How to Trick Your Brain for Happiness. This month, we feature videos of a Greater Good presentation by Rick Hanson, the best-selling author and trailblazing psychologist. In this excerpt from his talk, Dr. Hanson explains how we can take advantage of the brain’s natural “plasticity”—it’s ability to change shape over time. gobyg There’s this great line by Ani Tenzin Palmo, an English woman who spent 12 years in a cave in Tibet: “We do not know what a thought is, yet we’re thinking them all the time.” It’s true. The amount of knowledge we have about the brain has doubled in the last 20 years. Yet there’s still a lot we don’t know. In recent years, though, we have started to better understand the neural bases of states like happiness, gratitude, resilience, love, compassion, and so forth.
Ultimately, what this can mean is that with proper practice, we can increasingly trick our neural machinery to cultivate positive states of mind. But in order to understand how, you need to understand three important facts about the brain. 1. 2. HFI Animate: 7 principles that make your website more engaging with Dr. Susan Weinschenk. 8 — Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information. Does the unpredictability of a text message trigger dopamine release? Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting?
Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Have you ever gone to Google to look up some information and 30 minutes later you realize that you’ve been reading and linking, and searching around for a long time, and you are now searching for something totally different than before? These are all examples of your dopamine system at work. Enter dopamine – Neuro scientists have been studying what they call the dopamine system for a while. The myth — You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. It’s all about seeking — The latest research, though is changing this view.
And for those of you who like research: Kent C. The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People. TEDxSoMa - Damon Horowitz - 1/22/10.