https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/29/1010319240/stuck-in-a-rut-sometimes-joy-takes-a-little-practice

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There's A Simple Way To Feel Happier, According To The New Science Of
Emotion : Shots - Health News If you've been feeling blah recently,
you're not alone. The good news is you can retrain your brain to feel
happier. Here's how to shift your mood and restore your well-being.
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Your Health

Stuck In A Rut? Sometimes Joy Takes A Little Practice

June 29, 20215:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Michaeleen Doucleff 2016 square

Michaeleen Doucleff

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Stuck In A Rut? Sometimes Joy Takes A Little Practice

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The new science of emotions tells us that our feelings aren't
hard-wired. If you've been feeling blah in recent months, seeking
small, regular doses of delight can shift your mood and restore your
well-being over time.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Back in the fall, Michelle Shiota noticed she wasn't feeling like
herself. Her mind felt trapped. "I don't know if you've ever worn a
corset, but I had this very tight, straining feeling in my mind," she
says. "My mind had shrunk."

Shiota is a psychologist at Arizona State University and an expert on
emotions. When the COVID-19 crisis struck, she began working from
home and doing one activity, over and over again, all day long.

"I will be honest, for the past 14 months, I have spent most of my
waking hours looking at a screen, either my laptop, my phone or a TV
screen," she says, often from the same sofa, in the same room in her
San Francisco home. All that isolation -- and screen time -- had taken
a toll on Shiota.

During the pandemic, many people have felt their mental health
decline. The problem has hit essential workers and young adults, ages
18 to 24, the worst, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in May.
The percentage of adults with signs of anxiety or depression has
grown threefold, from about 10% to 30%.

During the pandemic, many people have felt their mental health
decline. The problem has hit essential workers and young adults, ages
18 to 24, the worst, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in May.
The percentage of adults with signs of anxiety or depression has
grown threefold, from about 10% to 30%.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Although some people are starting to test the waters of public life
again, planning vacations and socializing more, others may still have
lingering signs of what psychologists call languishing. They may feel
an emptiness or dissatisfaction in day-to-day life. Or feel like
they're stuck in weariness or stagnation.

Luckily, an emerging area of brain science has a new way to help lift
yourself out of languishing -- and bring more joy into your life. It
worked for Shiota.

"I had to expand my consciousness," she says. And she did it by
intentionally cultivating a particular emotion.

Explore ways to cultivate well-being with NPR's Joy Generator.

[promo-cook]

INTERACTIVE: THE JOY GENERATOR -- Feeling blah? Science shows you can
boost happiness by taking time for small moments of delight. NPR hide
caption

toggle caption
NPR

How emotions arise

For thousands of years, there's been a common belief in Western
culture about emotions -- that they are hard-wired and reflexive,
psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes in the book How Emotions Are
Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. "When something happens in the
world ... our emotions come on fast and uncontrollable, as if
somebody flipped a switch," she writes.

But when researchers look at what's going on inside the brain and
inside the body during specific emotional states, the theory doesn't
hold up.

Over the past decade, neuroscientists have begun to shift how they
think emotions arise. Rather than being inevitable, hard-coded
experiences, researchers now think emotions are malleable, and people
have more influence over them than previously thought.

Say for example, you're walking in the woods, and you see a grizzly
bear, says neuroscientist Anil Seth at the University of Sussex. "You
recognize it's a bear," he says, "and then what happens?"

Previously researchers thought the emotion comes first. "You see a
bear and then you feel afraid," Seth says. "Because you're afraid,
your brain then jacks up your adrenaline levels."

Your heart rate rises. Your breath quickens. Your pupils dilate. And
blood rushes to your skeletal muscles. The old theory was that "the
fear sets in train all kinds of flight and fight responses so that
you are well-prepared to run away and live another day," he adds. In
other words, the emotion (i.e., fear) triggers the physiological
responses (i.e., an adrenaline rush).

But according to the latest research, the human body probably works
the other way around, Seth says. "The brain registers a grizzly bear,
and that perception sets in train all the physiological responses."
You get an adrenaline rush. Your heart rate goes up. You start
breathing faster. Blood rushes to your muscles. And then the emotion
comes.

The brain senses these physiological changes and decides which
emotion to conjure up. The emotion is an interpretation of what's
going on both inside the body (the adrenaline rush) and the outside
of the body (the sight of the bear). "The brain has to figure out
what caused the sensory signals," Seth says.

The chosen emotion not only helps the brain make sense of these
signals, but it also helps the brain predict better the immediate
future and how to handle the situation at hand. Which emotion would
be most useful? Which emotion will help me survive?

Over the past decade, neuroscientists have begun to shift their
understanding of how emotions arise. "Your brain uses memories from
the past in order to create the present," psychologist Lisa Feldman
Barrett says. It means that our emotions are malleable, depending on
our experiences and how we feel in a given moment.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

To figure that all out, Seth says, the brain uses one more piece of
information -- and this part is key. The brain takes into account your
past experiences, your memories.

Let's return back to that encounter with the grizzly bear. If your
past experiences with bears come largely through news reports of
attacks and maulings, then your brain will likely interpret your
bodily sensations -- raised heart rate, raised blood pressure, sweaty
palms -- as fear. Lots of fear! And this emotion will help drive you
away from the bear. "So you can live another day," Seth says.

But what if your family hunts for a living? And your past encounters
with a bear ended in a wonderful feast for you and your neighbors.
Then your brain may interpret the adrenaline rush -- the heavy
breathing and raised heart rate -- as excitement. This positive
emotion will help drive you forward toward the bear, while all the
physiological changes help you bring home dinner.

"Your brain uses memories from the past in order to create the
present," says Barrett, who also does neuroscience research. "It's
bringing knowledge from the past to make sense of the immediate
future, which then becomes your present."

Neuroscientists call this "the predictive brain." Understanding how
these predictions work is "very powerful knowledge," Barrett says. It
means that emotions aren't hard-wired reactions to particular
situations, which are out of your control (i.e., you see a bear and
therefore you must feel afraid). But rather it's the opposite. "You
can, in fact, modify what you feel in very direct ways," she says.

Emotional muscle memory

It's not about trying to force a happier or less fearful feeling in
the moment, Barrett says. But rather, it's all about planning ahead.
You can stack the deck in favor of your brain, choosing positive,
uplifting emotions in two major ways, she says.

The first one is a no-brainer: You can take care of your body
physically. According to this new theory, the brain constructs
emotions based largely on physiological signals and other sensations
from your body. So by boosting your physical health, you can decrease
the chance your body will send unpleasant signals to your brain and,
in turn, increase the chance, your brain will construct positive
emotions instead of negative ones. "You can get more sleep. You can
eat properly and exercise," she says.

The second approach to influencing your emotions may be less familiar
but likely just as impactful: You can "cultivate" the emotions you
want to have in the future.

"If you know that your brain uses your past in order to make sense
[of] and create the present, then you can practice cultivating
[positive] emotions today so that your brain can automatically use
that knowledge when it's making emotions tomorrow," Barrett says.

By practicing particular emotions, you can "rewire" your brain, she
says. "Your brain grows new connections that make it easier for you
to automatically cultivate these emotions in the future." So when you
start to feel a negative emotion, such as sadness or frustration, you
can more easily swap that negative feeling for a positive one, such
as awe or gratitude.

Feeling happier is all about planning ahead, Feldman Barrett says.
You can stack the deck in favor of your brain, choosing positive,
uplifting emotions in two main ways: taking care of your body and
cultivating positive emotions.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

"For example, when I am video chatting with somebody in China, I can
feel irritated very easily when the connection isn't very good,"
Barrett says. "Or I can feel awe at the fact that someone can be
halfway around the world, and I can see their face and hear their
voice, even if it is imperfect, and I can be grateful for that
ability."

In this way, emotions are a bit like muscle memory. If you practice
the finger patterns for a chord on the piano, a few minutes each day,
eventually your fingers can play those chords with little thought.
The chords become second nature.

The same goes for emotions. To help pull out of the pandemic blues,
it's time to start "practicing" positive emotions -- and it won't take
as much as learning all the chords.

All you need is about five to 10 minutes, says psychologist Belinda
Campos at the University of California, Irvine. "Hopefully it
wouldn't take people as much effort as it does to eat healthier or to
exercise," she says. "Positive emotions feel good. I think people
will find them rewarding enough to return to them and keep doing
them."

Scientists say this practice is helpful to prevent or work with
everyday doldrums and weariness. It isn't intended as a replacement
for treatments, such as counseling and medication, for serious mood
disorders or anyone going through intense or prolonged bouts of
depression.

The antidote to isolation

A few decades ago, scientists used to lump together all kinds of
positive emotions into one concept: happiness. Since then, a group of
psychologists, including Campos and Shiota, figured that there is a
whole "family tree" of positive emotions, including pride, nurturant
love, contentment, nostalgia, flow, gratitude and awe.

One reason these emotions often make us feel good is they shift our
focus away from the self -- that is "me and my problems" -- and onto
others, Campos says. "They help put the self in its balanced place,
of not being absolutely the highest thing on the to-do list. They
help us focus on the joys that relationships can bring."

She adds, "In this way, positive emotions are part of what helps you
to put others before the self." And helping others often makes people
feel good. "So, for example, people report levels of higher
well-being when they're giving to others, and it can feel better to
be on the giving end rather than the receiving end," she says. "I
think that's more evidence that focusing on others can be really good
for us."

The idea of cultivating positive emotions is pretty simple. Choose
one of these emotions and then do a specific action regularly that
helps evoke it. Psychologists have devised suggestions for how to get
started, but it can be as simple as taking time to notice and
appreciate the small things around you that uplift you. (Read three
tips to get started at the end of this piece.)

To cultivate positive emotions, practice them. Identify activities
that evoke positive feelings such as awe, flow and gratitude, and
then practice those activities regularly. Over time, your brain will
start to use these emotions more often and turn to negative emotions
less frequently.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Over time, your brain will start to use these emotions more often --
and turn to negative emotions less frequently.

Take, for instance, gratitude.

For the past year and a half, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder has been on the
front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shamasunder is a physician at
the University of California, San Francisco, and he spends about half
his time in low-income communities around the world.

To help bring more "light" into his life, Shamasunder started to keep
a gratitude journal. It was part of a project for the Greater Good
Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Each day, Shamasunder simply jotted down things around him for which
he was grateful. "So not necessarily spending a whole lot of time
racking my mind, but just everyday occurrences that were powerful or
meaningful or just simple and beautiful," Shamasunder told The
Science of Happiness podcast. He jotted down the doctors and nurses
working on Sunday, "the unseen hands who created a vaccine," "the
evening light, magical and orange and blue," and a tree outside that
provides refuge to birds, ants and squirrels.

By intentionally cultivating gratitude, for even a short period each
day, Shamasunder found it easier to evoke positive feelings
throughout the day. "The act of naming the gratitudes carried into
the next day and the next, where I became more aware of things in my
life that I should cherish in the moment, or I need to cherish."

An awe a day keeps the malaise away

Back in the fall, when Shiota, the Arizona State psychologist, felt
her mind shrinking, she knew exactly which emotion she needed to
cultivate.

She got up off the couch, drove West from her San Francisco home and
ended up at the edge of the ocean. "I am trying to reconnect with the
vast natural world, with the universe beyond my professional and
personal responsibilities, and beyond this moment in time," Shiota
writes in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. "I am
searching for awe."

Shiota is a world expert on awe. She says the emotion is difficult to
define, "but I think that what we are dealing with is a change that
happens in our mind -- and in our bodies and in our feelings -- when we
encounter something so extraordinary that we can't explain it."

That encounter can be with something grand, such as a panoramic view
of a red sun dipping into the Pacific Ocean. It can be with something
minuscule, such as the black spots on a ladybug. (How did they get so
perfectly round?) It can be a scent, a taste or sound. "It can be a
very complex and powerful song that you've never heard before or even
a scene in a TV show," Shiota says.

Whatever it is, the extraordinariness of the event makes you pause,
for a bit, Shiota says, and try to figure it out. How does a rose
smell like a lemon? Why does a perfectly ripened peach taste so good?
"We simply slow down our body, slow down," Shiota says.

And this pause calms your body. "I've found evidence that the
activation of our fight-flight sympathetic nervous system dials back
a little bit."

The feeling of awe also widens your perspective, she says -- which
Shiota desperately needed after spending so much time looking at
screens. "I had to consciously force myself to look further away. I
had to let my senses -- my sight, my sound, take in a broader scope of
what was going on around me."

In addition to going to the beach, Shiota also simply walked around
her neighborhood, looking for unexpected and inspiring things.

"There was this amazingly elaborate, chalk drawing in recognition of
somebody's birthday. There was a couple, in which one person was
clearly helping the other learn to roller-skate on the San Francisco
hills. And they're clinging on to each other for dear life," she says
with a chuckle. "Then the flowers! If you look closely at flowers, in
a way that you never take the time to do, you'll see how incredibly
intricate they are.

"So the opportunities for awe are there," she says. "Look for what
moves you, what pushes your sense of boundaries of what is out there
in the world."

It took a little time -- and patience -- Shiota says, but eventually
these "awe walks" helped her recover from her pandemic funk.
Practicing awe released her mind from that constraining "corset."

"Then my mind was able to spread out and take up the space that it
needs to take to feel OK," she says. And once her mind released, her
body followed. "When you take off the corset, your whole body goes,
'Oh, oh! That's much better.' "

Awe is a challenging emotion to define, but it's that feeling you get
when you encounter something so extraordinary that you can't explain
it, says Shiota, an expert on emotions. She says that awe takes you
outside of yourself and shifts your perspective outward. Taking a
five-minute walk outside each day, focusing on the small details of
the world around you, is one easy way to cultivate awe.
Enlarge this image
Meredith Rizzo/NPR
Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Three ways to practice happiness

Psychologists say you can improve your well-being if you recognize
moments of positive feelings, value them and seek them out more
often. Below, find a few other ideas for cultivating positive
emotions and turning happiness into a habit. To explore more ideas,
check out NPR's Joy Generator.

1) Share some appreciation: Campos recommends this simple practice.
Get together with some friends and write out on cards three things
that you're grateful for in the other person. Then share the cards
with each other.

"We're using this task right now in my laboratory, and it seems to be
very evocative of positive emotion," she says. And though the data is
preliminary, she says, "what we see so far is that people enjoy
writing what they appreciate in others, and they enjoy sharing it
with the other person. It seems to be affirming bonds." Sometimes it
even ends in hugs.

2) Take an awe walk: Take a five-minute walk outside each day where
you intentionally shift your thoughts outward. Turn off your
cellphone or even better don't bring it with you. "Focus your
attention on small details of the world around you," psychologist
Piercarlo Valdesolo at Claremont McKenna College suggests. Look for
things that are unexpected, hard to explain and delightful.

For example, take a moment and find a crack in the sidewalk, where a
weed is poking out, Barrett says. And let yourself feel awe at the
power of nature. "Practice that feeling over and over again," she
says. "Practice feeling awe at colorful clouds, an intricate pattern
on a flower or the sight of a full moon."

3) Listen to a calm concert: A recent meta-analysis from the
University of Michigan found that sounds of nature, including
birdsongs and water sounds, lower stress, promote calmness and
improve mood. Find a bench in your neighborhood under a tree or near
water. Sit down, close your eyes and consciously listen to the
natural sounds around you. Listen for birdsongs, rustling wind or
trickling water. Try sitting for at least five minutes whenever you
get a chance. Allow and enjoy calm to wash over you.

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