Podcast Summary
The power of learning to heal and grow: Learning from daily experiences and turning them into lasting traits can help us heal, grow, and offer more to others
Learning is a fundamental strength that can help us heal, grow, and respond to the challenges and suffering in our lives. According to Dr. Rick Hansen, learning is the foundation of everything else, and it's something that can be continually developed. While there are many small good experiences in life, the key is to internalize these experiences and turn them into lasting traits. This process involves enriching and absorbing new experiences, which is the installation phase of learning. For most people, this can be achieved by finding and focusing on the good things in their daily lives, no matter how small they may seem. By developing the skill of learning, we can not only help ourselves but also have more to offer others.
Practicing enriching strategies for personal growth: Five evidence-based practices for making experiences more robust and lasting: extending, intensifying, using multimodality, elaborating, and reflecting.
Maximizing personal growth involves both enriching and absorbing experiences. Enriching experiences refer to the things we can do inside our minds to make the most of the experiences we have. There are five evidence-based practices for enriching experiences: extending the experience, increasing intensity, using multimodality, elaborating on the experience, and applying reflection and rumination. Extending the experience means staying with an experience for a longer time and avoiding distractions. Intensity involves fully immersing oneself in the experience, making it big in one's mind. Multimodality refers to having rich sensory and emotional experiences. Elaboration involves adding new information or perspectives to the experience. Reflection and rumination involve thinking deeply about the experience and its meaning. By practicing these enriching strategies, we can make our experiences more robust and lasting, leading to greater personal growth.
Make experiences intense, unique, and relevant: Engage all senses and emotions to deepen connections and make abstract ideas more tangible and real
To maximize learning and gain from experiences, we should aim to make them intense, unique, and relevant. This means lengthening the experience, making it as vivid as possible through multiple senses, and ensuring it holds significance to us. For instance, recognizing someone likes us isn't just a thought, but an experience with a visual aspect (seeing their face) and a physical sensation (feeling appreciated). This multimodal approach deepens our connection to our experiences and makes abstract ideas more tangible and real. It's a common challenge to bridge the gap between intellectual understanding and visceral feeling, and this approach can help bridge that divide. In essence, we should strive to make our experiences richer and more meaningful by engaging all our senses and emotions, rather than just relying on conceptual understanding.
Exploring the multidimensionality of experiences: Consider the cognitive, perception, emotional, and motivational aspects of experiences to deepen their richness and fullness
Experiences, especially positive ones, are multidimensional and can be enriched by exploring different aspects of them. Frida Frome Reichman's idea that people don't need new ideas, but new experiences, can be applied to our own lives. When we have a positive experience, such as realizing that someone likes us, we can deepen that experience by considering its various components. First, there's the idea or cognitive aspect, where we acknowledge and accept the truth of the experience. Next, there's the perception aspect, where we focus on the sensory details and body sensations associated with the experience. Third, there's the emotional aspect, where we explore the feelings and emotions that arise from the experience. By teasing apart these different threads of the experience, we can become more mindful and skilled at weaving them back together. Additionally, experiences are also motivated by our desires and intentions. By recognizing and acting on our natural inclinations and desires related to the experience, we can deepen our connection to it. Lastly, there may be physical actions or expressions that accompany the experience. By being aware of these different aspects of our experiences and tuning into them, we can maximize their richness and fullness. Our underlying frame is one of resourcefulness and self-reliance, always looking for the next good opportunity to deepen our experiences and tune into the different components that make them unique.
Exploring novelty and relevance in experiences: Incorporating novelty and relevance in experiences deepens learning and makes them more impactful and memorable
Enriching our experiences involves making them more meaningful by incorporating novelty and relevance. The brain is naturally drawn to novelty, so exploring different aspects of familiar experiences and approaching each moment with a sense of wonder can help deepen learning. Relevance, or finding personal value in experiences, can make them even more impactful and useful in our lives. For example, when trying to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, focusing on aspects of it that resonate with us on a deeper level can lead to greater appreciation. Similarly, recognizing the value of listening more and advising less in a difficult relationship can lead to improved connections. By intentionally incorporating novelty and relevance, we can make our experiences more enriching and memorable.
Engage in intentional experience processing: Intending to remember an experience and focusing on its rewards increases its efficiency in memory-making and long-term storage in the brain
To fully absorb and retain an enriching experience, both from an objective and subjective perspective, you should intend to internalize it, tune into your body's internal sensations, and focus on what is rewarding and meaningful about it. Research suggests that intending to remember an experience increases its efficiency in the memory-making process. Engaging interoception, or tuning into internal bodily sensations, leaves lasting traces in the brain. Additionally, focusing on what is rewarding and meaningful in an experience increases dopamine and norepinephrine activity in the hippocampus, flagging the experience for long-term storage in the neocortex. From an inside-out perspective, this process challenges our conventional relationship to experience, emphasizing the importance of actively engaging with and valuing our own experiences.
Engage with experiences to transform: Actively engage with experiences to maximize their impact and become a part of who we are, transforming us in profound ways
Experiences have the power to shape and transform us in profound ways. Instead of just passively receiving experiences, we can actively engage with them and allow them to inhabit us, becoming a part of who we are. This process can feel like a gentle rain sinking into deeper parts of ourselves or a jewel being placed in the treasure chest of our hearts. By approaching experiences with deliberateness and skillful effort, we can maximize their impact and benefit from them long-term. Even in moments of flow, where we are fully immersed in the experience, we can still reflect on and learn from what we've experienced. Overall, this perspective encourages us to be more intentional and present in our experiences, and to fully embrace the transformative power they hold.
Reflecting on experiences to improve skills: Through deliberate practice and reflection, we can deepen our understanding and master new skills, whether physical or mental. Our bodies store subtle sensations from past experiences, serving as valuable cues for future learning.
Our experiences, whether physical or mental, leave lasting impressions on us. These impressions can be reinforced through deliberate practice and reflection. For instance, when we dance, play music, or engage in any other performative activity, we strive to achieve a state of flow where we can fully immerse ourselves in the moment. Afterward, we reflect on our performance and identify areas for improvement. This reflection process helps us internalize new skills and techniques, making us more proficient and skilled in our chosen activity. This process is not limited to physical activities. We can also apply it to mental and emotional learning. Antonio Damasio's concept of somatic markers explains how our learning is rooted in sensory motor experiences. Our bodies store subtle sensations associated with new ways of thinking or being, which can serve as valuable cues for future reference. This embodied cognition can significantly enhance our conceptual understanding and overall learning experience.
Enriching and absorbing experiences for learning and personal growth: Making learning experiences salient, lengthening them, making them multimodal, unique, and important deepens absorption and leads to valuable growth.
Learning new skills, whether it's playing an instrument, skiing, or practicing mindfulness, leads to changes in the brain. This process of learning can be enriched by making the experience salient, lengthening it, making it multimodal, making it unique, and making it important to us. The absorption of the experience can be deepened by fully engaging with it, sinking into it like a stone through water, and making it meaningful and memorable. Approaching everyday experiences as opportunities to learn, even if they only last a few minutes, can lead to valuable growth. So, in summary, enriching and absorbing experiences are essential for learning and personal growth. By making the most of every opportunity to learn, we can unlock the full potential of our brains and enhance our lives.
