Our evolutionary survival mechanism is primed to remember bad experiences so they serve as warnings for the future, whereas pleasant experiences serve no such purpose and thus are discarded. Many of us also indulge in black-and-white thinking. We catastrophize: “I’ve had a terrible day,” we say, tarring the whole day with negativity, when the reality is that each day is made up of a multitude of experiences—positive, negative, and neutral. If we can start to pay attention and notice, particularly when we have a positive experience, and hold that experience in our being for two or three seconds, our memory will then “bank” it rather than let it slide away into oblivion. An additional benefit is that noticing a positive experience as it happens makes our life feel richer.
Make an intention to notice any pleasant experiences you have today. These are going to be mainly small things, such as noticing the clean, sharp smell of air when you leave a stuffy room; hearing a child laugh or a favorite song; seeing a pleasing arrangement of colors, and so on. It will be different for each one of us.
When you become aware of a pleasant experience, first notice what it feels like in the body. Does it feel tight, contracted, loose or open? If you were asked to describe it, what words or pictures would you use? What thoughts do you notice? What emotions are present?
Remember, we are not trying to create positive experiences. We are simply paying attention to any pleasant experiences that regularly occur but that we usually ignore or quickly forget.