due to neuro-plasticity we can have corrective experiences that change our brain.
But how does it work?
And again I want to…
I am very good friends with Rick Hanson and I recommend his books highly.
And he recently gave a talk that I found really clarifying on this, on how learning works,
but he says it is really two parts: you have to have an experience and you have to feel it.
You know, have an experience of hopefulness or of love or compassion or whatever and then
you have to saturate yourself in that feeling-sense for the brain to learn it.
In other words: it has to get installed, okay?
Just like William James had to over and over again keep turning to hope.
And researchers have shown – and it is very interesting - that the longer something is held in awareness
the more emotionally stimulating it is;
the more neurons that fire and wire together and the stronger the trace in memory.
So these two steps: have the experience and sustain the experience.
And Rick says both steps are necessary and people usually forget the second one,
flattening their growth-curve in life, and in therapy, coaching and mindfulness training.
And we know it.
We know what it is like.
We have a positive experience, we will be in nature and have a moment of awe;
or we might be with a loved one and feel very touched by something
or witness an act of kindness and sense , you know, hope for humanity or in some way…
But it comes and goes and we have these flitty minds that just get distracted and go on to the next thing,
which is often a worry about what is around the corner.
So we don’t sustain our attention.
The point is: for our nervous system to transition from having a state of mind to creating a trait,
a habit that is really deep in us - of hoping, of loving, of compassion -
we need to practice it.
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