All of these positive facts can be remembered from the past, noticed in the present or anticipated in the future. They can be real or even imagined.
So, the point here is to use mindful attention to rest our awareness on what is useful to us and then work skillfully to get those neurons firing together wholesome tendencies inside ourselves (Noetic Now Journal: 2011).
Amplify and Savor
Next, remain mindful of the embodied experience to the exclusion of everything else for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. It can be very useful to use language to intensify the positive experience.
Let It Sink In
The third step is to imagine the experience sinking into your body and mind.Really feel the physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts moving deeply into the body and intend that they are becoming part of you.
What Now?
These three steps can used in several ways. Two useful ways are: On-the-spot; and antidote experiences.
Taking in the Good On-The-Spot
The first way of actively saturating your implicit memory with positive experiences is to apply the process ‘on-the-spot’; as you are experiencing the desired resourceful state e.g. confidence.
Bringing awareness more and more frequently into the present moment allows people to notice what’s there. Knowing what to look for is also important. Using Well-being Theory’s PERMA model can be useful.
Become aware of positive emotions and positive sensory experiences; everything from positive feelings associated with memories, thoughts, or future plans. Notice beautiful sights, sounds, smells, and tastes in the moment; savour them.
Notice being in flow and celebrate it. Exaggerate and re-live fleeting positive interactions with colleagues, friends, and family. Bring memories into your awareness of times when you’ve felt a deep sense of meaning and purpose. And last but not least, validate yourself for having achieved everything you’ve achieved.
Buddha’s Antidote Experiences
The second way of working with implicit memory to enhance well being is to actively seek out antidote experiences to negative memories. According to Hanson these antidote experiences fall into three broad categories that match the evolution of the brain: avoiding harm, approaching rewards, and attaching to‘us’.
Antidote experiences related to avoiding harm include: embodied experiences of one’s own strength and efficacy; the fact that we are basically safe and secure right here and now; and having compassion for oneself and others. These positive antidote experiences infuse with negative implicit memory experiences of helplessness and weakness, anxiety, and resentment and anger.
A second group of antidote experiences relates to approaching rewards and includes: feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction; and gladness or gratitude. These experiences weaken negative implicit memories of frustration, disappointment,
and sadness.
The final, and perhaps most important group of antidote experiences for human beings is attaching to ‘us’. This group of embodied experiences includes: a sense of inclusion; recognition and acknowledgement; and love and friendship. These experiences lift our dis-empowering implicit memories of feeling unseen or rejected; feelings of inadequacy and shame; and feeling unloved or unlovable.
Both the on-the-spot and the antidote experiences are used in the same way. First the positive experience or antidote is acknowledged as fact and then felt as an experience. That experience is then amplified and imagined to be soaking into the body and brain.
The Fourth Step
Hanson’s Taking in the Good’ involves a fourth step. If the experience is positive,imagine it soothing old pain, and eventually replacing it. If one is overwhelmed with a negative experience, bring the psychological antidote to mind.
Always have the positive experience more prominently in awareness while keeping the negative experience in the background.
After maintaining both the positive and the negative experiences in awareness,release the negative experience and rest with the positive experience.
Coaching for Positive Change
The applications of well-being theory and self-directed neuroplasticity in coaching are many. PERMA provides a useful starting point and structure to choose and use positive facts about ourselves and our lives. Hanson further provides some ideas to focus on when ‘Taking in the Good.’
Hanson suggests focusing on bodily states; felt experiences in the moment. Desired feelings and moods are also useful targets for this practice. Others may find it useful to examine perspectives and views on self and others, or on the world, or on the past, the present, and the future. Finally, self-directed neuroplasticity can be used to develop your repertoire of behaviors and see how you can alter your inclinations.
Bibliography
Books
Hanson, R., 2009. Buddha’s Brain. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications.
Websites
International Coach Academy, 2012. Coaching FAQs. [online] Available at: http:// www.coachfederation.org/clients/coaching-faqs/ [21/07/2012].
Noetic.org, 2011. Noetic Now Journal. [online] Available at: [20/07/2012].