Susan Britton explains how the brain memorizes emotions through repeated exposure to stress hormones or dopamine and serotonin. She introduces the 68-second bask, where you focus on a deeply held value for exactly 68 seconds to reinforce positive emotions and rewire your emotional memory.
I will take an educated guess that you are a person who likes to learn, and learning requires memorization of details and facts and associating things and using that information so that you can keep using it, remember it, memorize it. What we don't often think about is whether or not we have memorized emotions. We're good at memorizing details, certainly, and facts and figures and techniques and procedures. But when it comes to emotions, we can also unknowingly memorize those as well. And many of us are not aware of unconsciously sort of memorizing emotions such as worry or fear or frustration or anger or pessimism. And on the converse, we can also memorize emotions like emotions such as joy and gratitude and happiness and compassion and some of the things that expand the way that we feel and think. So give some consideration to what emotions have I memorized in my world. It's easy to do. Treat yourself self-compassionately if you notice that some of the emotions you have memorized are a little more contracting in nature, and think about what emotions would I like to memorize for my world. Those too can form memory there's an interesting process around the actual cell receptors wanting more and more of the emotion that you have been feeding it. So if your cell receptors are used to receiving cortisol and adrenaline and epinephrine as a result of feeling stressed, they'll just want more of that. If your cell receptors start to say, "Hey, I like the feeling of this dopamine and the serotonin that's floating through my system. I want more of that," then you will start to memorize those positive emotions. One of the fastest, fun ways to be able to do that is to consider the 68-second bask. And that means that you just take for 68 seconds an intention to really hold one of your highest held values in mind, feel it throughout your body, let it last for 68 seconds and wash over you, and notice whether or not your whole demeanor, your countenance, your— the way that you feel hasn't changed after focusing, basking for 68 seconds around something that, that is of value to you, that you highly esteem. So whether that value is learning or gratitude or something that just falls into that appreciation for beauty or whatever it might be, that That concentration for 68 seconds will help you to memorize the emotions that you want to memorize and make a part of your life. Start now.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
