2] Expand Your Knowledge Base
The more you know about the world and the people around you, the more likely you'll be to recognize PE opportunities of greater depth and complexity. Research and plan the situations that will produce positive experiences, such as vacations, evenings out with friends, educational events, time devoted to your hobbies. Consult experts and acquaintances, use all available resources-- the local library and colleges, movies, TV, video, radio, magazines, computer databases and software--and explore all possibilities; expand your goals. Be creative and match up different ideas that don't automatically seem compatible. Try experiences that you see other people enjoying in movies magazines and television.
3] Never stop working to increase your knowledge:
The Roman philosopher Seneca says, ''The soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation.'' Humans possess the unique capacity to acquire and process information. Our lives and minds are enriched by learning, by cultivating the habit of nurturing our knowledge. You should devote time to your own particular interests-- professional sports, nature study, cooking, gardening, hobbies, politics, history or current events in the news.
4] Cultivate your creativity.
It takes imagination and creative interpretation of experiences to find the gleaming opportunities that can be turned into fantastic memories. Practice fantasy, mental imagery; speculate on impossible possibilities; use both sides of your brain; suspend your disbelief. You'll be opening your life to more possibilities for positive experience. Explore books or software programs for boosting your creativity.
5] Review and analyze your positive experience memory bank and the KPEI.(Kall Positive Experience Inventory: see Appendix)
Identify which positive experience areas you tend to focus on and which areas you neglect that are worthy of additional attention. Maximize your positive experience opportunities by identifying PE's that:
a. you can build into your regular daily, weekly, monthly or annual schedules
b.you enjoy but don't make happen often enough
c.you rarely or never have (but could)
d.you are usually too busy to connect with (you rush past them)
e. you should avoid because they are bad for you-- physically, emotionally or spiritually.
The Next Phase is PRACTICE. Try these exercises to boost your positive experience reflexes.
Develop your sensory skills to become more sensitive to smells, tastes, sounds, and sights. The more you cultivate your senses to discern subtle differences, the larger a selection of sensory experiences you'll have to enjoy. Listen to the sounds of nature-- birds, wind, water gurgling in streams-- and all kinds of music. Listen to the sounds of happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, peace, enthusiasm, and ecstasy.
The ability to smell is the most primitive sense-- one closely tied to sexual reproduction, hormones and pheromones-- the naturally produced perfumes that function as sexual attractants for creatures at all evolutionary levels. Even insects and amoebas can detect odors. Unlike the more evolutionally advanced senses of sight and hearing, which are processed by the higher parts of the brain, our sense of smell takes a short cut directly to the limbic system-- the emotional part of the brain. As Diane Ackerman describes in her book, A Natural History of The Senses-- (an excellent users manual for the human senses I strongly recommend you consider if you want to learn how to tweak the most out of your senses)-- "When the olfactory bulb detects something--it signals the cerebral cortex and sends a message straight into the limbic system, a mysterious, ancient, and intensely emotional section of our brain in which we feel, lust and invent." Ackerman quotes Kipling, "Smells are surer than sights or sounds to make your heart strings crack." Every breath we take-- about 24,000 a day, draws scents and aromas across our olfactory sensors. Smells can influence your perceptions and memories whether you notice them or not. Cultivate your awareness of different smells. Actually practice recognizing the smells of many different scents-- flowers, foods, cleaners, spices, trees-- different kinds of trees, etc.
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