This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Psychologist Fred Bryant studies a tragedy that affects millions of people around the world.
Most of our lives are filled with ample examples of joy and sorrow, but many of us preferentially focus on what is wrong.
In our last episode, we examined how many of us say we want to be happy but spend much of our lives focused on things that make us unhappy.
We pay attention to aches and pains, but take our bodies for granted.
When we are healthy, we complain about unpleasant coworkers and nasty neighbors, but don't talk much about the kind souls we know at work and in our communities.
When good things happen to us, we wonder how they could be better.
If you missed that episode, I strongly recommend you listen to it first.
It has a number of important insights.
We examined how sorrows have a way of finding us, no matter how hard we try to avoid them.
Joys, on the other hand, don't come knocking.
We have to find them.
And when we do, we need to learn a number of mental skills to notice and savor them.
Today on the show, part two of our mini series on the science of savoring how you can deploy your mind to make yourself a happier person.
This week on Hidden Brain, you've heard the phrase, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
The advice tells us, make the best of a bad situation.
Look on the bright side.
Fred Bryant's mother, Mary Lee, was an expert at looking on the bright side, and she was a master when it came to savoring the pleasure in joyful experiences.
She understood that savoring is a process that can begin long before the joyful thing happens.