They draw on Rachel Yehuda’s research on working memory and stress, which we discussed in Chapter 2, to highlight how resiliency is evident after exposure to stressful situations and resilient people show optimism in the face of adversity. So let’s return for a moment to Ann, who was busy at work and put off dealing with her problem. As a result, her working memory—and her work—was adversely affected by the stress. When Ann’s best friend pleaded with her to get over her fear of going to the doctor and get the bump checked out, she finally decided to listen to her. The doctor took a biopsy, and it turned out that the bump was not malignant. The bottom line is if you avoid dealing with your problems, it can diminish your working memory and make you more susceptible to depression. This can have a knock-on effect, because a poor working memory also undermines your ability to deal appropriately with the fallout that comes from avoiding problems in the first place. By dealing with your problems head on, you at least have the benefit of a fully functioning working memory so you can adapt to whatever comes your way.
Be Still and Be Happy
Meditation has long been linked to a sense of calm happiness. In a 2007 trial, Richard Davidson and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used functional MRI brain imaging to see what changes in the brain occur during meditation. The team enlisted expert meditators, many of whom had over 37,000 hours of meditation experience, as well as a group of novice meditators. As the participants meditated in the brain scanner, they were barraged with distracting sounds, such as restaurant noise, a baby cooing, or a woman screaming. The researchers found that compared to the novices, those with the most meditation experience were better able to filter out the distractions. The brain scans also showed greater activation of the PFC—the home of working memory—in the most experienced group. The PFC was recruited because the brain scans were conducted during concentration meditation, a form of meditation that involves focusing attention on a small visual image or on the breath, a technique that requires working memory.
Amishi Jha and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania took this discovery a step further and found a more direct relationship among meditation, a strong working memory, and feelings of happiness. She looked at U.S. Marines who were feeling stressed before they were deployed for duty. One group meditated for thirty minutes every day for eight weeks and the other group for twenty minutes a week for eight weeks. After that period, the participants were asked to rate their positive and negative moods. The group that practiced for thirty minutes a day had higher working memory scores at the end of the eight weeks and reported more positive moods than the group that meditated less. We would speculate that the improvement in working memory enabled the Marines to more successfully filter out negative, stressful thoughts and instead focus on positive thoughts, thus improving their moods.
At the beginning of this chapter we met “Super Mario,” a man whose positive outlook allowed him to triumph over incredible adversity, and asked whether a strong working memory might have contributed to his happiness. Having examined the evidence, we think the chances are good. A strong working memory Conductor would have helped Mario ignore negative emotions and focus on the positive, even though there was every reason to believe that the miners might not be rescued. Also, because he was keeping himself busy—telling jokes, planning his children’s future, looking for escape routes, and helping devise innovative ways to accomplish everyday chores while underground—which engaged his working memory, rather than brooding on possible doomsday scenarios—his dopamine and serotonin levels likely remained relatively high, preserving a feeling of well-being.
If you are frustrated because your coworkers are bombarding you with emails and IM jokes, strengthening your working memory Conductor can help you eliminate these extraneous distractions and focus on getting your project in on time. If you’re feeling down because your spouse is complaining that the kids are arguing, the house is messy, and friends are arriving for dinner in fifteen minutes, building your working memory can help you focus on the fun to be had at the dinner party once you get your house in order and put the kids to bed.
Working Memory Exercises
Your working memory Conductor helps you to control your emotions, which is a big step toward experiencing more happiness. The following exercises will set you on the path to strengthen your working memory and gain better control over your moods and outlook.
1. Learn How to Manage Positive and Negative Emotions
An important step to happiness is being able to identify what makes you happy and what makes you sad. We use our working memory to focus on familiar emotional information. This exercise will help train your working memory to evaluate emotional words, so that you can learn to focus the positive, rather than the negative.
1 Below is a list of words. Don’t look at it!
2 Ask a friend to read the list of words aloud.
3 Listen for repeating words. When you hear a repeated word that was read out three words before, do this:Snap your fingersTell your friend whether the word is emotionally positive, negative, or neutral.
The answers are in bold on the list.
Word List
leaf
unfortunate
ecstatic
sunny
syrup
ecstatic
thankful
syrup
plank
downer
afraid
friendly
downer
thankful
2. Have a Few Cups
In 2012, Lars Kuchinke and colleagues from Ruhr University, Germany, discovered that drinking 200 mg of caffeine, or about two to three cups of coffee or four cups of tea, improves how fast and how accurately you can recognize positive words, but not neutral or negative ones. While this study didn’t examine if coffee drinkers are less likely to be depressed, one can point out that if coffee makes it easier to recognize the positive, it’s a good thing.
3. Filter Out the Negative
When we ruminate, we can focus on negative experiences and emotions. This exercise trains your working memory to filter out negative feelings and focus on the positive ones.
Level 1: Instructions
1 Draw
