I previously wrote about the importance of savoring positive moments – like receiving a thank you card – with the same or greater intensity than you would experience negativity from receiving bad news. This is because that practice feeds the Wolf of Love. We need to be extra deliberate about feeding the Wolf of Love because evolution has equipped us with a negativity bias. In the past this aided our survival, but now it simply stresses us the fuck out.
At Stress School we spend a lot of time emphasizing and cultivating our felt (aka embodied) experience of sensations and emotions, for it is in the felt experience – not the cognitive/intellectual realm – that we really affect the synaptic wiring of our brains and evolve ourselves. This is so much more than thinking positive thoughts. I’m talking about FEELING positive feelings.
Click here to find out more about cultivating positivity.
Embodied states are dense nutrition for the Wolf of Love. Thoughts are just empty calories. To really beat our negativity bias we need to sit in and appreciate our positivity. It can be so easy to feed one negative thought or feeling with another, but the same is true of positive feelings.
For more on the two wolves, check out @rickhansonphd blog and his book Buddha’s Brain.
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