Well-being is a skill. If one practices the skills of well-being, one will get better at it. This article is adapted from a talk by Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, at the Greater Good Science Center’s recent Mindfulness & Well-Being at Work conference.
Resilience
We cannot buffer ourselves from adversity, but we can change the way we respond to it.
- Individuals who show a more rapid recovery in certain key neural circuits have higher levels of well-being and are protected in many ways from the adverse consequences of life’s slings and arrows.
Generosity
Our brains are constantly being shaped wittingly or unwittingly-most of the time unwittingly. Through the intentional shaping of our minds, we can shape our brains in ways that would enable these four fundamental constituents of well-being to be strengthened.
- We’re not creating something new-we’re strengthening and nurturing a quality that was there from the outset.
About the Author
Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
- He is the author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain and The Mind’s Own Physician
Outlook
See the positive in others, savor positive experiences, and see another human being as a human being who has innate basic goodness
- Even individuals who suffer from depression show activation in the brain circuit underlying outlook, but in them, it doesn’t last-it’s very transient.
- Simple practices of lovingkindness and compassion meditation may alter this circuitry quite quickly, after a very, very modest dose of practice.
Attention
People spend an average of 47 percent of their waking life not paying attention to what they’re doing
- An education that sharpens attention would be education par excellence
- William James defined attention as the root of judgment, character, and will, but it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about
