In December 2015, I created an “ah ha!” jar as a way of reminding myself of the wonderful aspects of my life and to balance out the impact of the daily serving of ” bad news”
presented by the media.
This idea is derived from current neuroscience research that recognises that positive experiences are like Teflon, they slip away…..whereas negative emotions are like Velcro….. they stick around.
Our brains are wired to focus on the negative aspects of life and these are the ones we remember easily. This is our survival mechanism at play and is part of the brain’s protective make-up. In addition, we forget about 40% of everything that happened to us yesterday.
(I have just learned that squirrels lose up to 50% of the food they hide. It must be genetic!)
On the other hand celebrating the good things in life, the events, relationships, the wow and ah-ha moments contribute to the joy of living and it is good to train ourselves to hold onto these experiences.
The use of the ah ha jar was for the purpose of capturing these moments that otherwise may easily have been forgotten.
During 2016 every time I experienced a moment of “wow” I post myself a note and placed it in the jar.
In this way,I captured the joys of life and I can revisit the joys anytime I please.
This is how my jar looks 12 months later in January, 2017. There are over 100 posts here.
As I read through them over the last week I was delighted to remember those wonderful ah ha moments that had slipped away from my awareness.
Very joyful! Consider this for yourself this year. I will be doing this again in 2017.
